outline

I. Dualistic Conception of Human Identity
a. Human/nature divide; primary dualism –a symptom Western rationalism
b. Ideal rational self vs. embodied embedded self
c. Dualistic thinking: human identity as separate from nature; outside of nature
d. Oppositional qualities associated with nature seen as less than human
i. Interconnected qualities/associations of women and nature
ii. Nature, emotion, the body, the female, senses, care (other cultures)
II. Plumwood’s Relational Account of the Self; reconceptualized human/self
a. Alternative to rights-based liberal morality
b. Denial of identification with inferorized Others based on human/nature divide
c. Recover human nature divide: relational self as embedded in nature
d. Egoistic extension of rights vs. nondualistic relations between self and others
III. Alternative Rationalities
a. Ecologoical rationality
i. Ecological crisis is in reality a crisis of reason (and culture)
ii. Hegemonic reason
1. Disembedded ecological relationships
2. Oppositional inferiorization of nature; Others; the Others of Reason
3. Oppositional understanding of human
4. Denial of value orientations
iii. Highlights ecological embeddedness, self-critical reason, nonoppositional, contextual, compatibility with biological systems, non-remote, redistributive, inclusive, alternative socio-cultural knowledge systems (thwart environmental risk),
IV. Victor Seidler: Masculinity, Reason, Science
a. Historical forces of modern science contribution to systems of rationality
i. Ideology through administrative state, market liberalism
ii. Environmental crisis a series of interlinked rationalities
1. science, technology, economics, and government administration under backdrop of the mastery of nature
2. Value orientation of Enlightenment science subsumed in scientific/technological rationality systems
3. Denial of contending value orientations part of crisis
4. Reconceptualization of the human as ecologically embedded changes rationality – reason/emotion dualism

Habermas, deliberation, struggles for recognition

Habermas, deliberation, struggles for recognition

Habermas' proposal for a deliberative alternative to the liberal system of rights for feminist politics is an important supplement in the pursuit of women's full freedom and equality within the liberal rights framework. He argues that women's individual liberties are forever at stake if women lack the public liberties that enable the exercise of private rights. Legitimacy and public autonomy constitute a large part of what makes the rule of law just. Modern law's neutrality toward legal persons has narrowly defined justice by disregarding difference as well as public participation in political life. While I do agree Habermas' deliberative alternative is a necessary expansion for legitimate democratic rule, it is still insufficient in its treatment of women and is perhaps an impossible ideal.

Liberal feminism as a movement stresses the equality of men and women and the unimportance of differences based on gender. It borrows from liberal political theory the idea of rights which rest on assumptions of individual autonomy and freedom and a capacity for rational thought. Many feminist theorists argue that liberalism has historically assumed males to be the individuals entitled to these rights. Women have only recently been included and accepted as fully human under the notions of liberal rights. By extending these rights to women, it is believed that educational, legal, political and economic equality for women can be achieved.

Liberal feminism has largely incorporated and uncritically accepted liberal conceptions of individual rights and argued for the extension of these rights to women, even as gender differences remain. To be sure, gains like suffrage and the removal of legal barriers and other provisions of "formal" equality under law have contributed to women's improved status. Yet formal equality is undermined by the inequalities of the market that produce and reinforce race, class, and gender inequalities. It is argued that denying or paying insufficient attention to gender differences has lead to new versions of unequal treatment for women.

Adding to this unequal treatment (through a denial of difference) has been the enactment of social-welfare policies in the areas of social, labor, and family law that attempt to remedy the unequal liberal treatment of persons. Welfare liberalism, like liberal feminist policies, has been charged with producing further discrimination for women—not through stressing a policy of sameness but through reinforcing gender stereotypes through a policy of difference. This accommodation of gender difference has enabled women to attain some measure of equality, although at the expense of reinforcing and normalizing the stereotypes that lead to discrimination in the first place. Arguably the social ills faced by women persist regardless of the existence of social-welfare policies that accommodate gender difference. Women past and present have faced employment risks due to social responsibilities (whether or not welfare compensation is received), are over-represented in lower wage brackets, are more susceptible to poverty, and perform the majority unpaid domestic work.

