bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Toward a Strong Cultural Sociology of the Body and Embodiment
Authors: Champagne Anne Marie
Published: January 2024

Tracing the thematization of culture and the body across modern, postmodern, and neomodern sociological thought, this chapter explores the possibility of developing a meaning-centered, strong cultural sociology of the body and embodiment, one that approaches body and embodiment as constituting a uniquely hermeneutic situation—a fusion of subject and object, ideality and materiality—structured by cultural codes and dependent upon interpretation for getting itself out into the social world. The development of a Strong Program cultural sociological perspective on the body is, Anne Marie Champagne argues, uniquely suited to ferreting out and reconstructing the personal and collective representations, senses and sensibilities, and myths and motifs through which the physical body comes to embody self, society, and world
Interpreting Africa’s Seselelãme : Bodily Ways of Knowing in a Globalized World
Authors: Geurts Kathryn Linn , Komabu-Pomeyie Sefakor
Published: January 2024

An African language term seselelãme (meaning bodily ways of knowing) has recently spread into a globally popular phenomenon appearing in films, workshops, blogs, therapy sessions, and other venues spotlighted on the world wide web. This chapter explores questions such as: What sorts of interpretations are being made about seselelãme by people attempting to deploy it in Global North contexts? What are the implications of individualizing and commoditizing seselelãme in fee-driven self-transformation workshops? In what ways does this perpetuate symbolic and structural asymmetries underpinning institutional power? This chapter problematizes some of the ways in which seselelãme is being used in Global North contexts (including as a quick fix to the mind–body problem) and then revisits how Ghanaian people themselves narrate bodily ways of knowing. Taking a psycho-socio-cultural approach, the authors align seselelãme with a modal (compared to categorical) way of understanding and being in the world. Finally, the chapter argues that seselelãme is one of Africa’s treasures, which is nonetheless being culturally distorted, culturally appropriated, and culturally stripped of its richness.
Theoretical Assumptions: Framing Projections in International Scenarios
Authors: Londoño Catalina Montoya
Published: January 2024

Chapter 1 offers an overview of the emergent body of literature about frame projection in international scenarios, using concepts such as public and mediated diplomacy. It introduces the concepts of framing and public and mediated diplomacy, and online information subsidies as a key strategy linking traditional and contemporary practice. The chapter discusses what is known about the potential of mediated public diplomacy and online subsidies for peacebuilding, beyond national interests and image building. The arguments put forward are that public diplomacy can be understood in a constructivist way when countries and organizations use communication to promote peace as a public good by counteracting negative public opinion around peacebuilding efforts and harness international credibility and civil society support more broadly, and that information subsidies are a key instrument for the practice of public mediated diplomacy that can contribute to the promotion of peacebuilding transformation.
Peacebuilding Efforts in Colombia: National Agendas and Management of International Cooperation
Authors: Londoño Catalina Montoya
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 compares peacebuilding efforts carried out by the Colombian governments of Juan Manuel Santos and Ivan Duque, based on reports from government and the Office of the Comptroller General and online subsidies from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The chapter also discusses the role that the October 2016 plebiscite had in propelling the campaign and election of Ivan Duque. It establishes key governmental agendas in Colombia, including peace negotiations with illegal actors and peacebuilding agendas in targeted places within Colombia. Despite some similarities, it is argued that the Duque administration actively opposed the peace agreement and transitional justice provisions left by the Santos government, as well as the reformist approach to the war against drugs. In addition, the chapter compares the management of international cooperation for peacebuilding by the Santos and Duque administrations, allowing a deeper appreciation of the differences and similarities in the governments.
International Actors’ Framing of Peacebuilding Spaces
Authors: Londoño Catalina Montoya
Published: January 2024

Chapter 6 explores which departments, regions, cities, municipalities and administrative spaces for peacebuilding were foregrounded in international actors’ online subsidies, and how they and Colombia as a national space were explicitly labelled and defined with negative and positive references. Negative comments suggested what was at issue and how spaces were understood and promoted as problematic and subject to intervention. Positive references illustrated how the international community generated aspirational images of peacebuilding at different scales of intervention, and how spaces could be transformed in line with positive models. The chapter explores how each country and international organization leading the post-conflict funds and support for the peace process explicitly referred to places with positive or negative qualifications, including, for example, the presence of armed conflict, illegality or inequality, or, conversely, spaces as models or with the presence of valuable features that fostered transformation possibilities with regard to peace.
Stigma-embedded Semiotics: Indexical Dilemmas of HIV across Local and Migrant Networks
Authors: Fontdevila Jorge
Published: January 2024

