Spaces of Governance: Gender and public sector restructuring in Canada

While the literature on economic restructuring tends to understand neoliberalism as a uniform governance ideology or economic-political reality, we suggest that it is more useful to understand neoliberalism as a loosely knit assemblage of programmatic efforts that consist of various political rationalities and practices of rule that aim to manage social conduct. The paper focuses on the various ways that these efforts are connected to complex state rescaling processes in Canada. Specifically, the first part of the paper examines the restructuring of nation-state responsibilities in social service and security provisions. It illustrates the shift toward a new citizenship regime that renders women as active agents who are responsible for solving problems in an individualized manner. The second part of the paper exemplifies how neoliberal programmatic efforts create new spaces of governance, particularly those of flexibility through non-standard work. The massive rescaling of the public sector, the decreasing demand for women's ‘traditional’ occupations, and the increasing prevalence of women in non-standard work arrangements constitute women as political-economic subjects in new ways. We analyze these processes using data drawn from in-depth interviews with personnel in the Canadian Federal Public Service. We outline some of the implications these initiatives have had on public service programmes and various public sector groups. Additionally, we provide a selection of individual accounts of public sector restructuring and gendered work by professionals and contract workers employed in the public service, and offer empirical illustrations of the contentions surrounding neoliberal restructuring initiatives.     

抗战胜利前后中间党派对民主的诠释：以经济民主为中心

加世纪40年代,中间党派及自由知识分子为反对国民党垄断国家资源的一党专政体制,提出了融政治民主、经济民主、教育民主、国际民主于一炉的社会民主主义理论。这种民主观试图扩大民主的范围,其目标是社会方方面面皆民主化,以保障人权和实现社会正义,体现了超时代的理想主义色彩。中间党派对社会民主主义的颂扬,具有反抗国民党专制统治的进步意义,是近代中国民主宪政运动史留给后人的一笔精神财富。     

甲午战争与近代日本国民的形成——近代媒体的发展与作用

培养近代国民是国民国家建设的重要目标,同时具备民族特质和公民特质是国民的内在属性。甲午战争是日本进入近代以来的第一次大规模对外战争,＂印刷资本主义＂的出现和发展形成了能够构成民族共同体的舆论条件。战争与媒体交互影响,使＂日本人＂的自我意识得以强化,对外形成了对朝鲜和中国的优越感和蔑视感,军人被英雄化、神圣化,围绕战争也形成教育方式多样性,民众由此达成了对天皇和国家的认同,甲午战争成为近代日本国民＂民族＂特质的重要标志。     

Tracking democracies: Italy and Japan in historical perspective

Abstract

The Italian and Japanese roads toward democracy have been paved by external forces, by the timing of economic development, by ‘great’ leaders and by such factors as institutions, class structure, geography and even by accident. In finding a pair of countries where so much is similar, and yet where fundamental differences penist, comparativists have fertile ground in which to look for key factors in political (and democratic) change. This article, in short, takes aim at illuminating these factors by distinguishing between the structural and cultural conditions within which democratic tracks were laid in Japanese and Italian history. It concludes that a closer examination of leadership and agency is necessary to explain more fully democratic development in Italy and Japan.     

Homelessness Regulation and Neoliberalism’s Imperial Past: The Janus Face of Anti-Homeless Urbanism and Tokyo’s Modern Socio-Spatial Development

Using historical ethnography and a systematic review of research on homelessness in modern Tokyo (1868–2019), I illustrate how imperial formations, or historically established asymmetrical relations of power, are bound up in homelessness regulation. I argue that the delegitimisation of unsheltered existence—seen in multiple policy fields across history—is a vessel for imperial formations that necessarily propagate anti-democratic limitations on rights and protections. Moreover, I advance that this continuous invalidation of the right-full existence of persons experiencing homelessness serves as a platform for paternalistic Janus-faced interventions co-constituted from corrective, compassionate, and middling ambitions. This research seeks to amend false dichotomies of a chiefly punitive past and a compassionate complex present, and redirects attention from presumed policy intent to the actual legal and social roots of urban injustice.     

Which national group will I identify myself with? The role of preferred and perceived identity representations

Research shows that the more people identify with a national in‐group, the more their citizenship representation becomes in line with the citizenship discourse attached to this national‐identity. However, although national identification may lead to a preference for a specific citizenship representation, national identification might itself depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences. In line with this, a longitudinal study among Flemish‐Belgian high‐school students (N = 275) showed reciprocal relations between national identification and citizenship representation. A second study among Flemish‐Belgian high‐school students (N = 407) then showed that strength of national identification does not simply depend on preexisting citizenship representation preferences but on the (mis)match between such preferences and the citizenship representation perceived to be attached to a national‐identity. In addition, results showed that the relation between national identification and out‐group attitudes depends on the national‐identity under consideration.     

