Neoliberalism on the Ground in Rural India: Predatory Growth,Agrarian Crisis,Internal Colonization,and the Intensification of Class Struggle

Focusing on the countryside and rural poor, this article delineates the contours and considers the effects of the Indian state's adoption of neoliberal policies in the early 1990s. It argues that the shift to neoliberalism has produced a pattern of predatory growth that has privileged urban India, entailed a withdrawal of state support for the agrarian sector, and increasingly involved the forcible expropriation of the land and resources of the rural poor. This pattern and the neoliberal policies underpinning it have precipitated an agrarian crisis, while domestic and international capital have been the principal beneficiaries of the ‘internal colonization’ of the poor through dispossession and suppression. At the same time, the shift to neoliberalism has formed the specific context for an intensification of agrarian class conflict that has included the mobilization of rural elites as well as the rural poor.     

Negotiating the Politics of Inclusion: Women and Australian Labor Governments 1983 to 1995

The Hawke and Keating Labor governments have tended to practise a politics of inclusion in which women, along with other social groups, are seen to have an important part to play in building the new, internationally competitive Australian economy of the twenty-first century. Australian politics have therefore had a very different nature from that of the more exclusionary politics practised by British Conservative governments. While the politics of inclusion have given feminists room for manoeuvre, and facilitated some positive developments in areas such as affirmative action and childcare policies, feminists have had little success in challenging the overall direction of the governments' right-wing economic policies. Furthermore, the ‘economic’ has functioned as a meta-category which dissolves difference and conflict. The Australian experience therefore has both practical and theoretical implications for British feminists who may be experiencing a Labour government themselves before too long.     

加强对转型时期劳工政策的研究

劳工政策是指针对劳动者或劳工阶层而设立的社会政策。转型时期我国劳工政策在劳工权益保障方面存在缺失,诸如劳动合同制度对乡镇企业和进城农民工还存在较大空白;集体谈判制度的完善有待工会组织体制的改革和谈判斗争手段的丰富;劳动监察制度不能有效地威慑和遏制用人单位的违法行为;劳动争议处理制度存在许多制度设计上的缺陷,亟待变革,等等。劳工政策缺失的要害是从属和服务于效率优先的经济增长政策,未能体现出公平与效率的统一。应在科学发展观指导下完善劳工政策。     

Russian agrarian reform and rural capitalism reconsidered

Since 1990, significant institutional and policy change has occurred in the Russian agrarian sector. A crucial question is whether these changes will facilitate rural capitalism and the emergence of a rural bourgeoisie. This article examines Russian domestic economic policies and international trade policies, arguing that macroeconomic policies are inherently detrimental to the agrarian sector, are undermining the prospects for capitalism and the rise of a rural bourgeoisie, and are hindering economic growth. Since the onset of agrarian reform, financial and material investments into agriculture have been slashed. Russia has also pursued an open trade policy which has witnessed an increase in food imports which pits higher priced domestic food against lower priced, better quality imports. As a consequence the agricultural sector is not fulfilling basic requirements for economic growth. Based on these trends, the article concludes that current prospects for the development of a rural bourgeoisie are not favourable.     

To Care and Protect: Care Workers Confronting Sweden Democrats in their Workplace

Austerity policies across European countries have encountered diverse forms of public protest and resistance. In Sweden, we have seen the emergence of a number of networks and organizations which take care workers’ professional identity as their point of departure. These networks and organizations stress the impossibility of being professional care workers in slimmed-down, neoliberal organizations. Parallel to this, and sometimes embedded into one another, female-dominated professions (e.g. social workers, nurses, doctors, and teachers) have been engaged in opposing restrictive refugee policies. This article analyses how care workers in an emergency room in Malmö mobilized against a visit by Jimmie Åkesson, leader of the right-wing, xenophobic Sweden Democrats. The article explores how workers used a gendered discourse of care and professionalism to argue that their actions were consistent with both organizational culture and their professional ethics. The article shows how, by defending their professional role of providing quality care to all in need, workers challenge both austerity and racist policies, which both impose restrictions on who has the right to care. Theoretically, the article explores how the politicization of care creates spaces of resistance, to critique both austerity policies and exclusionary understandings of national belonging. The study stresses the importance of identifying emerging forms of collective resistance among care workers at the intersection of the struggles against austerity and right-wing xenophobic parties.     