This chapter applies Peircean semiotics (sign, object, interpretant) and related tools (indexicality, metapragmatics) to rich ethnographic data on HIV disclosure across US local and migrant networks of gay and bisexual men. Interactional grammars of sexual encounters are examined where HIV can be transmitted via polysemic (mis)interpretation. For local sexual networks, silence (sign) about HIV non-disclosure can index “bareback” condomless contexts (object) of ingroup belonging and empowerment (interpretant). For recent migrant men, however, silence during condomless sex may index differently—that sex partners can be trusted to disclose if HIV positive. Thus, silence by some HIV-positive men as empowering response to HIV stigma and rejection may paradoxically create sexual contexts of HIV transmission that recent Latino gay men then encounter. These semiotic pathways act as performative expressions on the ground of larger scale stigma rooted in unequal sexual orders. From a pragmatist framework of social mechanisms, the chapter’s goal is to show how emergent properties of complex systems (structural stigma, HIV disparities) affecting vulnerable populations are partly realized via semiotic mechanisms at the micro-level of sexual interactions.
Supremacy or Symbiosis? The Effect of Gendered Ideologies of the Transhuman versus Posthuman on Wearable Technology and Biodesign
Authors: Wissinger Elizabeth
Published: January 2024

In March 2021, Dolce and Gabbana (D&G) showed its women’s fall/winter 21 collection in a windowless, audienceless, mirrored fantasia of flashing lights glancing off reflective surfaces. The video showed models sweeping down the runway in shiny metallic garb, glossy white robots rolling along beside them. One “MC” robot seemed to be running the show, strobing lights, and pulsing the music with dramatic sweeps of its humanoid hands. The COVID-19 pandemic may have nixed the customary live show, but not the futuristic exuberance of the presentation. Ostensibly informed by “robotics research and Artificial Intelligence,” D&G’s Instagram (@dolcegabbana, 3/1/21) claimed that this collection was “an attempt to reveal how technology and craftsmanship, two apparently different worlds” can come together. By eliding the notion that technology is craftmanship, the post invokes a rift in signification that has far-reaching consequences. The idea that high fashion and high tech are mutually exclusive has a long history. Fashion, traditionally associated with the feminine, is a luxury world of silk, fur, and leather. The “hand” of a fabric, its feel to the touch, is just as important as how it drapes or looks on the body. The notion of “handmade” is also highly valued, evoking images of patient seamstresses painstakingly beading a one-of-a-kind creation. As the organizers of the 2016 Manus x Machina show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art aptly pointed out, the “oppositional relationship” of the “hand/machine dichotomy” (Bolton and Cope, 2016, p. 9) has governed the culture of fashion since the birth of haute couture in the mid-19th century.
The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Modern War
Authors: Chin Warren
Published: January 2024

This chapter contends that the importance of technology increased dramatically in the conduct of war from the 19th century onwards. Schumpeter’s economic analysis of capitalism and its relationship to technology demonstrates that four long economic cycles in the industrial revolution led to ground-breaking changes in the mode of production in little more than a hundred years. These changes took time to permeate the consciousness of the military, but the second half of the 19th century witnessed enthusiasm to employ new ideas and technologies in war. This chapter seeks to explain why there was such a change in the mindset of the military and how this impacted the connection between war and the state until the end of the Second World War. Mass industrialized war in the 20th century emphasized quantity more than quality and required the mobilization of society and the economy via the state.
The US Tax State and the Limited Social Contract
Authors: Manning Carrie
Published: January 2024

Chapter 3 shows how in the US, as citizenship was extended through constitutional and legal means to people who were not citizens at the time of state formation and the forging of its associated tax bargain, resistance to the inclusion of new groups in the body politic takes the form of resistance to changes in the tax bargain. Today’s tax policies in much of the American South are informed by the process of state consolidation that followed the Civil War (1860–65) and by resistance from states to that process. Ideas about the state, citizenship, and intergovernmental relations that grew out of the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction periods in the South have been carried forward to the present day. These ideas have proved resilient in the face of initiatives – the New Deal, the War on Poverty – that held a more expansive (or intrusive) view of role of government, as well as a more robust social contract. The tax bargain, and the tax policies it encompasses, play an important role in maintaining a restrictive social contract.
Implications of the Reliance on Fines and Fees
Authors: Manning Carrie
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on one of the most pernicious effects of the artificial creation of fiscal scarcity through tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) – the use of law enforcement as revenue generation. The use of policing to generate government revenue, first through civil asset forfeiture and then through traffic fines, court fees and other criminal justice fines and fees, as well as municipal ordinance infractions, has reinforced this low-tax, small government tax bargain. And, though the modalities of its implementation have been updated over time, this narrow tax bargain continues to be premised on the exclusion of racially and economically marginalized communities. Non-tax revenues raised through traffic citations and fines for minor infractions tend to fall disproportionately on people of color. In effect, these measures allow politicians and taxpayers to keep taxes low while singling out a marginalized class of people to help pay for essential services that are normally considered public goods.
Introduction
Authors: Mocca Elisabetta
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter seeks to clarify the purpose of this book as well as illustrate the concepts and analytical categories employed. To begin with, the first chapter elucidates who the protagonists of this book are and discusses what ideal types of cities will be taken into account throughout the book. Second, it explains why it makes sense, in our globalised world, to research cities and to postulate cities’ autonomy. Third, the introduction touches upon the tension between cities and states, and how this underpins the emancipatory attempts of European cities. In relation to this, the core theme of this book – that is, European cities’ endeavours and their instruments to liberate themselves from the grip of the state – is briefly introduced. Finally, the chapter illustrates the structure of the book.
The Ebbs and Flows of Cities as Political Actors
Authors: Mocca Elisabetta
Published: January 2024