Following this critique, Habermas offers his deliberative alternative to traditional liberal human rights equality upheld by liberal feminism. In his view, the full realization and safeguarding of private autonomy for women can only occur if women's public autonomy as citizens of the nation is fully realized and implemented. While it is necessary to remove legal barriers that discriminate against women, simply eliminating such barriers to establish equal opportunity will not do justice to women. The emphasis on equality of opportunity has denied the gender differences that lead to unequal, inegalitarian systems. Furthermore, the social-welfare paradigm that seeks to remedy the weakness of liberalism by intervening in the private sphere to compensate for the inequalities incurred by liberal capitalism has also led to unequal treatment. What is needed is a deliberative model of democracy that enables women to substantially affect politics and the state. Habermas believes women must establish and articulate their voices in order to achieve true equality and recognition under the law. Rather than outrightly reject the framework of individual rights, liberalism must be supplemented by a proceduralist conception of rights that are to be exercised through a political public sphere. "Safeguarding the private autonomy of citizens with equal rights must go hand in hand with activating their autonomy as citizens of the nation" (Habermas 210).

Habermas rightly argues that no complement has been achieved for women's public autonomy because the liberal system of rights fails to "include a democratic understanding of the actualization of basic rights" (Habermas 210). The actualization of democratic rights entails "deliberatively filtered political communications"; Habermas advocates a reform of liberalism that designates free and open political culture and enlightened political socialization to enhance political participation for citizens. To Habermas, liberal feminism must view liberal political culture as problematic because its culture does not require continuous, intense political participation necessary for lawful democracy. Yet in my view, Habermas' liberalism does not wholly differ from liberal feminism's goals pertaining to reform of the public sphere; however his discourse theory does serve to broaden traditional notions of liberal rights by insisting on democratic participation through an autonomous public sphere.

The autonomous public sphere apart of Habermas' deliberative politics adds an important long neglected dimension to liberal rights theory: liberal political culture has never considered a lack of political participation a barrier to democracy. Habermas wants to bring back the communicative structures to civil society that was never fully realized under liberalism. A stronger political socialization, the one Habermas calls for, could potentially improve women's chances for the political socialization necessary for political participation. Women's consciousness raising groups were once such autonomous public sphere coordinated and conceptualized by feminists. The women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the development of a gender consciousness, crucial to women's political recognition that Habermas' deliberative method requires. If women consider themselves to be a distinct group, they are more likely to take part in political participation. Consciousness raising groups were one such mechanism used by feminists in order to bring about a recognition of shared political interests among women.

Deliberative politics views democratic law as legitimate when it is "an instrument for the equal protection of private and public autonomy"; to have private autonomy (individual rights) one must make use of their public autonomy as enfranchised citizens engaged in lawmaking (Habermas 258). Habermas stresses the internal relation between private and public autonomy to clear the obscured state of affairs between liberal rights and welfare paternalism that have continued to leave women discriminated and marginalized. Unlike Rawls, Habermas denies that the ethical neutrality used in modern legal systems is possible; he recognizes that women and cultural minorities will continue to be identity-neutral and stripped of the social obligations that constitute their identity primarily because the constitutional state is designed to be ethically-neutral, as it is in Rawls' veil of ignorance and political liberalism. Habermas believes a moral point of view (not to be confused with fundamentalist doctrine) can be established within politics using the ideal discourse situation, the situation in which rational argumentation is to take place acceptably within a non-coercive, inclusive environment of equals. For democratic law to be legitimate, the variety of moral points of view must be incorporated and rationally evaluated in formal political public spheres as well as in informal autonomous public spheres. Yet this metaphysical proceduralist legitimacy that enables liberalism to be internally sound is no less metaphysical than Rawl's political liberalism (supposedly neutral and therefore fair and just), for Habermas states, "the citizens are denied the "moral point of view" from which they could develop and justify a political conception in joint public deliberation" (Habermas 84). It seems Habermas' ultimate goal for liberalism is in its fulfillment of its metaphysical promises for self-determination through the balancing of popular sovereignty and human rights. However much the two philosophers continually charge each other with making metaphysical assumptions while denying their own theoretical presuppositions, both theorists wish to assimilate women and multicultural societies into liberal political culture.

Activating women's public autonomy and political participation would be an important institutional norm enabling women's equal exercise of individual liberties. This condition may be combined with welfare benefits aimed to equalize the opportunity women have to exercise these individual liberties, which their social obligations eternally prevent them from fulfilling. Habermas' deliberative method is indeed an important and accurate supplement in the pursuit of women's full freedom and equality within the liberal rights framework. But it does presuppose a willingness on women's part (divided across lines of race, class, religion, and sexual orientation) to engage in a struggle for recognition. And on account of the conservative resistance and backlash against feminism, many women who would have otherwise identified as feminist no longer do.