Social Investment in Gender Equality? Changing Perspectives on Work and Welfare in Norway

In many EU countries, the so-called social investment perspective has provided new arguments for active welfare state policies. The social investment perspective is characterized by emphasizing the role of the state to increase participation in employment by investing in the working capacity of the population—particularly women—through activation programmes and social policies. In this article we depart from recent debates surrounding this perspective to explore changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies, and the role of gender equality in these changes. In Norway, both female employment and fertility levels are high, but women still have a looser connection to the labour market compared to men, for example due to the large proportion in part-time positions, which makes changes in work and welfare policies an interesting case for exploring the relevance of the social investment perspective in this context. The empirical analysis suggests that ideas of social investment indeed have permeated recent changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies. However, questions of gender equality are not addressed in the documents introducing these changes, except when the problem at hand is the employment rate of migrant women—who are the main recipients of activation policies. In conclusion, we claim that social investment is a relevant lens for analysing changes in Norwegian work and welfare policies, but that a dual-tracked vision of gender equality is emerging, making migrant women the significant target of social investment.     

when debility provides a future: preventing vertical transmission of HIV

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government has enacted a series of cuts to public spending, under the auspices of austerity. Underpinning these cuts is a neo-liberal model of citizenship, in which citizens are expected to be autonomous, independent and economically productive, and in which the responsibilities of citizenship outweigh the rights. This model of citizenship is characterised by a paradoxical approach to social reproduction. The Coalition government has taken a significant interest in social reproduction as a means of creating the next generation of ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens; yet, the current austerity measures involve the withdrawal of state support for social reproduction activities. Drawing on participant observation carried out with migrant women’s groups in Sheffield and Manchester, as well as interviews with group members, this article demonstrates how the government’s paradoxical approach to social reproduction, combined with gendered and racialised discourses of citizenship and ‘Britishness’, have led to policies that place ethnic minority migrant women in an untenable situation. The social reproduction activities of ethnic minority migrant women are the subject of intense government interest, because of the concern that they will be unable to produce ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens. In some cases, this has led to government policies clearly intended to dissuade ‘undesirable’ migrants from having children. In other cases, migrant women are expected to show their commitment to integration, both for themselves and their children, specifically by learning English, even as the government has drastically cut funding for English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classes. While seemingly paradoxical, this is in keeping with a racialised neo-liberal model of citizenship under which the ‘responsible’ migrant mother should be able to parent and learn English without government assistance. Nonetheless, these policies are actually self-defeating, as they prevent migrant women from exhibiting the very characteristics of neo-liberal citizenship that they are ostensibly trying to encourage.     

Land tenure legislation in a pluri-cultural and multi-ethnic Society: The case of Bolivia

After considering notions of social justice as they are related to concepts of ‘development’, this article seeks to provide a regionally differentiated overview of the evolution of land tenure in Bolivia and the way arrangements for land tenure legalization have been contested and negotiated over time. It will show how the colonial ‘reciprocity pact’, which entailed recognition of indigenous tenure systems came under attack from liberalizing policies during the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1953 agrarian reform brought new arrangements and new agrarian policies that formally aimed at modernization. Yet another reform, in 1996, under the aegis of neoliberalism, brought a formal recognition of indigenous tenure systems which, however, has not yielded very satisfactory outcomes. This is due to a one-sided emphasis on tenure that disregards broader community organization and a slow and biased implementation favouring the traditionally dominant sectors.     