A wealth of literature acknowledges contemporary European cities’ enhanced political capacity. However, apart from a few exceptions, research on this topic tends to exclude time as an analytical dimension. Or, when the latter is considered, it covers a limited time span, rarely going beyond the post-Second World War period. This chapter contends that the recently revamped autonomy of European cities is the outcome of a century-long evolution. To this end, this chapter looks further back in time and historicises the development of European cities’ autonomy. An evolutionary institutionalist approach is employed to scrutinise the swinging European cities’ institutional and political capacity. Therefore, this chapter shows how the trajectory of European municipal autonomy went through periods of expansion and contraction, determined by their economic and political strengths.
Fleeing the State
Authors: Mocca Elisabetta
Published: January 2024

This chapter builds on the contemporary developments in state–local relations, characterised by the greater engagement of municipalities in domestic and international affairs. Here it is discussed how European cities have tried to move away from being passive recipients of top-down decisions to become pro-active political agents. Therefore, the main instruments for municipal emancipation, which go under the rubric of paradiplomacy, are illustrated. Intuitively, the term paradiplomacy indicates practices with which municipalities mimic state behaviour. As discussed in the chapter, some examples of paradiplomacy are collaborative EU-funded projects, multi-lateral agreements and transnational municipal networks. These constitute powerful tools to widen municipalities’ wiggle room and political influence, not only at national but also at supra-national level. This chapter aims at illustrating how paradiplomatic practices have been deployed by cities to carve out a niche of freedom outside the control of the state. Municipal paradiplomacy is here examined by excavating its main purposes – that is, its teleology. By proceeding through parallelism with state diplomacy’s primary objectives, three functional equivalents that constitute the primary teloi of paradiplomacy are identified: municipal self-determination, influence and latent contention. The analysis of the teloi focuses on the distribution of power, hegemony and autonomy at different scales.
Civitas Activa : The Mobilising Potential of Cities
Authors: Mocca Elisabetta
Published: January 2024

The urban dimension has held a vivid attraction to social researchers. Since the contributions of early urban sociologists, the urban scale has provided a bound environment where human behaviours can be best observed. However, the political potential of cities has been sidestepped. Therefore, this chapter contends that political action is intrinsically connected to the specific features of the urban dimension. The city is here construed as the site and catalyser of political activation, inasmuch as urban characteristics prompt the body of residents to engage in political acts. For this, cities constitute the humus for the civitas activa. To articulate the political potential of cities, this chapter bridges multiple scholarly contributions across political theory, political science and critical urban studies. By bringing into conversation different theoretical imports, a distinction between the political as dissensus and as deliberation is provided, to underscore how cities are conducive of conflict and dialogue at the same time. In particular, greater attention is drawn to the political as deliberation to conceptualise the urban as a favourable locus for political action. By examining the nature of the political and its connection with the urban, this chapter thus seeks to reinstate the political value of cities, countering post-political urban visions.
A Municipal Way Out?
Authors: Mocca Elisabetta
Published: January 2024

The concluding chapter takes stock of the analytical insights of the previous chapters, with the aim of reflecting over the trajectory of European municipalities’ centrifugal push and trying to cast some light on future development of the state–local conflict. In particular, this chapter embeds the discussion of the main arguments of the book in the debate on the contemporary international order that replaced the state-centric Westphalian system. Building on the literature putting forward the thesis of the development of a new international system, this chapter shows how the role of European cities has changed over time. The chapter draws to a close by reflecting on the future of cities in the European polity as shaped by the main crucial events that have occurred in the first two decades of 21st century.
Privacy, Surveillance, Whistleblowers and Hacktivism
Authors: David Matthew
Published: January 2024

