This article introduces the concept of dialectic icons: public figures who feature in contentious and polarising political discourse. The inflammatory quality of dialectic icons and their role as highly mediated symbols of conflict creates long-lasting emotional energy among audiences, who cluster in ideological camps as a response. However, these audiences can also actively and directly engage in and shape these discourses, particularly through social media. Examples of the public discourse about quarterback-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick’s anthem protests illustrate how the controversiality, newsworthiness, interactivity and visibility of dialectic icons ultimately contribute to social polarisation. By focusing on dialectic icons as proxy battlegrounds for public audiences, this article establishes a useful concept for gaining fresh insights into collective meaning- and truth-making processes.
In January 2023, Anders Rhiger Hansen visited Lund University to talk to Max Koch about sustainable welfare, human needs, social inequality and a little bit about Bourdieu. The message from Max was clear: politicians need to drop the idea of green growth and instead define a safe and just operating space to determine what can be done within this space. His sociological approach combines Marxian and Bourdieusean traditions, and he recommends that the Consumption and Society community investigates consumption in combination with processes of production, for example by engaging with critical political economy approaches such as the French regulation school or the Frankfurt School. According to Koch, the survival of the planet requires holistic approaches that would transform society and its exchanges with nature, based on principles of degrowth and on a scale that we have not yet seen.
Many people have been labelled with psychiatric ‘diagnoses’ such as ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’. That was one of the labels that was bestowed on me, amongst others, incorrectly. This poem speaks to what I experienced.
Industrially produced mass culture has the reputation of being uniform and monotonous, leaving hardly any room for originality and creativity. In stark contrast to this concept, other theorists of popular culture emphasise the increasing individuality of mass culture made possible by the increasing opulence and leisure time of the working masses followed by the marketing of consumer goods and services. Using the American automotive markets and the Soviet fashion industry as examples, the article addresses the role of fashion in promoting individuality in modern consumer culture questioning both Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s analysis of culture industry and Bourdieu’s analysis of the ‘down-to-earth’ taste of the working class. Critical Theory was right in referring to the culture industry, fashion included, as promoting pseudo-individuation, but not right in downplaying the role of the individual judgement of taste. Bourdieu was right in arguing that the social groups with little cultural and economic capital have hardly any role in challenging the legitimate taste, but not right in arguing that their taste is not an aesthetic taste at all. In analysing the relation between the individual and the social, or the particular and the general, in modern culture, one should pay more attention to the social formation of fashion, operative in consumer goods markets. The reconciliation between the individual and the social that fashion offers is real enough but takes place only provisionally and in a socially conforming manner challenging neither the social formation of fashion nor the general social order of the capitalist, commercial society.
COVID-19-related social lockdowns had profound consequences in all aspects of social life, yet technology’s role in mediating relationships during lockdown has received little attention. Drawing on a survey of 565 young adults in the UK, we used mixed methods to explore (a) differences in technology use by people in serious romantic relationships (cohabiting vs. living apart together), casual relationships or single; and (b) how COVID-19 influenced long-term, serious relationships. For participants in a serious relationship, technology was used as a strategy to facilitate ongoing communication, enabling partners to achieve ‘intimacy from afar’. Qualitative analysis revealed five reasons (more free time, navigating lockdown restrictions, greater boredom, desire for love and miscellaneous) for online dating profile usage changes. People in serious relationships perceived deeper intimate bonds, boundary issues, less physical intimacy, difficulty with lockdown separation and greater negative impact because of COVID-19. Limitations and implications are discussed.
Addressing the central theme of structure and agency, this chapter explores the dilemma that decision-making entails structural power often controlled by elites, while transformative change often happens through the agency of people power and collective action. Key to enabling transformation is the relationship between mobilisation and democratic institutions; we need more democracy (more equalising structures) and more mobilised citizens (more agentic power). The dominant form of power in political parties needs to relate to and facilitate the transformative power of mobilisation. The first section of the chapter briefly contextualises the structural power of capital, corporations and elites and addresses the importance of engagement of people in ideational debate in rich forms of participatory and deliberative democracy: a form of institutional democracy described as ‘high-energy democracy’. The second section discusses strategies for collective mobilisation, arguing for coalition-building and mobilisation around environmental, gender and social reproduction and traditional distributional concerns about income equality and public services. Arguing that necessity is the mother of coalition, the combined evils of environmental destruction and inequality merit a new political mobilisation in the form of a triple movement. The chapter concludes by discussing Ireland from the perspective of movement-building, examining various constellations of actors, and clusters of mobilisations.
The book integrates ecological and social arguments in identifying the problems and solutions to issues of contemporary sustainability. Intentionally light in its presentation of theory, key concepts discussed include commodification, globalisation, sustainability, institutions, services, income, participation, imaginaries, transformation, and power. The book focuses on the problem; the cojoined realities of increasing inequality and environmental destruction, and part of the solution; a recast welfare system as an ecosocial welfare system capable of enabling society to meet the challenges of achieving sustainability and equality. Ecosocial welfare reflects the transformational potential of social policy. It is mapped, in this book, as specific reform proposals combining enabling institutions, universal basic services and income support (Participation Income). The intention is to enable different outcomes for work, income, time and care, and facilitate socially useful work and flourishing lives.
Chapter 1 begins by examining the contemporary globalised and financialised eco-political economy and draws on a Polanyian framework and concept of commodification. The chapter analyses the problem, the related social and ecological destruction, as commodification, and uses the concept of decommodification to frame potential solutions pointing to an ecosocial project that deemphases the role of the market in favour of an enhanced role for the state and society. It argues that states should focus on addressing need through social, public and local mechanisms in which we care for each other and put our planet at the centre of our policy processes. The chapter concludes by assessing the anchor case, Ireland’s political economy and its commodified policy and outcomes.
We all now have to find our place in engagement with climate change and be part of the demand for systemic change. The conclusion interrogates the propositions in the book to test whether they are coherent and convincing arguments. It echoes the challenge, identifying a clear problem and proposing an ecosocial welfare future as part of a broader transformative agenda to a post-growth world. It situates a political strategy for making it happen through a deepening and widening of democratic institutions and processes and inclusive participation and coalition-building. The conclusion underscores the urgency of now and how crisis only offers opportunity to those who are ready with ideas to enact. Ready now
A uniquely hybrid approach to welfare state policy, ecological sustainability and social transformation, this book explores transformative models of welfare change.
Using Ireland as a case study, it addresses the institutional adaptations needed to move towards a sustainable welfare state, and the policy of making such transformation happen.
It takes a theoretical and practical approach to implementing an alternative paradigm for welfare in the context of globalisation, climate change, social cohesion, automation, economic and power inequalities, intersectionality and environmental sustainability, as well as perpetual crisis, including the pandemic.