Murder,cruelty and sexual assaults

As more and more political institutions stress the significance of gender equality policies, it becomes important to investigate the different interpretations and meanings attached to the concept of gender equality in diverse policy contexts. In this article we are interested in problematizing visions of gender equality by studying the challenges that the growing amount of paid domestic work performed within European households poses for gender equality policies and practices in two European countries. The aim is to reveal normative assumptions and silences in relation to gender equality by comparing how “paid domestic work” has been framed in policy debates in Sweden and Spain. As welfare states, Sweden and Spain are generally considered to be very different, and in policies on care for children and the elderly the differences are perhaps most apparent. In both countries, however, paid domestic work in the home has become more and more common in the last two decades. The rise of paid domestic services in European households has been interpreted as due to the limitations or decline of welfare states, the ageing populations, and the increasing numbers of dual-earner families. These services are most often provided by women, predominantly of immigrant background, and involve a wide range of tasks, including care work. The phenomenon of an increasing sector of domestic (care) work poses a theoretical and methodological challenge to gender and welfare studies. This article argues that the analysis of debates surrounding domestic service in private households is a useful starting-point for an intersectional analysis by means of revealing the normative assumptions and marginalization embedded in gender equality policies. It uses a comparative frame analysis in combination with intersectional analysis to assess how interactions between gender, class, race, and sexuality have been articulated in the policy debates on domestic services in Spain and Sweden.     

Editorial

Welfare state support for the reconciliation of work and family has long been regarded as a characteristic of the Scandinavian welfare state and a trademark of its "woman-friendly" policies. Based on an examination of important Nordic childcare policy reforms of the 1990s, such as the expansion of state-sponsored childcare services, the strengthening of fathers' rights to care and the institution of cash grants for childcare, the impact of reforms on mothers and fathers as workers and carers is discussed. In conclusion, the discussion returns to the reconciliation of work and family, and asks: To what extent have reproduction policies succeeded in updating the traditional gender contract of the male breadwinner family?     

若干经济政策对我国职工队伍的影响

改革开放以来经济政策的主流是好的。但是,若干经济政策的失当,或经济政策是好的,由于执行中的失误,对我国职工队伍造成了一定的冲击和影响。这种影响的实质导致了劳动关系的失衡。而不均衡的劳动关系对和谐社会的构建产生的是负面影响,不利于社会的稳定和经济的发展。     

隔代照料问题研究述评与政策思考——基于老年人力资源开发的视角

老年人是重要的人力资源。家庭内部的隔代照料是老年人力资源开发的重要途径,可对推动女性就业、促进人口均衡发展和经济增长作出重要贡献。但隔代照料也会对老年人的身心健康产生积极或消极影响。本研究在借鉴国外隔代照料家庭支持政策的基础上,采用社会政策分析框架探讨我国隔代照料支持政策的发展思路。研究认为,应将隔代照料支持政策纳入各地“一老一小”整体解决方案和老年人力资源开发相关政策。未来应进一步分析老年隔代照料的经济价值,统筹考量其经济成本,多学科细化分析其社会性价值与成本,强化老年隔代照料的政策研究。     

由我国当前的失业现象谈劳工问题的认定

劳工政策是我国目前公共政策领域的一个研究热点。劳工问题的认定,对制定劳工政策具有十分重要的意义。劳工问题的认定有三项原则:劳工问题是指劳工与他所处的外在环境之间关系的失调以及劳工群体内部的失调,这种失调对社会造成了广泛的不良影响,这种失调得到了政府的重视。     

试论我国行政管理体制改革背景下的行政执行力建设

行政执政力是各级政府及其部门和工作人员贯彻执行国家大政方针、法律法令和公共政策的能力。提高行政执行力是当代行政管理体制改革的重要内容,也是各国政府竭力追求的目标。在我国行政管理体制改革逐步深化的过程中,行政执行力有了明显提高,但也存在一些突出的问题亟待解决。提高行政执行力应该在党的十七大关于深化行政管理体制改革的背景下,从对行政执行力存在问题的分析入手,结合我国国情、政治环境和行政体制,从调整权力、利益和思想格局的角度出发,对如何加强行政执行力建设提出相关对策。     

The ‘Good’ Attached Mother: An Analysis of Postmaternal and Postracial Thinking in Birth and Breastfeeding Policy in Neoliberal Britain

