The Affective, the Normative and the Everyday: Exploring What Motivates and Sustains Anti-Austerity Activism

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-94
Author(s):  
Emma Craddock
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Perceived Injustice ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Making A Difference ◽  
Outright Rejection ◽  
Core Elements ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Choices

This chapter explores what motivates and sustains anti-austerity activism within the context of continued austerity. It affirms the centrality of the affective and normative dimensions of political engagement by demonstrating that anti-austerity activism is motivated and sustained by three core elements; emotion, morality and relationship. Individuals are motivated by an emotional response to perceived injustice combined with normative ideals about how society should be and how we should act in relation to others. They utilise notions of humanity and empathy to combat the dehumanising effect of neoliberal capitalism and its focus on individualism and competition. Participants translate such abstract, universal concepts into concrete, particular actions through a focus on everyday activism and individual choices. Rather than an outright rejection of individualism, participants seek to redefine it in ways that move away from the dominant neoliberal understanding and towards reconciling the individual with the wider collective and common good. Here, activism is conceptualised as a moral duty. Participants therefore suggest that everyone and anyone can and should do activism, with small acts making a difference. This chapter begins to unpick the ways in which activists resist, subvert and sometimes unwittingly reinforce neoliberal capitalism, as well as questioning the problematic distinction drawn between ‘non-activist’ and ‘activist’.

What Can Economists Contribute to the Common Good Tradition?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Yuengert
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Common Pool Resources ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Insight Into

Although most economists are skeptical of or puzzled by the Catholic concept of the common good, a rejection of the economic approach as inimical to the common good would be hasty and counterproductive. Economic analysis can enrich the common good tradition in four ways. First, economics embodies a deep respect for economic agency and for the effects of policy and institutions on individual agents. Second, economics offers a rich literature on the nature of unplanned order and how it might be shaped by policy. Third, economics offers insight into the public and private provision of various kinds of goods (private, public, common pool resources). Fourth, recent work on the development and logic of institutions and norms emphasizes sustainability rooted in the good of the individual.

scholarly journals Age-Graded Transitions and Turning Points in Polish Offenders’ Criminal Careers from the Standpoint of Life Course Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (11) ◽  
pp. 6010
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Pękala ◽  
Andrzej Kacprzak ◽  
Piotr Chomczyński ◽  
Jakub Ratajczak ◽  
Michał Marczak ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Turning Points ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Juvenile Detention ◽  
Criminal Careers ◽  
Social Adaptation ◽  
Life Course Theory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
First Time

Both juvenile and adult criminal careers show regularities in the origins of delinquency, the dynamics of the criminal pathway, and the turning points that lead to desistance/persistence in crime. Research shows that family, education, and friendship environments contribute significantly to the individual choices that create criminal biographies. Our aim was to apply core aspects of life course theory (LCT): trajectory, the aged-graded process, transitions, institutions, and ultimately how desistance/persistence factor into explaining the criminal careers of Polish offenders. The research is based on in-depth interviews (130) carried out with both offenders (90) and experts (40). The offenders were divided into two groups: 30 were juveniles, and 60 were adults of whom half were sentenced for the first time (30) and half were recidivists (30) located in correctional institutions or released. The experts group (40) includes psychologists, educators, social rehabilitators, and prison and juvenile detention personnel working with offenders. We used triangulation of researcher, data, and methodology. Our data revealed that similar biographical experiences characterized by an early socialization, family and friends-based circles laid the groundwork for their entry and continued participation in criminal activity. Juvenile and adult first-time sentenced offenders led criminal careers significantly different from those of recidivists, who faced problems with social adaptation caused by lack of family and institutional support.

Can Communities Protect Autonomy? Ethical Dilemmas in HIV Preventative Drug Trials

1995 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Zion
Keyword(s):  
Advance Directive ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Drug Trials ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Gay Community ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Trial Participants

Before sailing past the sirens' “flowery meadow,” Ulysses instructed his sailors to lash him to the mast so that he would not succumb to the siren's singing. His advance directive demonstrated that he valued his dispositional or long-term autonomy over his unquestioned right to make decisions. He also indicated to his oarsmen that he understood the nature of temptation and his inability to resist it. Ideas of autonomy and sexual choice are central to this discussion of new AIDS treatments, especially the trials of preventative vaccines. Questions arise over the rights of individuals and the extent that these should be limited by concerns of the gay community. Should the gay community intervene in the risky decisions of individuals if no explicit advance directive exists? If so, how do they justify their paternalism? Could their aims not be better served through strengthening the individual dispositional autonomy of trial participants rather than making specific claims about the common good?

