The Freedom of Desire: Hegel's Response to Rousseau on the Problem of Civil Society

The ever-growing body of literature on civil society can benefit from a return to the original theoretical articulation and defense of the concept in the work of G.W.F. Hegel. Specifically, this article suggests that Jean-Jacques Rousseau's influential critique of civil society remains unanswered and argues that Hegel responded with a sweeping and sympathetic institutional design that remains relevant today. Hegel agrees with Rousseau that commercial society aggravates the dissatisfaction of its members, and that educating individual desire through institutional design is necessary to solve this difficulty. However, modern states need not adopt Rousseau's extreme and impracticable solution. Hegel's concrete, market-based associations of civil society render desires satiable and elevate them to accord with the common good, while still maintaining the freedom and distinctness of a pluralistic modern society.     

Health reform and privatization in Alberta

Abstract: In 2000 the Government of Alberta passed legislation to regulate the activities of private health clinics in the provision of insured health services through contracts with regional health authorities. In seven years the interaction of ideas, interests, institutions, and external events forced the Government of Alberta to move from a non‐regulatory policy stance to a policy of stringent regulation. The legislation struck a balance among competing values relating to public and private sector roles, increased access and choice, regulation of the growth of public expenditures, and quality assurance. Sommaire: En l'an 2000, le gouvernement de l'Alberta a adopté une loi visant à réglementer les activités des cliniques de sante privées en matière de prestation de services de santé assurés par l'intermédiaire de contrats avec les offices régionaux de la santé. En sept ans, l'interaction d'idées, d'intérêts, d'institutions et d'événements externes a forcé le gouvernement de l'Alberta à passer d'une position de politique non exécutoire à une politique de réglementation rigoureuse. La loi établit un équilibre entre les valeurs opposées que représentent le rôle important du secteur privé, un accès et un choix accrus, la réglementation de la croissance des dépenses publiques et le contrôle de la qualité.     

Forget-E-Not: Environmental Liabilities Poised to Rise?

Forget-E-Not: Environmental Liabilities Poised to Rise?

All authors

William M Wilt, Vinay Saqi, Brian Church & Vinay Misquith

https://doi.org/10.1080/10406020490506481

Published online:

10 August 2010

Table     

The underexamined assumptions of the invisible hand: Monetary incentives as policy instruments

To alleviate overcrowding in pretrial detention facilities, the City of New York established a program offering substantial budgetary increments to those district attorneys' offices in the city that reduced the number of long-term detainee cases. The experience with this program suggests that the inherent assuptions underlying a monetary incentive strategy—the existence of capacity, the avoidability of goal displacement, and the efficacy of financial rewards—need to be carefully examined if implementation is to be successful.     

States and the constitutionalization of international relations: A view from the mid‐Atlantic

Michael J. Baun, An Imperfect Union: The Maastricht Treaty and the New Politics of European Integration (Westview, Boulder, CO, 1996), xvi + 182 pp., ISBN 0–8133–2710–5 (hb), 0–8133–2711–3 (pb)

Michael Calingaert, European Integration. Progress, Prospects and US Interests (Westview, Boulder, CO, 1996), xiii +223 pp., ISBN 0–8133–2953–1 (hb), 0–8133–2954‐X (pb)

Brian Hocking and Michael Smith, Beyond Foreign Economic Policy. The United States, the Single European Market and the Changing World Economy (Pinter, London, 1997), 216 pp., ISBN 185567–269–3

John Peterson, Europe and America: The Prospects for Partnership (Routledge, London, 1996, 2nd edn), xii +240 pp., ISBN 0–415–14653–4 (hb), 0–415–13864–7 (pb)     

Cindy Sherman in a New Millennium: Fashion,Feminism, Art and Ageing

ABSTRACT

If feminism and the fashion industry were once seen as adversaries, given how the strictures of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex (1949) permeated so much of second wave feminism, a consideration of ‘fashion’ is now central to contemporary feminist scholarship. But just as the earlier critique of fashion seemed finally to have been supplanted, certain basic arguments around dress and makeup nevertheless resurfaced within contemporary feminism. The current neoliberal climate has led to the ever-increasing consumption of ‘fashionable’ goods, provoking unease and encouraging the contested ‘protectionist discourse’ within feminism to shield young women from just such excesses. Meanwhile, the fashion world itself, arguably more powerful than ever, has across the last twenty years continued a process of legitimising itself through its various modes of alliance with the art world; it has even hijacked elements of feminist practice in the pursuit of publicity. This article suggests that the fashion industry and contemporary feminism are nonetheless alike in one significant respect: neither have properly engaged with the needs of an ageing population. It is an omission that this article will seek to examine through a discussion of the recent ‘portraits‘ of Cindy Sherman, an artist of great interest to feminist scholars, in whose earlier work there was a discernible ‘anti-fashion’ element. Now ‘fashionable’ herself, a leading figure in the global art world, she has collaborated with the fashion industry in rather different ways. Her ‘portraits’ of 2012, in which she reconfigured herself as imaginary Manhattan socialites in or beyond middle age, and a later series, exhibited in 2016, where she appears as a series of ageing, anonymous ‘movie stars’, reveal more general ideological tensions surrounding the representation of women, the ageing process and the fashionable ideal. It is the dissection of these tensions that underpin this article, for while Sherman’s work has been the subject of academic debate across a forty year period, her use and critique of the ‘fashionable ‘ image has not been examined alongside an exploration of the expanding activities of the fashion industry itself; nor have her recent images of ageing women been examined within this more general context.