Intervention and Statebuilding Beyond the Human: From the ‘Black Box’ to the ‘Great Outdoors’

This article analyses intervention and statebuilding as shifting towards a posthuman discursive regime. It seeks to explore how the shift to ‘bottom-up’ or post-liberal approaches has evolved into a focus upon epistemological barriers to intervention and an appreciation of complexity. It attempts to describe a process of reflection upon intervention as a policy practice, whereby the need to focus on local context and relations – in order to take problems seriously – begins to further undermine confidence in the Western episteme. In other words, the bottom-up approach, rather than resolving the crisis of policy practices of intervention, seems to further intensify it. It is argued that the way out of this crisis seems to be found in the rejection of the aspiration to know from a position of a ‘problem-solving’ external authority and instead to learn from the opportunities opened up through the practices of intervention. However, what is learnt does not seem to be able to fit into traditional modes and categories of expertise.     

Primitiveness and the flight from modernity: sociology and the avant-garde in inter-war France

This paper examines the links between the French school of sociology and anthropology and the surrealist avant-garde in inter-war Paris by unearthing their common reliance on a cross-cultural critique of European modernity. Accordingly, the paper focuses on how both currents – and notably the Collège de sociologie – used representations of a mythical ‘primitive’ condition to produce an outside of modern society and an alternative socio-cultural universe from which Europe's pathologies could be diagnosed. This self-critique through a comparative lens aimed to radically situate, relativize and decentre the phenomena of rationalization, disenchantment and anomie characterizing modernity, which could be shown to be neither natural, eternal, universal nor inevitable, but rather the socio-historical products of developments in a particular culture during a specific period of its history.     

The Big Society: Back to the Future

This article contributes to the steady flow of critiques of the big society idea contained in The Political Quarterly. It focuses chiefly on two sets of parallels. The first is between the big society and the policies pursued by the Thatcher government which, despite their obvious rhetorical differences, contain many striking similarities, including their neoliberal origins, application of the ‘crowding out’ thesis and uncritically idealised notions of community. The second is between the big society and a policy with the same name pursued doggedly by the Chinese Communist Party for nearly 20 years until being abandoned as a failure. Lessons for the Prime Minister's flagship policy are drawn from the Chinese experience. The article concludes with a welcome for the rediscovery of the social by public policy and some suggestions as to how a more participative and democratic state could follow from this breakthrough.     

Neoconservatism,US–China conflict,and Australia's ‘great and powerful friends’ dilemma

Abstract

Following its time-honoured ‘great and powerful friends’ foreign policy tradition, Australia has been cultivating close ties simultaneously with the United States and China. Yet, as a rivalry between the two powers apparently looms large, Australia faces an acute dilemma. While the rise of China and the question of Taiwan are often cited as main causes of US–China discord, this article argues that the American neoconservative policy on China, underpinned by a belief in both military strength and moral clarity, is integral to this growing competition and is, by extension, partly responsible for the emergence of Australia's predicament. To avoid such a difficult choice, the article suggests that Australia should strive to curb the policy influence of neoconservatism both in the United States and at home by pursuing a more independent foreign policy, making clear its strategic postures on US–China relations, and helping establish a trilateral strategic forum between Australia, the United States, and China.     

Catastrophe risk

This paper examines the recent emergence of initiatives involving the reinsurance industry and the capital markets to develop mechanisms to finance the losses arising from catastrophic events. These initiatives are discussed from two perspectives. One perspective explores these financing mechanisms from the contention that catastrophic events are becoming increasingly non-insurable within contemporary risk society. In this regard the paper addresses issues relating to the coherence and sustainability of the risk networks underpinning efforts to maintain the insurability of catastrophic events. These catastrophe-financing initiatives are also discussed from a second, although related perspective. This refers to the very emergence of these different financing mechanisms. In this regard the moving potential of liberal government or the inventive mechanics driving the development of different ways to manage catastrophic risk become significant. The paper argues that the emergence of these different catastrophe-financing mechanisms is occurring at the intersection of concerns over the non-insurability of the catastrophic and the extremes of capitalist ingenuity, suggesting both perspectives might offer insights into some of the possible future trajectories of risk society.     

Raising citizens in ‘mixed’ family setting: mothering techniques of Filipino and Thai migrants in Belgium

As states increasingly regulate ‘mixed’ family formation, self-positioning has become central to the lives of migrant spouses, including women. To understand this process, the present article investigates the mothering techniques of Filipino and Thai migrant women in Belgium, that is, the decisions, actions and ways of being they consciously enact in response to state policies ‘here’ and/or 'there' to secure the mother–child bond in space and time. Interviews and observations reveal these women’s main techniques: obtaining Belgian nationality for themselves, prioritising a single nationality (Belgian) for their children and staying at home (in the case of Filipino migrant women) or working (in the case of Thai women). This self-positioning sets these women’s own path and prepare their children’s route towards full, active membership in the nation. Mothering appears therefore as a fertile site of citizenship, which from afar echoes the public–private divide but in close-up reveals the porosity of such dichotomy.     

The Big Society: Power to the People?

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently set out his vision of a ‘big society’. Its core themes are empowering communities, redistributing power from the state to citizens and promoting a culture of volunteering. The idea is badly flawed. It overlooks the crucial role that needs to be played by the state in promoting social justice, which is vital to the development of active citizenship and vibrant communities. Moreover, Cameron views the active citizen as simply a philanthropist and volunteer rather than as a politically literate individual, knowledgeable about the major political issues of the day and actively involved in debates about how public or private services ought to be run. The initiative is particularly perverse in the context of the credit crunch, a vitally important cause of which was precisely not the development of an over‐mighty state but rather the inadequate state regulation of free market trading activities by banks.     

梁赞诺夫对马克思传的四大贡献——《马克思恩格斯合传》评析

梁赞诺夫为马克思传记的研究与出版做出了四大贡献:第一,首倡将马克思传记列入马克思恩格斯著作全集;第二,最早将马克思传记作为独立的研究对象,与梅林进行了意义深远的历史争论;第三,MEGA1的编辑出版为马克思传奠定坚实可靠的文献基础;第四,《马克思恩格斯合传》注重马克思恩格斯生活、思想、革命的世界历史背景介绍,是了解马克思恩格斯生平思想的极好入门书。