RevisitingCriticalLegal Pluralism: Normative Contestations in the Afghan Courtroom

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nafay CHOUDHURY
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Fully Discrete ◽  
Active Defence ◽  
Defence Lawyer ◽  
The Individual ◽  
A Site ◽  
Individual Choices ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractThis paper revisits the concept ofcriticallegal pluralism, which treats the individual as a site of normativity with the capacity to create legal knowledge. To help operationalize the usage of critical legal pluralism, I propose a methodological approach that places the individual’s ability to makes choices along a continuum. On one side of continuum, legal pluralism can be viewed as facilitating fully discrete choices that ascribe to one legal order or another. On the other side, the ability to make individual choices is curtailed because of the presence of a hegemonic legal order. This simple continuum helps to shed light on the complex considerations that affect individual choices, which in turn affect how various legal orders are legitimated. The paper then considers how critical legal pluralism can enrich the discussion on the legal system of Afghanistan, focusing on interviews with two Afghan justice actors: a former judge and an active defence lawyer.

The Everyday in a Time of Transformation: Exploring a Single South African Lifeworld after 20 Years of Democracy

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-54
Author(s):  
P. Conrad Kotze ◽  
Jan K. Coetzee
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Epistemological Framework

Transformation has come to be a defining characteristic of contemporary societies, while it has rarely been studied in a way that gives acknowledgement to both its societal effects and the experience thereof by the individual. This article discusses a recent study that attempts to do just that. The everyday life of a South African is explored within the context of changes that can be linked, more or less directly, to those that have characterized South Africa as a state since the end of apartheid in 1994. The study strives to avoid the pitfalls associated with either an empirical or solely constructivist appreciation of this phenomenon, but rather represents an integral onto-epistemological framework for the practice of sociological research. The illustrated framework is argued to facilitate an analysis of social reality that encompasses all aspects thereof, from the objectively given to the intersubjectively constructed and subjectively constituted. While not requiring extensive development on the theoretical or methodological level, the possibility of carrying out such an integral study is highlighted as being comfortably within the capabilities of sociology as a discipline. While the article sheds light on the experience of transformation, it is also intended to contribute to the contemporary debate surrounding the current “ontological turn” within the social sciences.

Creative Participation and the Expansion of Political Engagement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Theocharis ◽  
Joost de Moor
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
The Common ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Ongoing Assessment ◽  
Do So

Creative participation refers to citizens’ invention of, and engagement in, new action forms that aim to influence, or take responsibility for, the common good in society. By definition, these action forms are constantly evolving and cannot be listed or summarized. Yet some, like guerrilla gardening, have over time become more established in political repertoires, and specific arenas are known to be particularly productive sites for their development. These include in particular the Internet, and lifestyles and consumption. The constant changes in how citizens become active represented by creative participation present considerable challenges for scholars of political participation—both in terms of theory and methodology. In particular, such forms test our ability to distinguish political from nonpolitical activities. However, how political creative participation is, is often subtle and implicit, and therefore hard to establish. Yet being able to do so is essential for an ongoing assessment of the quality of participatory democracy. With conventional forms of participation declining and creative participation becoming more common, scholars must be able to agree on definitions and operationalizations that allow for the comparison of participatory trends. For instance, a key concern has been whether creative forms of participation crowd out more conventional ones, like voting or lobbying politicians. Developments in survey research have been able to show that this is not the case and that creative participation may in fact increase conventional participation. In addition, qualitative research methods like focus groups and ethnography, allow for more open-ended explorations of this elusive research topic. As to who participates, creative participation has enabled traditionally underrepresented groups like women and young people to catch up with, and sometimes overtake, those older men who have long dominated conventional political participation. Still, education remains a key obstacle even to creative participation. The COVID-19 crisis that took hold of the world in 2020 has compromised access to collective action and public space. It has thereby once more put the onus on citizens to engage creatively with ways to influence, and take responsibility for, society. At the same time, the crisis presents a need and opportunity for political participation scholarship to engage more deeply with theoretical debates about what it means to be political or to participate.

scholarly journals From an ethnography of the everyday to writing echoes of suffering

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rechtman
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Racial Group ◽  
Collective Modes ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
The Individual

Veena Das has introduced a major shift in our contemporary conception of ethnography. While she brings forward a new way of looking at everyday life, which is already a major achievement, she also offers a conceptual resolution to a classical unresolved opposition between the individual and the collective, and between idiosyncratic psychology (subjectivity) and collective modes of thinking, through a challenging debate on what makes one a member of a group and yet radically distinct from all others. The ethnography in her book Affliction stands on three major pillars: The first is the ethnographer’s subjective position in the field regarding the issues of lives, testimony, and research. The second is the neighborhood as the site of fieldwork, with all of its heterogeneity, rather than the group, such as an ethnic or racial group or one cohering around another criterion of belonging. The third and final pillar is the focus on the ordinary through ethnography of the everyday. I then illustrate Veena Das’s perspective on subjectivity with my own fieldwork with survivors of the Cambodian genocide.

