Curb Cuts: Crip Displacements and El Edificio de Enfrente

Somatechnics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215
Author(s):  
Robert McRuer
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Good Will ◽  
British Embassy ◽  
The Uk

Theorists of neoliberalism have placed dispossession and displacement at the centre of their analyses of the workings of contemporary global capitalism. Disability, however, has not figured centrally into these analyses. This essay attends to what might be comprehended as the crip echoes generated by dispossession, displacement, and a global austerity politics. Centring on British-Mexican relations during a moment of austerity in the UK and gentrification in Mexico City, the essay identifies both the voices of disability that are recognized by and made useful for neoliberalism as well as those shut down or displaced by this dominant economic and cultural system. The spatial politics of austerity in the UK have generated a range of punishing, anti-disabled policies such as the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax.’ The essay critiques such policies (and spatial politics) by particularly focusing on two events from 2013: a British embassy good will event exporting British access to Mexico City and an installation of photographs by Livia Radwanski. Radwanski's photos of the redevelopment of a Mexico City neighbourhood (and the displacement of poor people living in the neighbourhood) are examined in order to attend to the ways in which disability might productively haunt an age of austerity, dispossession, and displacement.

Madri single che lavorano: uno studio longitudinale

2009 ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Tess Ridge ◽  
Jane Millar
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Limited Mobility ◽  
Lone Parents ◽  
Poverty Risk ◽  
Lone Mothers ◽  
Rich People ◽  
Large Scale Survey ◽  
The Uk

- Analysis of poverty dynamics based on large-scale survey data shows that there is limited mobility across the income distribution for most individuals and families. Some people may get better-off over the lifecourse, as their careers develop and wages rise, but overall most poor people do not become very rich and most rich people do not become very poor. Lone parents are at high risk of poverty in the UK, but this poverty risk is reduced for those who are in employment and who receive state financial support through Tax Credits to supplement their wages. This article reports on longitudinal qualitative research which has involved repeat interviews with lone mothers and their children over a period of three to four years. The analysis here explores the experiences of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income and highlights the challenges faced in seeking financial security in this context.

scholarly journals The spatial politics of chick lit in Africa and Asia: sidestepping tradition and fem-washing global capitalism?

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-129
Author(s):  
Melissa Tandiwe Myambo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Black Widow ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
Political Impact ◽  
Chick Lit ◽  
Traditional Structures ◽  
First World

This article provides a spatial analysis of the types of microspaces, or Cultural Time Zones (CTZs), that constitute the narrative universes of chick lit from South Africa, China and India. I argue that although these books take place in ‘developing’ countries, their ‘First World’ spatial politics, and thus their political impact and cultural commentary, are both enabled and constrained by the settings of their narrative thrust. In the CTZ of the five-star hotel, or the elite spa, the books’ protagonists exemplify a popular notion of choice/neoliberal feminism. What, then, do they say about the possibility of feminism for confronting patriarchal traditions in CTZs like the ‘local’ neighbourhood? The three books analysed – Angela Makholwa’s Black Widow Society, Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby and Anita Jain’s Marrying Anita: A Quest for Love in the New India – are set in the globalising cities of Johannesburg, Shanghai and Delhi in putatively ‘developing’ countries; however, the books’ female protagonists tend to inhabit a series of ‘global’, ‘First World’ CTZs, like the high-end shopping mall, the Western music-playing nightclub or the cappuccino-serving cafe. These CTZs are geographically distant from those of their Western chick lit counterparts, yet nonetheless not very far away if measured in cultural kilometres. The neoliberal, so-called feminist ‘choices’ available to these protagonists would not be possible in geographically proximate but culturally distant, ‘traditional’ CTZs. The key question this article asks is whether these narratives’ spatial settings, confined as they are to upper middle-class, ‘global’, ‘modern’ CTZs, produce a form of spatial politics that fem-washes global capitalism while failing to confront patriarchal and traditional structures which dominate in more ‘local’, ‘traditional’ CTZs.

Authoritarianism and Social Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-254
Author(s):  
Bill Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Democratic Parties ◽  
Social Democratic Parties

Authoritarianism seems to be emerging as the default mode of global capitalism. In the absence of reliable economic growth, and with working-class incomes in long-term stagnation, both liberal and social democratic parties have lost support in many countries, and authoritarian regimes have come to power in several. But poor people in the USA, UK and Europe have long experienced coercion, being forced to accept low-paid, insecure work or face benefits sanctions. As a growing proportion of workers have come to rely on supplements such as tax credits, the working class has been divided, and opportunistic authoritarian politicians have mobilised the anxiety and resentment of those on the margins of poverty. This article argues that only an active civil society, with voluntary agencies uncompromised by involvement in coercive policies, along with universal, unconditional Basic Incomes for all citizens, can reverse these trends.

scholarly journals Interview with Simon McNorton, Better Delivery Team Leader, UK Department for International Development, British Embassy Beirut

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fania Jean
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
International Development ◽  
Disaster Response ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Evaluation Framework ◽  
Graduate Study ◽  
Undergraduate Study ◽  
Effective Delivery ◽  
British Embassy ◽  
The Uk

Simon McNorton lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he works for the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). McNorton heads a team that ensures effective delivery of the UK's £90m bilateral aid package to Lebanon. He has held roles with DFID as a researcher and evaluation adviser based in East Africa and in the UK, following two years as a Senior Research Officer at the UK's Department for Work and Pensions. McNorton graduated from the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration in 2013 with a MasterÕs in Public Policy and a concentration in International Development and Program Evaluation. His capstone team delivered an evaluation framework for Teachers Without Borders global disaster response education. During his graduate study and earlier in his career, McNorton worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in DC as a Senior Policy Fellow, and spent two years in the Public Affairs Team at Stonewall, the UK's leading lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights charity. Immediately prior to his graduate study, McNorton spent a year working on social justice programs in Rajasthan, India. He completed his undergraduate study at the University of Salford in Manchester in the UK in 2006. In February 2020, Fania Jean interviewed McNorton for Policy Perspectives.