The scope for privacy has expanded exponentially via digital networks. Privacy and its invasion are a cat-and-mouse game. The scope for states to monitor individual communications is greater than ever before, as is the scale of big data collected by companies. Yet, awareness of attempts to monitor citizens and manipulate consumers is also increased by means of digital networks. Such networks inform as well as inform upon us. In what ways are WikiLeaks and Anonymous similar? In what ways are the two different? Can social scientists judge whether leaks and hacktivism are ‘justified’, or is such judgement only ever a by-product of whose side you are on? Can social scientists be neutral or is it in the nature of social reality that facts are morally loaded? Do the cases of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden show the scope or the fragility of power in today’s digital surveillance state?
Introduction: Beyond Modern Environmentalism
Authors: Bresnihan Patrick , Millner Naomi
Published: January 2024

In this chapter, we expand and unpack some of the major arguments in the book. We revisit the history and formation of modern environmentalism, exploring some of its key assumptions. We emphasise three important blindspots that have been configured by this specific history – (anti)colonial geography, struggles over land and livelihoods, and lived ecologies – proposing these as productive entry points for a counter-history of modern environmentalism. Finally, we use the title of the book to clarify what this project will, and will not, set out to do, as well as situating our own research and commitments as authors. The chapter also includes two boxes on denaturalising environmentalism and provincialising environmentalism.
Suburb, Field, Laboratory: Recomposing Geographies of Early Environmentalism
Authors: Bresnihan Patrick , Millner Naomi
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the early geographies of environmentalism in the 1960s, with an emphasis on chemicals, pesticides and the industrial food system. In this chapter we revisit the legacy of Rachel Carson, who is remembered as a seminal figure in the making of environmentalism, making clear the contributions of other, less-well remembered figures and movements, including migrant farmworkers’ unions in California, and movements against the early Green Revolution in Mexico.
Mobilizing Memories: Remembrance as a Social Movement Tool in the Vieques Anti-Military Movement (1999–2004)
Authors: Vélez-Vélez Roberto
Published: January 2024

In 2004 the community of Vieques, Puerto Rico succeed in closing a US naval station, ending more than 60 years of military presence in the municipal island. At the center of this resistance process, the Vieques Movement deployed narratives revisiting the experiences of dread, fear, and violence that accompanied over three decades of bombardment and war games, memories of trauma. This chapter seeks to bridge the gap between the narratives that social movements created to frame mobilization, and notions of the past that allow for the elicitation of action. Using an approach focused on remembrance structures termed mnemonic signifiers, the analysis looks at how mobilization narratives were attributed meaning by linking them to personal and collective memories. Instead of assuming that social movements approach representations of the past as fixed frames, the chapter examines the signifying power that personal experiences of historic events render to social movement processes.
Commemorations as Transformative Events: Collective Memory, Temporality, and Social Change
Authors: Whitlinger Claire
Published: January 2024

Few places are more notorious for civil rights-era violence than Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the 1964 “Mississippi Burning” murders. Yet in a striking turn of events, Philadelphia has become a beacon in Mississippi’s racial reckoning in the decades since. Examining two commemorations around key anniversaries of the murders held in 1989 and 2004, this chapter engages commemorations as potentially structure-transforming events drawing on William Sewell’s eventful temporality to explain the differences in how those two commemorations unfolded. In particular, the chapter suggests that commemorations are most likely to be transformative when conditions for positive intergroup contact are met. This includes collaboration on a common goal, equal status within the commemorative planning process, the support of relevant political and cultural authorities, and opportunities for informal interactions, often through storytelling. More broadly, this chapter suggests that interracial efforts to commemorate racial violence should be conceptualized as instances of intergroup contact, highlighting the often-overlooked interactional dynamics of the commemorative planning process and extending arguments about the relationship between storytelling and social change.
Changing Memories of the Shoah in Post-Communist Countries: New Memories and Conflicts
Authors: Leydesdorff Selma
Published: January 2024

In this chapter, the author argues that past and recent political changes since the fall of communism have influenced the narrative of the Shoah. New memories have been manipulated and have created new historical canons. Memories in the western world were always divergent from those being told in the former communist countries where a Russian memory has been imposed. It was hardly possible to speak or write about the suffering of Jews. All victims were Russified and have become innocent Soviet citizens. With recent political changes new stories have replaced the old ones. In the new political climate, many groups contest the victimhood of others, while victimhood has become part of the search for a non-communist identity. The ensuing nationalist narrative is often supported by the state or dominant political narratives and defined as the only one “correct” view that replaces what is considered to be a distortion. These politics hinder a pluralist attitude where the past can be contradictory. Examples come from Russia, Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states. The author has interviewed survivors of Sobibor and the article is inspired by these interviews.
Authoritarian Algorithmic Management: The Double-edged Sword of the Gig Economies
Authors: Masikane Fikile
Published: January 2024

