What punishment expresses

In this article, I consider the question of what punishment expresses and propose a way of approaching the question that overcomes problems in both psychosocial and philosophical expressivist traditions. The problem in both traditions is, I suggest, the need for an adequate moral – neither moralizing nor reductive – psychology, and I argue that Melanie Klein’s work offers such a moral psychology. I offer a reconstruction of Klein’s central claims and begin to sketch some of its potential implications for an expressive account of punishment. I outline a Kleinian interpretation of modern punishment’s expression as of an essentially persecutory nature but also include depressive realizations that have generally proved too difficult for liberal modernity to work through successfully, and the recent ‘persecutory turn’ is a defence against such realizations. I conclude by considering the wider philosophical significance of a Kleinian account for the expressivist theory of punishment

The provocation of the humanitarian social imaginary

This article reviews recent attempts to analyse the visibility that is brought to human suffering within 'social imaginaries' committed to humanitarian concerns. It questions the conventions of critique that operate to cast the humanitarian social imaginary as a negative development within our political culture. It is designed to encourage a more critically reflexive and historically informed approach to the work of critique. It also argues that it is possible to trace a tradition in which humanitarian campaigners operate with the aim of appropriating the critical reaction to their work as part of their political strategy. In this regard, campaigners are more concerned to provoke moral controversy than to fashion 'winning arguments'. Here the visualization of human suffering is valued more for its potential to generate value conflicts than for the extent to which it serves as an authentic or ideologically uncontaminated representation of social reality

European industrial policies in the post-war boom: 'planning the economic miracle'

This survey briefly outlines the characteristics and drivers of western European industrial policies over the years 1945–75. Institutions for the coordination of labour bargaining were not decisive for the most rapidly growing economies. Rather policies were that encouraged openness to trade and investment, for they created an environment favourable to competition and technology transfer. Ireland demonstrated how much could be lost by failing to liberalise trade and investment. Spain and Greece were the stars of industrial growth, yet their lower growth of exports to GDP reflected under-performance. West Germany rapidly resumed her pre-1914 position as Europe’s industrial core thanks to price decontrol in 1948 and a judicious institutional compromise between the state, corporatism and the market in an open economy