The French Campaign for Improved Road Safety: State Power,Public Policy,and Regimes of Justification

In reaction against Bourdieu's state-centered analysis of power, theorists associated with the ‘Groupe de sociologie morale’ argue that non-state actors exercise considerable agency. In so doing, these actors draw upon ‘regimes of justification’ to formulate and defend moral schemes of action. While a necessary corrective to a Bourdieusian view of the world in which habitus and institutional fields of power leave relatively little room for creative agency, this position nonetheless leaves unanswered questions pertaining to the role of the state and its relation to these regimes of justification.

The recent French campaign for road safety provides an opportune instance in which to observe how states can and do draw on regimes of justification to legitimate public policies. Here I argue that the French government used two regimes, namely those based on civic equality and solidarity and on industrial efficiency, to legitimate new measures that cut across longstanding cultural patterns. In this process, the supposedly dirigiste French state actively sought civil society partners to educate French drivers and to convince them to accept, however grudgingly, the new policies. This case example thus suggests a middle path between the Bourdieusian view of the state as the ultimate field of power and the emphasis on individual agency of the approach associated with the ‘Groupe de sociologie morale’.     

Material Culture and the Politics of Personality in Early Victorian England

This article uses the insights of material culture studies to explore the role of objects in the development of a politics of personality in the first half of the nineteenth century. Political objects were part of a broader material culture of fame and recognition in this period, encompassing a wide range of public figures such as royalty, military heroes and authors. These artefacts acquired agency, playing an important role in the construction of their subjects as recognizable public figures: an asset for popular politicians whose primary constituencies lay beyond the ranks of the enfranchised. By representing key moments in the public narrative of a politician's career, objects and other representations helped to cement the connection between individuals and the causes with which they were chiefly associated. Some objects, including jugs, teapots and other practical items, may have been used in the public performance of rituals of loyalty to a particular figure. Others, including the famous Staffordshire figurines, were designed for display in the home, becoming vehicles for the domestic re-enactment of public narratives and the performance or construction of personal loyalties and identities. The article concludes by considering the way in which objects associated with famous political figures, including autograph letters, signed prints or even more intimate objects such as locks of hair, could be used to forge real or imagined relationships between politicians and individual members of their wider public.     

Local area farming Plans — a common reality for farmers and conservationists in the Scottish Highlands?

This paper supports the need for new policy developments to produce farm conservation plans specific to local areas. It explores attitudes to land management for conservation and economic goals, and presents views of fanners and local conservationists, who are directly involved in agri‐environmental and farm woodland schemes, in three regions of the Highlands of Scotland. It reviews the current state of Scottish agri‐environmental schemes, and presents results of on‐farm workshops conducted with farmers and conservationists and discusses common management plan approaches for environmental action. It concludes that farmers and conservationists are already considering the advantages of local area planning at a local area level and agree that there should be focus on addressing local site specific issues which take into account both the whole farm and its wider environment.     

Governance,Policy Innovation,and Local Economic Development in North Carolina

This article examines the extent to which local governments in North Carolina embrace innovation in their economic development activities. The study makes a distinctive theoretical contribution by examining the relationship between innovation in how economic development policies are administered and implemented (using concepts associated with governance and NPM), and innovation in what is substantively done (policy innovation). An analysis of the results from a statewide survey of local governments in North Carolina finds that certain governance/management variables are significant determinants of economic development policy innovation. An implication of this finding is that new ways of doing economic development may go hand‐in‐hand with new ways of governing and managing. Many of the governance/management variables are also positively associated with the use of a greater number of traditional economic development strategies and tools. This suggests that local governments may find it helpful to be innovative in how they implement economic development irrespective of the substantive policy orientation of particular strategies and tools.     

Brewarrina: An Australian Story

This short paper discusses Barry Morris's account of the ‘riot’ at Brewarrina, New South Wales, in 1987 and its legal aftermath, which continued for some years. An iconic event in Australian race relations, much can be learnt from its various dimensions, a fact that Morris amply demonstrates. Notwithstanding, this discussion questions a related narrative in his book, which interprets capitalism's impact on self‐determination simply in terms of neoliberalism's ‘political effects’. The paper seeks to broaden the discussion of the relations between the state and self‐determination, and between capitalism and race.