Forests and water - closing the gap between public and science perceptions

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 39-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
I.R. Calder
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Water Environment ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Stakeholder Groups ◽  
Research Programmes ◽  
Develop Land ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Uk ◽  
New Research

The public perception that forests are, in all circumstances, necessarily good for the water environment, that they increase rainfall, increase runoff, regulate flows, reduce erosion, reduce floods, “sterilize” water supplies and improve water quality, has long been questioned by the scientific community. The evolving “modern” science perception suggests a more complex and generally less advantageous view of forests. It is suggested that the disparity between the two perceptions needs to be addressed before we are in a position to devise and develop land and water policies which are aimed at either improving the water environment, and by doing so improving the livelihoods of poor people by greater access to water, or conserving and protecting forests. Examples are given of “interactive” research projects in different parts of the world including the UK, South Africa, Panama and India where, through the involvement of stakeholder groups, often with representatives comprising both the science and public perceptions, research programmes have been designed and are being implemented, not only to derive new research findings with regard to the biophysical processes, but also to achieve better “ownership” and acceptance of these research findings by the stakeholder groups.

INCLUDING POOR PEOPLE IN LEISURE SERVICES WITHOUT STIGMA: LEISURE CARDS IN THE UK

1998 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael F. Collins ◽  
Christopher Kennett
Keyword(s):  
Poor People ◽  
Leisure Services ◽  
The Uk

From Hundreds to Billions of Dollars of Income

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Francis Teal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Poor Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Us ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Global Growth

This is a book about inequality. About the fact that we live in a world of very many poor people and a very few extremely rich ones—the poor and the plutocrats of its title. In this chapter we frame the question posed by the book—how one can move from such poverty to such riches?—using data from the UK, the US, and poor countries. If a longer term, and comparative, perspective is taken on incomes and inequality the problem is not to explain a rising tide of poverty—there isn’t one—nor is it to explain how capitalism generates ever-increasing inequality—it hasn’t. The problem is much more complicated. How can we explain such large changes in both incomes and in inequality as have occurred since the start of sustained global growth in the early part of the nineteenth century?

Crisis at Work: Gender, Class, and the Dehumanization of Jobs

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Harriet Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Gender Segregation ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Women's Employment ◽  
Women’S Employment ◽  
The Uk

Drawing on Huw Beynon’s paper in HSIR 40 (2019), this article surveys the position of women in the UK labour market over the last fifty years. It suggests that many of the developments Beynon describes are relevant to women’s employment, but with the added twist that women’s position in the labour market and society is structured by their responsibility within the total social organization of labour for reproductive labour. Despite increased women’s employment, gender segregation, both horizontal and vertical, is obstinately persistent, especially in working-class occupations. Two of these occupations, care work and retail, are used to illustrate how increasing precarity of jobs combined with technologies of control have brought about a dehumanization of work. It is concluded that the restructuring of global capitalism on neoliberal principles has negatively affected opportunities for women workers.

scholarly journals Placing precarity: access and belonging in the shifting landscape of UK mental health care

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natassia F. Brenman
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Health Care ◽  
Spatial Politics ◽  
Client Experiences ◽  
Migrant Communities ◽  
Client Group ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Ways Of Being

Abstract This paper engages with the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ through an ethnography of the social and material aspects of accessing mental health care in the UK. I focus on moments of access and transition in a voluntary sector organisation in London: an intercultural psychotherapy centre, serving a range of im/migrant communities. Whilst both ‘belonging’ and ‘place’ are often invoked to imply stability, I explore how material contexts of access and inclusion can paradoxically be implicated in the ongoing production of precarity—of unstable, uncertain, and vulnerable ways of being. A sociomaterial analysis of ethnographic material and visual data from two creative mapping interviews attends to material and spatial aspects of the centre and its transitory place in the urban environment. It demonstrates how these aspects of place became entangled in client experiences of access: uncertainties of waiting, ambivalence towards belonging to a particular client group, and questions around deservingness of care. This engendered an embodied and situated experience of ‘precarious belonging’. I therefore argue that precarity should be ‘placed’, both within the concept of embodied belonging, and ethnographically, within the material constraints, impermanence, and spatial politics of projects to include the excluded in UK mental health care.

scholarly journals Game Workers and the Empire: Unionisation in the UK Video Game Industry

2020 ◽  
pp. 155541202094709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Ruffino ◽  
Jamie Woodcock
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Video Game Industry ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
Historical Specificity ◽  
Game Industry ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Participatory Observation

This article investigates some of the key debates that have emerged within the nascent union organising project Game Workers Unite, with a specific focus on its UK branch (GWU UK). The analysis is based on a period of participatory observation and a series of interviews with board members of GWU UK. This article evaluates Game Workers Unite (GWU) in relation to other recent attempts at unionising the game industry. It concludes that the strategies adopted to counter the hyper-visibility and individualisation of the game worker are key contributions of GWU in contemporary video game labour. This article draws on the work of Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter (2009) Games of empire: Global capitalism and video games to evaluate the historical specificity of GWU and the importance of the organisation for the contemporary video game industry.

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