Most of the studies on gig work focus on the Global North, with very little research done on how platform workers in Africa are responding to the digital economy. Ostensibly based on freedom and self-employment, this new work order is deepening worker insecurity, undermining worker rights and dramatically increasing inequality between a core group of extremely wealthy senior managers/owners and a growing pool of precarious workers. However, our research among food service delivery couriers in Johannesburg, Accra and Nairobi shows that digital technology is generating forms of counter-mobilisation, often into self-organised network associations. By technologically linking platform workers, the gig economy tends to link their bargaining power, thus contributing to the emergence of hybrid forms of union-like associations (associational power) and new partnerships with traditional unions and NGOs (societal power). The chapter concludes by suggesting that the new digital technology is a double-edged sword: while it extends authoritarian managerial control over workers, increasing their insecurity and deepening levels of inequality, at the same time it increases workers’ workplace bargaining power, providing them with the ability to develop innovative forms of collective solidarity, organisation and strike action.
College Students’ Perceptions of Interpersonal Violence
Authors: Bainter Madison , Hammeke Abigail , McDowell Joshua , Lynn Tamara J.
Published: January 2024

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act requires institutions of higher education to respond to issues of sexual violence. However, research indicates that students often do not recognise behaviours characteristic of interpersonal violence unless blatantly physical in nature, even though emotional and sexual violence are equally common. Because students may not recognise these behaviours as interpersonal violence, these issues often go unreported, leading to long-term consequences, including anxiety, continued victimisation, depression, difficulty maintaining relationships and/or school failure. Additionally, those residing in rural communities are less likely to acknowledge and/or report such victimisation due to protecting the deeply entrenched ‘close-knit’ relationships. This chapter presents findings from a survey designed to measure undergraduate perceptions of interpersonal violence. Members of the research team attended 12 randomly selected junior and senior-level classes at a rural, liberal arts, teaching university. Students (n=247) viewed a series of vignettes depicting both violent and non-violent forms of interpersonal violence. Participants then provided basic demographic information and indicated whether each vignette demonstrated instances of interpersonal violence. Analysis accounted for differences in gender; race; whether the student, or someone they know, previously experienced interpersonal violence; and whether the student previously attended a programme educating students on the signs and symptoms of interpersonal violence. Findings confirm that education is effective for helping students recognise interpersonal violence. Expanding educational resources will aid campus college administrators in proactively reducing Title IX issues and effectively responding to Title IX issues after the fact.
‘Trying to Avoid Coyotes’: The Nexus of Rurality, Violence and Inequality
Authors: Magnus Amy M.
Published: January 2024

Rural domestic violence is a growing area of scholarship; yet, more research is needed to fully grasp survivors’ lived experiences. This chapter leverages my own community-based, action-oriented ethnographic research from a rural community in the western United States to convey grassroots lived experiences of rural domestic violence survivors. It serves as a window into the nexus at which rurality, domestic violence and inequality meet; in particular, this chapter delineates what is known about domestic violence in rural locales and the ways it disproportionately impacts those most vulnerable. Importantly, survivors’ lived experiences raise awareness about the unique, intersectional dimensions of rural domestic violence. This includes issues pertaining to transportation in a rural environment, cultural and religious forces that shape staying in and/or leaving abusive circumstances, and rural social isolation. From these findings, the chapter offers suggestions for ways to better address rural domestic and gendered violence, offering a path forward for future scholarship and social action.
Religious Responses for Rural Sexual Assault Survivors
Authors: Terry April N.
Published: January 2024

Sexual assault research, and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV), has focused nearly exclusively on urban areas, ignoring the documented differences between metropolitan and rural communities. Additionally, as research has indicated, many juvenile and criminal justice system involved girls and women enter the system with histories filled with chronic traumatic experiences, including extensive histories of sexual violence. Using a feminist criminology foundation, this chapter adds to the understanding of girls’ and young women’s experiences with sexual assault in their rural communities, with specific interest in gaining insight into how ‘close-knit’ environments respond to survivors of sexual violence. Data were gathered through a larger project incorporating interviews with one rural Midwestern state’s only population of incarcerated youth and young women as well as community stakeholders. Open-coding identified that while community workers believe survivors are seeking faith-based organisations for assistance, at-risk young women are not directed to such individuals. Family status influences how communities respond to survivors of sexual violence – in some instances, survivors are ignored, in other cases, their abuses are criminalised. While the community perception is that at-risk young women are seeking help from their religious leaders, this pathway to ‘help’ may be specific to citizens already involved within their faith communities – a sample of patrons that do not include outsider families. Yet, policy implications would encourage collaborative work, both domestically and internationally, with faith-based organisations and other community providers to ensure holistic services for all rural survivors.
community-based services faith-based organizations
Introduction
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

