State Formation, Habitus, and National Character: Elias, Bourdieu, Polanyi, and Gellner and the Case of Asylum Seekers in Ireland

Synthesizing material derived from Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, Karl Polanyi, Max Weber, Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, in Part I the concept of “national character” is delineated as a special case of “habitus” relating to the socio-spatial scale of the nation state. In relation to problems of state-formation, national character is shown to be a figurational and co-developmental function of the system of nation-states in which patterns of mutual identification and “imagined community” involve both the coercive codification and internalization of particular national narratives and origin myths which define “people like us” in terms of a symbolic family; and also, in relation to competing nation-states, the projection and internalization of national group charisma and shame. In Part II, these ideas are applied to the pattern of state formation in Ireland and the recent history of the reception, cultural accommodation, and treatment of asylum seekers

A Complete Act: Conservatism, Distributism and the Pattern Language for Sustainability

Linking Norbert Elias’s concept of the triad of controls, to Andrew Willard Jones’ analysis of the ‘complete act’, the paper outlines the relation between culture and personality and the implications of this for any project of localization and the re-embedding of the economy. Re-iterating the reality that degrowth cannot be a liberal project, the paper goes on to explore the relation between Western individualism and Judeo-Christianity. Shorn of the overarching ontology and orienting architecture of Christianity, individualism has become corrosive, unstable and, in the end, self-destructive. The socially conservative preoccupation with a decline in virtue is linked to eroding social capital, anomie, and unhappiness arising from a surfeit of freedom. Hyper-social and -spatial mobility is linked to the suppression of the domain of Livelihood, with its bottom-up, communitarian and family-based forms of social regulation; and a corollary expansion of both top-down collectivist regulation by the State and the transactional logic of the Market. Livelihood is a function of embedded individuals enmeshed in relations not only with other individuals and groups, but with God. In contrast, the materialist metaphysics of Market and State both depend on disembedded, free-wheeling citizen-consumers, severed from any relation to transcendent values. But these same phenomena are also the principal drivers of consumption and ecological degradation. On this basis it is argued that any culture of ecological restraint predicated on the re-embedding of markets must also entail an ontological re-embedding of the sacred conception of the individual (the Imago Dei) into a relation with the divine. Such a project implies a very different understanding of freedom predicated on an external, legitimate authority; a freedom that is ‘fullest not when it serves itself but when it serves truths freely held” ([1], Loc. 419). Applying Christopher Alexander’s theory of pattern languages, the paper goes on to explore what such a sustainability project might look like. </div

Open knowledge commons versus privatized gain in a fractured information ecology: Lessons from COVID-19 for the future of sustainability

COVID-19 has shone a bright light on a number of failings and weaknesses in how current economic models handle information and knowledge. Some of these are familiar issues that have long been understood but not acted upon effectively – for example, the danger that current systems of intellectual property and patent protection are actually inimical to delivering a cost-effective vaccine available to all, whereas treating knowledge as a commons and a public good is much more likely to deliver efficient outcomes for the entire global population. But COVID-19 has also demonstrated that traditional models of knowledge production and dissemination are failing us; scientific knowledge is becoming weaponized and hyper-partisan, and confidence in this knowledge is falling. We believe that the challenges that COVID-19 has exposed in the information economy and ecology will be of increasing applicability across the whole spectrum of sustainability; sustainability scholars and policymakers need to understand and grasp them now if we are to avoid contagion into other sectors due to the preventable errors that have marred the global response to COVID-19. Social media summary COVID-19 highlights both the failures of privatized knowledge and worrying fractures in the wider information ecology

Livelihood, Market and State: What does A Political Economy Predicated on the ‘Individual-in-Group-in-PLACE’ Actually Look Like?

Ecological economics has relied too much on priorities and institutional conventions defined by the high energy/throughput era of social democracy. Future research should focus on the political economy of a survival unit (Elias) based upon Livelihood as counterbalance to both State and Market. Drawing on the work of Polanyi, Elias, Gellner and Ong, capitalist modernization is analyzed in terms of the emergence of a society of individuals and the replacement of the survival units of place-bound bound family and community by one in which the State acts in concert with the Market. The operation of welfare systems is shown to depend upon ongoing economic growth and a continual flow of fiscal resources. The politics of this survival unit depends upon high levels of mutual identification and an affective-cognitive &lsquo;we imaginary&rsquo;. Increasing diversity, a political rejection of nationalism as a basis for politics and limits to economic growth, are likely to present an existential threat to the State&ndash;Market survival unit. A reversal of globalization, reconsolidation of the nation-state, a reduction in the scope of national and global markets and the expansion of informal processes of manufacture and distribution may provide a plausible basis for a hybrid Livelihood&ndash;Market&ndash;State survival unit. The politics of such a reorientation would straddle the existing left&ndash;right divide in disruptive and unsettling ways. Examples are given of pre-figurative forms of reciprocation and association that may be indicative of future arrangements

Manchester First: From Municipal Socialism to the Entrepreneurial City

After coming to power in 1984, Manchester's 'New Urban Left' were for a while at the forefront of those radical councils seeking to use the local state both as the primary site of resistance to the Thatcher government, but also to develop a genuinely 'prefigurative' local socialism. However, in Manchester this experiment proved short-lived. The subsequent entrepreneurial project has proved both durable and more distinctive. This article provides a detailed narrative account of the transition from 'municipal socialism' to the politics of 'Manchester First'. Whilst summarizing the notable differences between the two projects, the paper argues that an interpretative emphasis on the apparent political U-turn after 1987 obscures important continuities. With hindsight, the municipal Left can be credited with redefining the role of local authorities in relation to the economy, creating a space for proactive local and regional economic strategies. At the same time, the embrace of urban entrepreneurialism in the late 1980s did signal a marked shift in the perception of what was actually possible in terms of the parameters and constraints on local strategy Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2000.