While Habermas' deliberative method establishes a sound reform of liberalism—balancing negative liberties with positive liberties—it does not necessarily solve the problem of political recognition or the arguably problematic framework of individual rights. Habermas' deliberative method presupposes that women and cultural minorities have a responsibility to struggle for recognition without considering the possibility that these groups may not wish to struggle in the first place. The proceduralist justice Habermas calls for indeed places a moral imperative on marginalized groups to seek recognition in nation-states that have continually denied their identities and their full existence.

If Habermas sides with radical feminism's assertion that society's cultural self-understandings are in need of revision, he should be aware of the fallibility of the supplemented liberal rights framework he proposes. Should Habermas (and liberal feminism) recognize relational feminist's rejection of individualist self-conceptions, his project to broaden individual rights might well be rejected, or he might just reject relational accounts of the self as fundamentalist. Relational feminists view the self as constituted in a web of interconnected relationships of mutuality and autonomy as opposed to abstract, disconnected individualist notions of the self; value and respect are accorded to difference when interconnected relationships are taken into account. Despite forty years under liberal and radical feminism, women today still largely define themselves in relation to others—as wives, mothers, workers, etc.; arguably we all do. If women are not properly thought of first as individuals, but as units of a larger whole, and if they too identify themselves not by their individuality but by their relation to others, might different forms of moral considerability be needed in order to account for this difference? The acceptance of socially-constructed gender differences that relegate different human qualities to the masculine and to the feminine has suppressed relational accounts of morality and care practiced in large part by women. It is also important to note that relational feminism does not wish to essentialize or normalize these qualities to women as liberal feminism alleges, it simply seeks to elevate a moral framework that values difference rather than neutralize it to the detriment of women and minority cultures as liberal rights theory has.

If Habermas' deliberative alternative and ideal discourse situation fails to be realized and achieved, might the Western Enlightenment project be in need of radical reorganization rather than reform? Surely Habermas' deliberative alternative is the genuine, ideal and consistent version of liberalism needed for a feminist politics under liberal democracy. Yet his deliberative method is founded on an ideal that asserts democracy should set a politics of the public sphere outside of the state for lawful legitimacy to be maintained; this project has yet to be "actualized" and is arguably an impossible project to begin with. The feminist community knows that the issue of gender transcends questions of formal rights to social and political equality, and although Habermas' deliberative alternative supports a public sphere able to support further feminist goals, in spite of everything, it may still be insufficient to remedy women's unequal treatment, especially because it is grounded in a utopian vision of deliberative politics.

Word Count: 1,940



Habermas, Jurgen. 2001. The Inclusion of the Other, Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Comparative Political Economy

Literature Review: Comparative Political Economy

The texts from this week concern the changing nature of domestic economies and production regimes in the advanced capitalist countries amid the spread of international financial markets along with the political processes that enable globalization. Soskice’s article argues that the different production regimes (the institutional framework of capitalist systems) explain the differences in micro behavior and seeks to explain how and why industrial relations have changed from the 1960s to the present in advanced industrialized economies. Two production regimes are identified in advanced industrialized economies: business-coordinated market economies and uncoordinated market economies. Coordinated market economies (CME) give considerable nonmarket coordination between companies, under an institutional framework set by governments that incorporate labor unions and collective bargaining (Soskice 1999; 106). In contrast, uncoordinated economies (liberal market economies; LME) have little to no institutional framework governing the coordination of industrial relations. LMEs typically have a lower level of training for workers, unions are avoided, and bank-industrial ties are weak, leading industries to rely on competitive markets rather than collective action. In CMEs, “training and technology transfer take place primarily within industry-based organizations” whereas LMEs do not possess monitoring systems over corporate governance.

It is then argued that the most important determinate of the form of a country’s production regime is in the nature of coordination between companies, unions, and government: “Business coordinating capacity has influenced the feasibility of different production regimes and has molded the power and interests of business as a political actor in the shaping and reshaping of regimes in the 1980s and 1990s” (Soskice 1999; 104). In CMEs, the interests of business are shaped to favor long-term cooperative institutional frameworks rather than in LMEs where no industry coordination existed and hence businesses were shaped to embrace deregulation (Soskice 1999; 130). Finally, it is argued that both the CME and LME frameworks were conducive to international competitiveness but in different types of markets and in differently organized companies. CMEs prevailed because business as a collective actor are able to resist governments attempts to deregulate because such changes are not in their interests, as vocational training and technology transfer would function under markets if deregulated. Essentially, economic institutional frameworks have been reshaped in the era of globalization, and businesses under CMEs have reregulated rather than deregulated to preserve their institutional frameworks for long-term cooperation and industry exchange (Soskice 1999; 134)