The introduction outlines the significance of global neoliberal capitalism – its achievements, failures and contradictions. Despite recurrent crises of capitalism, current critical thinking in the social sciences reveals unpredictable and uncertain futures. The introduction summarises the thinking of leading writers, which include: spontaneous collapse leading to the rise of a new but undefined social formation, a reformed liberal capitalism, state capitalism or the rise of parallel autonomous economies. Among the social scientists discussed are Randall Collins, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, Michael Mann, Branco Milanovic, Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian, Immanuel Wallerstein, Alexander Buzgalin, Daniel Chirot, Wolfgang Streeck, J.K. Gibson-Graham and Samir Amin. The introduction explains why it is important to distinguish, theoretically, between different forms of capitalism and globalisation, and outlines six major alternatives. The book is organised into three parts: the three introductory chapters outline and criticise globalisation and neoliberalism; the next part outlines 20th-century alternatives to capitalism, it discusses their merits and failings; the final part considers current alternatives – their strengths and weaknesses – and finally my own proposal of regulated market socialism.
State Socialism Moves to a Market Economy
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Relying on the experience of the USSR, the chapter shows how convergence to neoliberalism arose out of the failure of the statist economy to adapt to the technological advances that were under way in the transition from industrial to post-industrial society. Reform of state socialism led by Gorbachev, was influenced by Thatcher’s reforms, and supported by the rising strata of professional educated people who formed the ‘service class’. The geo-political dimension in favour of neoliberal reforms is shown to be crucial for the dismantling of state socialism. The two area comparisons bring out how, in both the Western social democratic and the East European socialist parties, domestic social support for neoliberal political reform was generated by the ascendant professional white collar social strata and the failure of state led politics. The chapter analyses how Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms effectively dismantled the planned socialist economy, ending an alternative to capitalism and instigated the arrival of a neoliberal capitalist economy.
The ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Critique
Authors: Lane David
Published: January 2024

Chapter 12, The ‘Anti-Capitalist’ Critique, deals with critics who wish to reverse globalisation to form areas of self-governing autonomous communities which may run in parallel to post-industrial capitalism. They propose justice and democracy in place of hierarchy and authority. The emphasis is on action, the ‘here and now’, a prefigurative strategy. Discussion includes the ‘occupy’ movements whose objectives are to replace the oppressive forms of capitalism with a democratic symbiotic society based on mutualism and cooperation. Many of these tendencies adopt an ‘exit’ strategy: the objectives are either to replace globalisation with autonomous economic democratic cooperative associations or to coexist with global capitalist forces. Other movements include informal networks and ‘Twitter’ revolutions which enable mobilisation. These movements are considered expressions of social and political discontent that reveal and identify important forms of oppression. Many of these movements are limited to micro changes and present alternatives forms of coexistence to global capitalism.
Transition
Authors: Atkins Ed
Published: January 2024

This chapter outlines the conceptual starting point and vocabulary used for subsequent chapters. It introduces how contemporary energy transitions are creating new energy landscapes, in which the relationships between people, communities, and energy are transformed. It highlights how these changes currently benefit the most powerful in society. In light of this, the chapter moves to assert the need for a new form of energy transition. In understanding this new energy model, it draws from scholarship on just transition, energy justice, and energy democracy to explore how decarbonisation policies can be transformative and improve people’s lives. It moves to assert the significance of place-based elements in an energy transition – highlighting that while decarbonisation is a national priority, it is primarily felt at the local level.
Home
Authors: Atkins Ed
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents a particular geographical dimension of a just energy transition: exploring how patterns of energy poverty and injustice can cluster in certain areas and affect particular groups. It adopts a language of restorative justice to highlight the need for energy transitions to help those facing energy poverty. It illuminates how current policies fail to do this – with respective schemes often being inaccessible to those who would benefit from them the most. in terms of economic inequality but also along lines of home ownership. Energy efficiency and rooftop solar policies should prioritise those most in need. The chapter highlights the potential of both national and local schemes to do so and calls for new policies of mass retrofitting policies urgently. It ends by detailing the fourth rule for a just energy transition: the need to prioritise those most vulnerable to energy poverty.
Work
Authors: Atkins Ed
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents a second geographical dimension of a just energy transition: detailing how decarbonisation has important consequences for workers. Any energy transition represents a process of economic restructuring – creating new jobs and making others redundant or undesirable. While green jobs are a key priority in national and international policy, there is often uncertainty about what these jobs might be. This chapter reflects on how ‘good’ current green jobs are – highlighting issues of pay, conditions, and who can access such work. It argues that, for any transition to be just, it must offer better jobs to those impacted by the phasing out of fossil fuels or looking for work. A route to doing this is by investing in skills, rather than jobs – supporting workers to not only change jobs but secure future livelihoods. The chapter then moves to assert the fifth rule for a just energy transition: the inclusion of workers and trade unions in deliberations of what decarbonisation is and the forms it takes.
Global
Authors: Atkins Ed
Published: January 2024

