Key messages We live in an era of overlapping crises of global political economy. Among these crises is a perceived crisis of liberalism or liberal democracy. bell hooks’ work enables a radical re-reading of this as a crisis of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The rise of the Right and its alliance with liberals is a rearguard action against a progressive revolution of values. The violence with which the supremacy of white values is affirmed and the aggressiveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the ways of life and of
. Transformation as revolution? One thing to which it might assist us is full acknowledgement that, as I suggested in the Introduction, ‘transformative change’ – a notion much invoked in current discussions of the climate situation, and general enough just in those terms to sound a broadly positive note of (perhaps slightly apprehensive) excitement for many – must actually mean social and political revolution : a term with a harsher and more fearful timbre. Social and economic transformation in itself does not seem to be incompatible with utopianism – all utopias, after all
31 TWO Revolution, culture and society IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom ... In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic
73 5 Revolution: Theories and Practices Introduction The Iranian Revolution of 1979 is an ongoing subject for debate among scholars and analysts around the world. It stands as one of the more remarkable world events in the period since the end of the Second World War. It achieved its goals through the use of what, for George Sorel, is the essence of myth: an abrupt break with the recent past that is achieved only by means of ‘expressions of a will to act’ (Sorel, 2005: 28). The main achievements of the Revolution abolished the monarchical rule of the
contagious revolutions. It was the threat of one country after another falling like dominoes to Communism. In his now famous introduction of the ‘domino theory’, which helped give birth to this war a decade later, then US president Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed the danger of the ‘falling domino principle’, whereby, similar to dominoes in a row but with countries, ‘you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly’. Indeed, in retrospect, scholars have critically described this perspective as ‘the
This book offers a radical rethink of family policy in the UK. Clem Henricson, the family policy expert, analyses in detail the major shift in the role of the state viz a viz personal relationships in recent years, with its aspirations to reduce child poverty, increase social mobility and deliver social cohesion. Brought in by New Labour and carried forward, albeit in diluted form, by the Coalition, Henricson asks whether this philosophy of social betterment through manipulating the parent-child relationship is appropriate for family policy. She challenges the thinking behind the expectation that you can change a highly unequal society through the family route. Instead the argument is made for a family policy with its own raison d’etre, free of other government agendas. A premium is set on the need to manage the multiple core tensions in families of affection, empathy and supportiveness on the one hand and aggression, deception and self interest on the other. A set of coherent support and control polices for family relations are developed which endorse this awareness and embrace a fundamental shift in perspective for future progressive governments.
REVIEW ARTICLE Transatlantic revolutions and the war of ideas Mark Garnett* Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK The study of the history of political ideas has been greatly enhanced in recent decades by the work of scholars who emphasise the importance of ‘context’. This approach has promoted more sophisticated analysis from anyone who hopes to enter the field, as well as drawing attention to previously neglected texts which are worthy of serious attention. However, texts can be read in a multiplicity of contexts
between jobs. Having a robust welfare state in place is absolutely essential, whether or not it accompanies a UBI regime. In its absence, we can have neither genuine equality of opportunity nor a satisfactory standard of social fairness. Support for the UBI has been driven, in part, by the possibility of having significant job losses resulting from the AI revolution and climate change. But the challenges we face are neither technological nor economic. Rather, they are political challenges, requiring political solutions. The threats of incessant growth in global
349 15 Will the ‘smart mobility’ revolution matter? Graham Parkhurst and Andrew Seedhouse ‘Smart Mobility’: the transport sector in transition? In essence, ‘smart mobility’ is the belief that by significantly increasing the application of computer science technologies in the transport sector, long-term aspirations for more efficient movement of people and goods, with fewer negative consequences, will finally be realised. In this vein, since 2010, there has been a steady stream of publications from global consultancy firms seeking at once to offer an
to the more utopian brand of technocratic writings). Moreover, Smyth was clearly recycling ideas expressed more eloquently by established intellectuals of his time, most notably those of Thorstein Veblen as we shall see. Nevertheless, Smyth’s vision of national industrial management carried through by a mobilization of engineers, technical experts and scientists does capture the essence of American technocratic thinking at the back end of the second industrial revolution, which the First World War to some extent epitomized and concluded, with a certain aplomb
