Distributive justice with and without culture

Academic treatments of distributive justice normally adopt a static approach centred on resource allocation among a set of individual agents. The resulting models, expressed in mathematical language, make no allowance for culture, as they never engage with the society’s way of life or the moulding of individuals within society. This paper compares the static approach to distributive justice with a cultural one, arguing that a case for redistribution should rest upon its cultural effects in assisting well-being and social cohesion. Unless we recognise culture, we can have little understanding of why inequalities matter, where they come from, and how they might be reduced. Redistribution may be motivated by universal value judgements taken from external sources, but it also entails internal cultural changes that refashion social relations through cumulative causation. In practical terms, it has to penetrate beyond reallocating resource endowments to bring revised attitudes in a society less tolerant of unequal outcomes. Egalitarian reforms will flourish only if they generate and reflect an egalitarian culture

A tale of two capitalisms: preliminary spatial and historical comparisons of homicide rates in Western Europe and the USA

This article examines comparative homicide rates in the United States and Western Europe in an era of increasingly globalized neoliberal economics. The main finding of this preliminary analysis is that historical and spatial correlations between distinct forms of political economy and homicide rates are consistent enough to suggest that social democratic regimes are more successful at fostering the socio-cultural conditions necessary for reduced homicide rates. Thus Western Europe and all continents and nations should approach the importation of American neo-liberal economic policies with extreme caution. The article concludes by suggesting that the indirect but crucial causal connection between political economy and homicide rates, prematurely pushed into the background of criminological thought during the ‘cultural turn’, should be returned to the foreground

Community engagement and professionalization: Emerging tensions

© 2019 by Emerald Publishing Limited. An increase in community engagement by governments across Australia’s three-tiered federal polity conforms to international trends. It represents a multidimensional institutionalization of participatory democracy designed to involve the public in decision-making. Increasingly, it is a practice which displays the markers of professionalization, including (self-described) professionals, professional associations and a code of ethics. The individuals who design, communicate, and facilitate community engagement are placed in a unique position, whereas most professions claim to serve both their client or employer and a greater public good, community engagement practitioners play these roles while also claiming to serve as “guardians” of democratic processes. Yet the claimed professionalization of community engagement is raising some questions: Is community engagement really a profession – and by what criteria ought this be assessed? What tensions do community engagement practitioners face by “serving multiple masters,” and how do they manage these? More pointedly, how can ethics inform our understanding of community engagement and its professionalization? This chapter examines the case for the practice of community engagement as a profession using Noordegraaf’s (2007) pillars of pure professionalism as a guide. It then explores some practical examples of the tensions practitioners may experience. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the future direction of community engagement given its positioning

The rise of inconspicuous consumption

Ever since Veblen and Simmel, luxury has been synonymous with conspicuous consumption. In this conceptual paper we demonstrate the rise of inconspicuous consumption via a wide-ranging synthesis of the literature. We attribute this rise to the signalling ability of traditional luxury goods being diluted, a preference for not standing out as ostentatious during times of economic hardship, and an increased desire for sophistication and subtlety in design in order to further distinguish oneself for a narrow group of peers. We decouple the constructs of luxury and conspicuousness, which allows us to reconceptualise the signalling quality of brands and the construct of luxury. This also has implications for understanding consumer behaviour practices such as counterfeiting and suggests that consumption trends in emerging markets may take a different path from the past

[Introduction] Toward an anthropology of the just price: history, ethnography, critique

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Fact and fiction in housing research: utilizing the creative imagination

As much of our conceptual framework is informed by the experience of the imagination, there is much to be learnt from a study of various creative forms. Narrative fiction can be one such form, allowing us to gain a useful insight into complex features of social life. The purpose of this article is to investigate the treatment of housing issues in contemporary literature in order to gain insights into attitudes, experiences and interpretations from the perspective of a broad cultural milieu. Discussions of professionalism, housing tenure and homelessness have tended to be conducted within a narrow framework and adopted orthodox modes of evaluation. Consequently, the neglect of housing within a wider cultural context has reinforced the isolation of housing issues. The article argues that although discussions of housing and housing policy have been seriously limited within the contemporary novel, there are a number of key insights that can be gained from a discussion of issues within a fictional setting

Review Essay : Industrial Organization and Socialist Development in China

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68697/2/10.1177_009770047900500204.pd

Rethinking European integration history in light of capitalism: the case of the long 1970s

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of an intertwining between European integration history and the history of capitalism. Although debates on capitalism have been making a comeback since the 2008 crisis, to date the concept of capitalism remains almost completely avoided by historians of European integration. This introduction thus conceptualizes ‘capitalism’ as a useful analytical tool that should be used by historians of European integration and proposes three major approaches for them to do so: first, by bringing the question of social conflict, integral to the concept of capitalism, into European integration history; second, by better conceptualizing the link between European governance, Europeanization and the globalization of capitalism; and thirdly by investigating the economic, political and ideological models or doctrines that underlie European cooperation, integration, policies and institutions. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of an encounter between capitalism and European integration history, focusing on the case of the 1970s. This allows us to qualify the idea of a clear-cut rupture, and better highlight how the shift of these years resulted from a complex bargaining that took place in part at the European level