scholarly journals The Common Good in an Age of Moral Hyperpluralism: A Catholic Bioethical Perspective

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
John Kleinsman
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Individual Autonomy ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
The Common Good ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Innovative Work ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Contemporary Account

This article will argue that the notion of the common good is imperilled by a particular contemporary account of the moral good; one which, because of its (somewhat narrow) emphasis on the individual, readily lends itself to a state of 'moral hyperpluralism' in which 'the good' is primarily defined in terms of the promotion and protection of self-interest. At the same time, it will be argued that any quest to recover the notion of the common good cannot be achieved by either returning to, or holding onto, a more traditional account of morality. It will also be proposed that, as part of the quest to recover the common good, close attention needs to be paid to how the term is understood. The tension between individual autonomy and the welfare of society, and the differing ways in which this tension is resolved within different moral paradigms, will emerge as central to any discussion about the ongoing place of the common good in contemporary legal and moral debates. Finally, it is suggested that a solid basis for articulating a robust account of the common good may be found in the foundational and innovative work being done by thinkers of the gift to establish an alternative account of morality. 

scholarly journals Moral discourses and pharmaceuticalised governance in households

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dew ◽  
P Norris ◽  
J Gabe ◽  
K Chamberlain ◽  
D Hodgetts
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Roles And Responsibilities ◽  
Natural Production ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moral Discourses ◽  
Health Experts

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This article extends our understanding of the everyday practices of pharmaceuticalisation through an examination of moral concerns over medication practices in the household. Moral concerns of responsibility and discipline in relation to pharmaceutical consumption have been identified, such as passive or active medication practices, and adherence to orthodox or unorthodox accounts. This paper further delineates dimensions of the moral evaluations of pharmaceuticals. In 2010 and 2011 data were collected from 55 households across New Zealand and data collection techniques, such as photo- and diary-elicitation interviews, allowed the participants to develop and articulate reflective stories of the moral meaning of pharmaceuticals. Four repertoires were identified: a disordering society repertoire where pharmaceuticals evoke a society in an unnatural state; a disordering self repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a moral failing of the individual; a disordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify a threat to one's physical or mental equilibrium; a re-ordering substances repertoire where pharmaceuticals signify the restoration of function. The research demonstrated that the dichotomies of orthodox/unorthodox and compliance/resistance do not adequately capture how medications are used and understood in everyday practice. Attitudes change according to why pharmaceuticals are taken and who is taking them, their impacts on social relationships, and different views on the social or natural production of disease, the power of the pharmaceutical industry, and the role of health experts. Pharmaceuticals are tied to our identity, what we want to show of ourselves, and what sort of world we see ourselves living in. The ordering and disordering understandings of pharmaceuticals intersect with forms of pharmaceuticalised governance, where conduct is governed through pharmaceutical routines, and where self-responsibility entails following the prescription of other agents. Pharmaceuticals symbolise forms of governance with different sets of roles and responsibilities.

scholarly journals Editorial: Discussing conflicts of interest during a Kettil Bruun Society symposium, June 2014, Turin (Italy)

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Allaman Allamani ◽  
Franca Beccaria
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Drug Research ◽  
Conflicts Of Interest ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Society Symposium ◽  
Referral Network ◽  
Scientific Truth ◽  
The Individual

Allamani, A., & Beccaria, F. (2016). Editorial: Discussing conflicts of interest during a Kettil Bruun Society symposium, June 2014, Turin (Italy). The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 5(1), 1-3. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v5i1.226Human beings have always sought after truth and made efforts to define and measure objects and events outside and inside themselves. In the last four centuries, since the time of Galileo, scholars came to agree more and more on a scientific method that could be shared in order to obtain replicable results that could become a common good for humanity. The results of a study can in fact lead to technological applications in various sectors of human life, like education, commerce, industry, and health.The search for scientific truth and its relationship with the economy has always had a complicated life: first, because in any given moment there will be different ideas about truth, and second, because researchers need both the means and the time to conduct their work. This is why a researcher must either support him- or herself and/or be financially supported by someone that may have different expectations about the research results.Thus, this involves the integrity of both the individual researcher and his/her referral network—the "scientific community"—that can call into question their ethical sphere by a potentially problematic relationship with truth, economy, and utility.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document