Huber and Stephens demonstrate how the welfare state regime is linked to production regimes (the varieties of capitalism in advanced industrialized countries) and domestic financial controls. Using a quantitative comparative approach, the authors categorize the advanced industrial countries by the type of welfare state regime in place: the four types include the Social Democratic welfare states of Scandinavia, the Christian Democratic welfare states of Western Europe, the Liberal Welfare states of the UK, Ireland, Canada, and the U.S., and the “Wage Earner” welfare states of Australia and New Zealand. Policy and institutional designs are then compared and contrasted between the varieties of welfare states, and Soskice’s conceptualization of production regimes is used to further distinguish the states based on the coordination of labor unions, business, and government (coordinated market economies) or the lack thereof (uncoordinated market economies). Coordinated economies rely on a long-term growth/employment policy predicated on domestic financial controls, enabling both Christian democratic and social democratic welfare states the ability to provide generous social services to citizens, bargaining centralization, wage setting, union contract coverage, and overall more egalitarian outcomes for citizens (Huber and Stephens 2001; 126).

To explain the ensuing welfare retrenchment in European countries, the authors point to two different dynamics: ideologically driven cuts due to the “rising hegemony of neoliberal doctrines” and unemployment driven cuts. It is then argued that contrary to popular belief, other factors influenced the growing unemployment and slow growth of the welfare states in the era of globalization rather than the nature of their systems. Some of these factors included the rising working age population (explaining rising unemployment), the sectoral changes in production regimes (shift from manufacturing to service production), the decontrol of domestic financial markets and the influence of international financial markets, and the shocks from the collapse of the Soviet Union and budget deficits caused by German reunification. Essentially, changes in the financial economy and deregulation of international and domestic financial markets fundamentally changed European production regimes, depriving the European countries of “stimulative fiscal and monetary countercyclical tools” they once had in their control (Huber and Stephens 2001; 134).

Hamann and Kelly’s work looks at the political nature of welfare retrenchment and the enactment of social pacts in Western Europe. The authors claim that contrary to conventional accounts of social pacts as a governmental reaction to economic pressures, electoral pressures induce the adoption of social pacts by political parties as well. Social pacts, national-level agreements between governments, labor unions and sometimes employer legislation that negotiate wage and non-wage issues, can play an important role in parties’ election campaign strategies as consensus solutions to economic adjustment policies that they may undermine if pacts do not produce the desired outcomes (Hamann and Kelly 2007; 976). Social pacts are also politically advantageous because they minimize potential electoral costs related to economic adjustment while enabling dominant political parties to keep traditional voting blocks and incorporate new voters (Hamann and Kelly 2007; 975). Using three case studies of the Netherlands, Ireland, and Austria, the authors argue that variations in the adoptions and extent of social pacts across Europe present anomalies to the economic pressures thesis. Regression analysis findings show pacts to be far more common than legislation in response to economic adjustments. The analysis also shows that the ideological spectrum of political parties does determine to some extent the different responses to electoral setbacks and strategies used by political parties dealing with economic adjustment (Hamann and Kelly 2007; 34).

Yet the political processes shaping the differing institutional frameworks are predicated on the value priorities of government. Clearly, coordination between businesses and between labor unions is a valued process within the CMEs of European states, and cooperation between industries along with welfare services fashioned the institutional framework to form a specific outcome—desired goal or end—through policy. Likewise, the reregulation of CMEs and the deregulation of LMEs depend upon political processes, but beneath these processes underlie certain values and priorities, one favoring business coordination and extensive welfare services and the other favoring free market economics and privatization initiatives that reduce domestic management of the economy and the coordination of industry. There has to be a reason LMEs developed and did not incorporate coordination between industries. Although it is true that CMEs set up an institutional framework that allowed coordinated business to prevail even in the midst of the internationalization of markets while LMEs simply could not respond to globalization in the same way because it did not possess the institutional framework that defends against deregulation. Yet it is true that CMEs and their production regimes are undergoing a crisis caused by globalization (the deregulation of international and domestic markets), and although CMEs have not converted to the neoliberal framework of deregulation wholly, they have certainly had to reregulate to preserve their system of capitalism. Hamann and Kelly’s contribution helps to show the political nature of such reregulation, but the literature also shows the political problems involved in CME maintenance. In sum, the texts help to show that economics is not independent of political culture, parties, or the state.

Works Cited

Hamann, Kerstin and John Kelly. 2007. “Social Pacts in Western Europe: The Impact of Electoral Competition and Blame Avoidance.” Work in progress.