Tocqueville and the End of History

Abstract

We argue for the relevance of a contemporary return to Shakespeare because his work prompts thinking about the “Body Politic,” perhaps the most vivid and enduring image in speech describing political community ever proposed. Shakespeare's meditation on this image invites us to reflect on the conditions under which a body politic can be made whole; that the constitution of any formal commonwealth requires a self-conscious articulation of the body politic and that this articulation could not happen without the parts themselves being aware of their partial character within the whole political order. The need for the consent of those parts in the political order to which they would belong thus becomes suddenly more evident. Shakespeare's plays show that this need for consent always emerges within discrete political communities. As such, the constituent parts of those communities must grant consent, exercise and enjoy their rights, and participate in the whole within the limitations circumscribed by their political boundaries and borders. His dramatic works thus help us reconsider contemporary attacks on the nation-state and illuminate the body politic as an essential means for bringing into being the preconditions and framework required for healthy political life, including liberal democracy, to flourish.     

Slipping through the cracks: museums and social inclusion in Australian cultural policy development 2007–2010

This article explores the actions taken by the Australian Government during the period of 2007–2010 in regard to its proposal to develop a new national cultural policy. Despite its stated commitment to the creation of opportunities for the re-articulation of existing publics and the formation of new ones, the newly elected federal government’s social inclusion and productivity policies did not, at any stage, seek to draw a positive or causal association between museums and social change. This was despite the museum sector’s numerous attempts to communicate its value in precisely these terms to government. It was also despite the precedents for this policy initiative that existed internationally, particularly in the UK. This article explores the actions taken by the Australian Government during the period of 2007–2010, the international context within which these occurred, and the reactions generated by the museum and collections sector in response to the events.     

从西方化到本土化:英国的殖民统治与马来西亚的政治发展

马来西亚是政治发展较为成功的发展中国家。马来西亚政治发展的成功,在很大程度上是由于对殖民时期的政治遗产进行了适当的本土化改造,使民主与权威同时为政治稳定提供支撑,形成了介于民主与权威之问的政治体制。马来西亚政治发展的经验说明,发展中国家只有根据本国国情对继承而来的政治遗产进行本土化的改造,才能建立适合本国社会与历史特点的稳定的政治体制。西方的政治发展模式并不是普适性的真理,发展中国家在探寻政治发展道路过程中也可以形成自己的政治发展模式,从而使人类文明的发展变得更加丰富多彩。     

Female Workers,Political Mobilization,and the Meaning of Revolutionary Citizenship in Beijing, 1948-1950

After entering Beijing in January 1949, the Communist Party immediately sent cadres to local factories in order to mobilize female industrial workers into a women＇s movement and to establish the idea of ＂revolutionary citizenship.＂ The Party wished to nurture this idea in both the local political arena and in women＇s lives inside and outside the factories. This article demonstrates that a host of factors defined revolutionary citizenship, including party directives, choices in revolutionary strategy, cadres＇ interpretations of directives and their own initiatives, and workers＇ reactions to mobilization. It was in this complex mix of mobilization, women＇s strategies to protect and advance their own interests, and the politics of group representation in the revolution, that female workers came to understand the meaning and impact of revolutionary citizenship and the shape of labor-state relations in the emerging socialist China.     

Sport in the “city of culture”

This article examines the emerging intrusion of sport into the realm of cultural policy in tandem with an increased emphasis on culture in civic planning programs. The empirical focus of the article is on the location of sport within recent campaigns by British regional cities to win the title of European City of Culture, to be conferred in 2008. The particular case study considered is the unsuccessful joint bid put forward by Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne and Gateshead. The article looks at how the economic revival of Newcastle has been driven by cultural regeneration, and at how sport has assumed a prominent place within the cultural symbolism and iconography of the city. Consideration is given to the policy background and implications; in particular, the developing links between sport policy and cultural policy and sport considered in relation to the “creative industries” and the arts as more traditionally perceived. The article offers critical reflection upon the role of sport within the desired cultural democracy of the planners and promoters of the “city of culture”.     

民众的统治抑或奴隶主贵族阶级的寡头统治?——雅典民主政治新论

长期以来,学术界对雅典民主政治的认识一直存在"民众的统治"与"贵族和富人或者奴隶主阶级的寡头统治"两种截然对立的观点.本文通过对雅典民主政治中政治领袖与民众权力的考察和分析,得出结论:雅典民主政治既非"民众的统治",也不是"贵族和富人或者奴隶主阶级的寡头统治",而是民众与政治领袖的共治.民主政治权力为民众和政治领袖所共享.