This chapter presents a final geographical dimension of a just energy transition: exploring the global dimensions of decarbonisation. It adopts an approach of cosmopolitan justice to explore how contemporary energy transitions represent a process of cost-shifting between countries and communities that leads to renewable energy technologies benefiting some and negatively impacting others. To do so, this chapter explores how solar panels and battery technologies are implicated in environmental destruction in South America’s ‘lithium triangle’, child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and forced labour in Xinjiang, China. It also discusses the global dimensions of electricity transmission, illuminating how the potential exporting of electricity from Morocco to Europe will link the latter region to processes of subjugation and injustice in Western Sahara. It then moves to discuss patterns of waste, exploring how energy technologies must be reused and recycled – rather than going straight to landfills, where they may become implicated in further global injustices. It closes with the final rule of a just energy transition: that justice here equals climate justice everywhere.
Conclusion
Authors: Atkins Ed
Published: January 2024

This final chapter provides a commentary on the arguments and cases developed throughout the previous chapters and reflects on the potential of a new energy model. It asserts the need for energy transitions to present a better future for many, arguing that a just energy transition can reduce emissions, help vulnerable households, and empower local communities. However, it contrasts this potential with UK government policy in 2022 that remained short term and narrow in character. This chapter closes by presenting a vision of what a just energy transition should be, reiterating the rules presented in previous chapters and reflecting on what happens next.
Actuaries Going on a Random Walk
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

In Chapter 4, the book’s analytical focus moves to the actuarial profession and examines how changes in the structure of life insurance arrangements led actuaries to reconsider the nature of financial uncertainty. The chapter starts by identifying a key moment in debates about financial risk: the presentation by Sydney Benjamin of a new way of modelling the financial risk in unit-linked insurance contracts, using stochastic simulation techniques. While traditional actuarial modelling was mostly ‘deterministic’, representing the future merely according to point-based estimates, stochastic simulation modelling ascribed a likelihood to different scenarios and thereby allowed actuaries to account for the spread of possible outcomes. After describing Benjamin’s novel approach and identifying the sources of its contentiousness, the chapter reviews the ensuing actuarial debates about whether and how financial uncertainty should be modelled and then places this debate in the broader context of the actuarial field, showing how actuaries struggled to operationalize financial risk, but also grappled with the question of the appropriate place for mathematics and computing in actuarial thought and practice. The chapter concludes by considering how the introduction of this new mode of modelling financial risk – stochastic modelling – influenced life insurance and actuarial science more broadly.
Managing Risk in Insurance
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 7 examines the rise of quantitative approaches to financial risk management in insurance. While the market-consistent valuation models discussed in Chapter 6 seek to estimate the economic value of insurance contracts, given their financial risk, risk models seek to estimate the likelihood that the economic value of insurers’ liabilities fall below their assets, which requires the quantification of non-diversifiable risk factors, including risks associated with improvements in life expectancy and financial risks. The chapter examines the rise of financial risk management practices in insurance and scrutinizes the development of models to quantify longevity risk. It also addresses the question of how the rise of risk management affects the power relations between the different actors within the field of life insurance.
De-Risking Pensions, Managing Assets
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 9 examines the emergence of the pension de-risking market, which in many ways is exemplary of the changes in the insurance industry more generally. The chapter provides a brief historical overview of what became known as the ‘pensions crisis’ that led to the closure of many defined benefit pension schemes, leaving the legacy defined benefit pension liabilities to be picked up by insurance companies. The chapter then analyses the structure of this newly invigorated market field before analysing the ties with this field and the adjacent market field of asset management. The chapter concludes by arguing that this development illustrates the changing logics underpinning private pensions: from a relational model based on trust to one that revolves primarily around the financial logic of risk-based capital
Financial Evaluation and the Future of Insurance Society
Authors: van der Heide Arjen
Published: January 2024