Hamann, Kerstin and John Kelly. 2007. “Party Politics and the Reemergence of Social Pacts in Western Europe.” Comparative Political Studies. 40(8): 971-94.

Huber, Evelyn and John D. Stephens. 2001. “Welfare State Production Regimes in the Era of Retrenchment.” In Paul Pierson (ed.). The New Politics of the Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 107-45.

Soskice, David. 1999. “Divergent Production Regimes: Coordinated and Uncoordinated Market Economies in the 1980s and 1990s.” Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism. New York: Cambridge University Press. 101-34.

market individualization

I woke up today from a dream that provided me with a storyline for a novel. It sort of worked in line with the research I've been doing on welfare states. Sounds boring right? Wrong. So the premise is - what happens when the state can not only no longer provide welfare to its citizens (collective social investments) but also can no longer provide work? What happens when there is no need for people anymore, only power? I am constantly reading about welfare restructuring and how the welfare systems of advanced industrialized nations of the West are in crisis. Structural challenges to the long-running welfare regimes in Europe call for new models, but the only model we are met with is neoliberal market individualization, where risk and economic uncertainty is individualized and more and more of the domestic economy is deregulated, leading to less and less money for social investment. Globalization and national deregulation contradicts the rule of law of an international order of sovereign states, but pay no mind to that....

New social and economic conditions are not being met with new (reconstructed) social support systems. And the state is losing traditional power due to reductions in legitimacy and collective spending, more economic insecurity and higher unemployment (and higher rates of part-time and temporary work). Work doesn't exist to consumers or to citizens.We tend to forget that even though welfare is in a period of restructuring, so is work and the nature of jobs in general. Postsocialist countries know this harsh reality, yet Western capitalist countries are only beginning to confront it. One can live without welfare, but certainly not work. What does the reconstruction of work in general mean to citizens?

It seems like welfare and work are being undercut for people in general. And even a conservative would have to agree that you can cut welfare, but certainly not WORK. That this is possible proves that people are largely expendable in postindustrial countries (it's like we are becoming third world). This is the outcome of amoral technological progress combined with market individualization that destroys any possibility of collective goods/security and humanistic goals.

And so I woke up with a dream about an army of helmet-wearing robots that arrive on a city bus to replace middle class technical workers in a not-too-distant future city. The middle class rebels by striking in the building against the robot army and the employers but the mood is really what caught me in this dream. I'm really interested in what kind of social and economic order is emerging in the world, because hardly anyone can define it but everyone knows we are going through some sort of transition (and the welfare state is partially what made this present situation possible). It's more than just this vague notion of post-industrial technological consumerist society; we need new words. I know the dream sounds very Bladerunner-esque but I was thinking if I put a welfare reform commentary spin on it, it might work. Problem is I have problems writing stories because I am primarily a nonfiction writer, I do my best work in essays. It's as if I can come up with the concepts and overarching story, themes, motifs, but as for the substance of the story and description, I'm at a loss. So here's more of the theoretical background for the story:

What happens when people are no longer necessary to the societal order/economic processes? What use are humans was a question that should have never been asked. But it had always been one of the primary questions of modernity. Evaluative standards had always been of more importance than moral standards toward some collective goal for the good of society. And now more than ever it was humans who decided what use humans existed for. Nature provided this answer for millions of years but somehow it ended up in the hands of one of its own progeny. Humans were able to conceptually conceive of such a question and therein (and precisely because of this) answer it. It's a question which should not have to be answered because its a question that should not have to be asked. To conceptually conceive of something is to make it reality.

Work became a technical problem and power did not intend to find a social solution to it.
Is welfare a social solution to a technical problem? The technical problem: what are humans for in an automated society where the ends justify the means and there is no collective end or goal for a society except power in and of itself? The ideology of the market. Democratically, these questions should be answered by the rule of the people (and not by God or monarchy). Yet the market functions as the people at this stage of the metanarrative (human progress and technological rationalism).

The reason the state can't provide for work is because the state has less and less control over the providing. Less and less involved in securing work for worker-citizens, the market is more or less in charge. Problem with the market is it has no legitimacy, no basis of rights (or duties), no possibility for institutional frameworks (rules of the game created for the benefit of the collective), and no overarching societal goals. So it's the market that takes over what both the state and market should govern in conjunction. As this happens we are edging toward a neutrally authoritative world order where a majority of the earth's population will have no entitlements to jobs or security. And how is this not like communism just with the market neutrally having no stake in the well-being of humanity; just as power under state socialism had no stake in the general well-being/greater good?