ABSTRACT

In the last 20 years, a new parenting philosophy has garnered increasing attention and popularity. Coined by William Sears in the early 1980s, attachment parenting (AP) proposes that secure attachment between parent and child is necessary for optimal development and therefore ‘good’ parenting. Simultaneously, neoliberalism, a socio-political context defined by market logic, has emerged as the dominant global trend. In this article, I examine the correspondence between AP, and the broader ideology of intensive mothering it expresses, and the parenting-related policies advanced by the neoliberal state. Specifically, I focus on how birth and breastfeeding policy in Britain aligns with AP, contextualising the emergence of AP and its appearance in contemporary state policy as the result of two features of neoliberalism: postmaternal and post-racial thinking. I draw attention to the experiences of black mothers and, through this lens, reveal the raced, gendered and classed dimensions of ‘good’ parenting. In my examination of these policies, I argue that postmaternal and postracial thinking have enabled the emergence of AP, an approach that individualises child-rearing and relies upon an uncritical appropriation of the so-called traditional practices of racialised women.     

On the margins of soy farms: traditional populations and selective environmental policies in the Brazilian Cerrado

In the Cerrado, the expansion of soybean cultivation since the 1990s has coincided with the strengthening of environmental regulations. We analyze how the two main environmental policies – Protected Areas and the Forest Code – have played out at the ground level in western Bahia state. These policies in Cerrado have not been designed to curb the expansion of this agricultural frontier. These norms have, on the contrary, accommodated this expansion because the way environmental managers selectively choose environmental problems and publicize them through specific information systems depreciates traditional fire-dependent production systems. These ‘politics of selection’ are likely to increase competition for resources in the margins of soybean agriculture, which is where traditional populations have now become confined.     

for reproductive justice in an era of Gates and Modi: the violence of India’s population policies

This article addresses India’s contemporary population control policies and practices as a form of gender violence perpetrated by the state and transnational actors against poor, Adivasi and Dalit women. It argues that rather than meeting the needs and demands of these women for access to safe contraception that they can control, the Indian state has targeted them for coercive mass sterilisations and unsafe injectable contraceptives. This is made possible by the long-term construction of particular women’s lives as devalued and disposable, and of their bodies as excessively fertile and therefore inimical to development and progress. It further considers how population policy is currently embedded in the neoliberal framework of development being pursued by the Indian state. In particular, it argues that the violence of population policies is being deepened as a result of three central and interrelated aspects of this framework: corporate dispossession and displacement, the intensification and extension of women’s labour for global capital, and the discourses and embodied practices of far-right Hindu supremacism. At the same time, India’s population policies cannot be understood in isolation from the global population control establishment, which is increasingly corporate-led, and from broader structures of racialised global capital accumulation. The violence of India’s contemporary population policies and the practices they produce operate at several different scales, all of which involve the construction of certain bodies as unfit to reproduce and requiring intervention and control.     

The politics of private farming in Russia

This article seeks to explore why private farming in Russia has fared so poorly even after private farming was designated the centrepiece of Russian land reform and political capital was invested in its success. The underlying causes for the lack of success extend beyond economic and social factors. While the entire agricultural sector has been adversely affected by reform policies undertaken since 1992, private farmers have been hurt the most because they were more vulnerable. Private farmers have not been successful in defending their interests because they are politically weak, a fact that led them to seek out urban alliances whose interests differ from private farmers, and because of intra‐rural divisions that have weakened the efforts by agrarians to defend their interests.     

灵活性与稳定性:中国开发区工会组织情况调查

随着全球化的发展,发展中国家纷纷设立以吸引外国资本进入为目的的各类开发区(如保税区、出口加工区等),同时向外国投资者提供各类经济和社会优惠政策以换取资本输入.最主要的优惠政策之一是限制区域内的工会活动或工人结社的权利.国际劳工组织注意到了这一现象并在各国开展了有关开发区劳动条件和工会组织情况的调查研究.本文在对中国开发区内进行调研的基础上,主要对中国地区开发区内的工会组织情况进行了分析,对开发区内工会组建过程中面临的困难、工会组建策略及集体协商的基本情况进行了梳理.通过研究发现,中国开发区内的工会活动既存在迎合资本活动的灵活性,也承担着维持开发区内劳动关系和谐的稳定性.