Chapter 10 concludes the book by returning to some of the questions raised in this introductory chapter. I review the key arguments developed in this book, and, in an attempt to understand why modern finance theory has become such a powerful force in reshaping various domains of society, I relate the key arguments of the book to the notion of ‘performative power’ (Svetlova, 2012). I subsequently address the question of how the institutionalization of modern finance theory may be interpreted as a form of rationalization that, on the one hand, achieves socio-technical closure by making it more difficult to sustain organizational forms of insurance other than large proprietary insurance companies that predominantly sell unit-linked products. I finally raise the question of whether this socio-technical closure should be seen as a desirable development in the context of future needs for economic security.
The Disney Princess Phenomenon
Authors: Muir Robyn
Published: January 2024

This book provides an updated and foundational understanding of the Disney Princess Phenomenon, a group of animated characters that have permeated all areas within popular culture. Dividing the Disney Princess Phenomenon into three facets: films, merchandising and marketing, and consumer experiences, this book identifies what images of femininity are present in the Disney Princess Phenomenon, how they have changed over time, and where some are more dominant than others in their range of mediums through a new analytical framework. This identifies the princess as the political due to their ever-growing status as role models to consumers and their contribution to the construction of femininity with popular culture.
Playing in the Parks: Meeting ‘Real Life’ Princesses
Authors: Muir Robyn
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the third facet of the Disney Princess Phenomenon: consumer experiences. Through an autoethnography, the chapter maps out how the Disney Princesses are remediated through theme park meet and greets, identifying which models of femininity are dominant.
Green New Deal Agendas: System Change versus Continuity
Authors: Levidow Les
Published: January 2024

In recent years, Green New Deal (GND) agendas have gained significant support for a transition to an environmentally sustainable, low-carbon, socially fairer economy. In the 2019 US and UK versions, endorsed by some public-sector trade unions, the GND sought to achieve a net-zero carbon by 2030, localize production-consumption circuits and reduce resource burdens. Proponents envisaged greater socio-economic equity by mean such as expanding public goods and workers’ cooperatives. When these agendas sought endorsement by major political parties, however, trade unions in fossil fuel sectors sought a commitment to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a condition for supporting a GND, thus perpetuating fossil fuels. Such promises illustrate the general appeal of technofixes to soften societal conflicts around a potentially disruptive decarbonization process. By contrast, going beyond climate fixes, the labour movement has been promoting GND local campaigns for a socially just, low-carbon economy. Its agendas for retrofitting houses illustrate a cooperative eco-localization perspective, in conflict with the neoliberal techno-market fix of competitive tendering that constrains insulation standards and improvements.
Conclusion: What Social Agency for System Change?
Authors: Levidow Les
Published: January 2024

Techno-market fixes carry beneficent promises to decarbonize economies in ways avoiding societal disruption and conflict. But the problem runs more deeply: they justify institutional change along neoliberal anti-democratic lines, supposedly in order to realize the techno-optimistic promises. Often a mobilized counter-public has stimulated public controversy and promoted alternative solutions. Exemplifying eco-localization, some local agendas would incur lighter resource burdens, enhance socio-economic equity, involve grassroots innovation, localize production-consumption circuits, assign political responsibility and devise appropriate sociotechnical means. Such transformative mobilizations undermine climate fixes and go beyond them. More effective strategies can emerge from Participatory Action Research, whereby researchers and practitioners jointly define the problems that warrant research. In the case studies here, knowledge exchange with political activists helped to sharpen action-research questions for a systemic perspective on false solutions versus alternatives. As many cases here illustrate, technical designs and standards always facilitate one social order rather than other, thus warranting political struggle. This big picture can help to identify and facilitate an effective social agency for transformative mobilizations, as steps towards system change.
Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Positions
Authors: Varriale Simone
Published: January 2024

Chapter 2 addresses how imaginaries of Northern meritocracy inform Italians’ motivations for migration and how these imaginaries are negotiated in unequal positions in Italy. The chapter introduces the concept of a field of forces to capture the interplay between migrants’ imaginaries and their experience of structural inequality, problematizing too-broad distinctions between high-skilled and low-skilled migrations. Findings show that Northern meritocracy is more salient in the narratives of younger migrants (regardless, to some extent, of class background). Italians in their 20s present migration as a project on the self and of social distinction, linking it to feelings of autonomy and control. Gender and racial inequalities complicate these narratives, but it is especially ageing (and its intersection with other inequalities) that magnifies narratives of external constraints and lack of control, which make Northern meritocracy a muted category of practice.