Contests of citizenship: A comment

The language of citizenship is one of authority, legitimation and contest. Citizenship rights were brought about in some parts of Europe through struggle and revolution, and even then excluded the masses and women. But the ‘law‐state’ and constitutions they established were the necessary conditions for subsequent struggles by these sectors for inclusion and ultimately for cultural and social citizenship. The advocacy of human rights is frequently denounced as ‘Western’ imposition of an individualism alien to other cultures, but these culturalist defences act as a cover for communitarian and state authoritarianism. The establishment of legal rights does not contradict social bonds, but can ensure reciprocity of obligations and protection from communal authority. This is specially pertinent for women. Social bonds are not peculiar to the ‘East’ or ‘South’, but are universal, including the mythical ‘West’, and legal rights for the individual are a necessary condition for achieving justice in social relations.     

Governable catastrophes: a comment on Bougen

Bougen's analysis of catastrophe insurance has considerable and damaging implications for the 'risk society' thesis. First, it outlines how insurance 'imaginaries' render even catastrophic and 'incalculable' modernization risks insurable. It also highlights the fact that such insurance has been mobilized and shaped by specific forms of political rationality, something which falls beneath the gaze of grand theory. Finally, the paper indicates that risk and uncertainty - far from being mutually exclusive - are frequently assembled together into governing technologies, and that uncertainty may denote a variable set of technologies through which catastrophes can be and are managed.     

Syposium comment: Improving economic development strategies

There is an old bromide, often associated with former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, that says “all politics is local.” The papers under review here implicitly raise the question of whether all (or at least a good portion) of economic development is local, and what sort of strategies state and local governments should pursue in fostering healthy economic development.