Colm O'Doherty: According to Dan O'Brien there is no relationship between inequality and law breaking (Irish Times 24/08/12). This bogus statement is grounded in the same kind of statistical modelling which economists relied upon to predict ‘soft landings’ for economies with sound ‘fundamentals’ . The predictive capability of economics here is based on a positivism which seeks generalizations which are independent of culture. For Dan O’Brien and other neo-liberal commentators the hubris of positivism is manifested as a fetishism of numbers, an illusion of precision and the donning of the status shield of science. As we now know the so called pragmatism of economics as trumpeted by a large technocratic mainstream was nothing more than a policy driven skate on the thin ice of casino capitalism.
There is more than a whiff of this neo-liberal policy agenda in Dan O'Brien’s promotion of a mechanistic relationship between objective conditions and human behaviour. There is no natural science of society, and of crime in particular. The perspective on social order which is espoused in this article is well known to us all : it is the ‘orthodox’, the ‘conventional’ the ‘taken for granted ‘ world carried by mass media and the establishment. Namely that society is a fundamentally rational and consensual arrangement where deviance and crime is seen as a marginal and minority category. The deviants and criminals are seen as different from the ‘ normal’ population and there is generalised agreement on what constitutes criminal behaviour.
However, in reality, during the boom years, when inequality between the bankers, speculators and property developers and the rest of the population spiralled, particular types of criminal behaviour flourished. Consider anti-social behaviour. The concept of anti-social behaviour which has been disseminated by the media and the establishment in recent years is focused on a whole range of behaviours such as begging, neighbourhood disturbance/nuisance, public drunkenness etc. It is fair to say that poor and socially excluded populations are portrayed as the culprits here and that cracking down on anti-social behaviours is viewed as an exercise in the creation of social order in such neighbourhoods. If we examine anti-social behaviour using an interpretative rather than a mechanistic and positivistic orthodoxy lens we will see that the fallout from the anti-social behaviour of the bankers, speculators and developers has major repercussions for everybody. Our health services are in crisis, our education system is under stress and the vulnerable are abandoned. So the figures and statistics used to advance the arguments in the piece are concealing the reality that as inequality has increased in the US, the UK here and in other highly marketised economies so has the incidence of serious white collar crime. During the boom years poverty decreased but the crimes of the wealthy – as we are now discovering- increased. Crime statistics do not reflect this increase.
Apart from the conceptual limitations of his arguments Dan O’Brien also takes some liberties with the available statistics. There is a large body of evidence showing a clear relationship between greater inequality and higher homicide rates –see Heisch and Pugh’s (1993) review and Wilkinson and Pickett’s (2006) review.
Showing posts with label colm o'doherty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label colm o'doherty. Show all posts
Wednesday, 29 August 2012
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Scale of inequality now a drag on our economy and well-being
Colm O'Doherty: The results from the Central Statistics Office Survey of Income and living Conditions 2010, released earlier this year, confirmed what most Irish people are acutely aware of – the gap between the top and bottom 20% of income earners is increasing. The well-off are getting richer compared to the rest of the population and are suffering little or no repercussions from the economic crash. Average income of the top 20% of earners was 5.5 greater than those in the lowest 20 per cent. This inequality ratio is up from 4.3 a year earlier.
Persistent and increasing inequality is a serious threat to both our economic prospects and our well-being. A new wave of research on the effects of inequality, growth and financial crisis all see inequality as a driver behind the unsustainable surge in household indebtedness which triggered the crash.
On the level of individuals, Joseph Stiglitz suggests that in the US people on lower incomes over-borrowed in order to maintain a rising standard of living in the face of stagnating real incomes. This borrowing, over time, became unsustainable and led to default and pressure on over-extended financial institutions such as Fanny Mae, precipitating the wider financial crash. A second set of theorists (Rajan, Fitoussi and Saraceno) argue that on the societal-level inequality is the driving force for policy choices which, in turn, lead to unsustainable household and governmental debt levels. In this scenario, neo-liberal economic policies use regulatory tools to facilitate low income households’ access to credit , particularly mortgages.
These policies encouraged low interest rates and financial deregulation to compensate for inadequate incomes. They also aided and abetted financial liberalisation and raising top incomes, seen as progressive policies by neo-liberals, through regressive taxation strategies. Policies such as these permeated the thinking of successive Fianna Fail coalition governments and, many people were convinced that that they represented a natural economic order. It appears that the current Government is also in thrall to these doctrines. While there is some overlap between these theoretical standpoints, they all clearly make valid links between inequality and the financial crash.
The consequences of inequality are also becoming clearer. Economic hardship, manifested as unemployment, wage reductions and income support cuts, is affecting all tiers of Irish society except those at the top who are becoming more and more adept at looking after themselves and their own. A recent report from the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 1.82 million adults, say they have less than 100 Euro a month spend after bills are paid. Poverty rates are on the rise with yearly increases in consistent poverty and at-risk–of-poverty rates being recorded by the CSO. Reductions in essential public services such as health and education, are weakening the social contract between citizens and the State.
The State is pursuing policies which openly discriminate in favour of the wealthy and against all other citizens. This policy direction is the road to economic and social ruin. While the left here appear not to have woken up to this reality – blaming the EU, the IMF and global capitalism for everything - world leaders in the US and France accept that government policy needs to be framed around re-distribution of wealth in order to balance the fiscal books and fulfil the social contract obligations of the State.
On the academic front, Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, who is recognised as an authoritative academic but not a firebrand, has pinpointed inequality, the closure of social mobility and diminishing social trust as threatening America’s economic future. The tax burden in Ireland, at 28% of GDP, is one of the lowest and most regressive in the EU. Sweden and Denmark and other Scandanavian countries have tax burdens of the order of 45.8 % and 48.2% respectively, and are not in the same economic disaster zone as us. Despite going against the economic orthodoxy we have been in thrall to for the past twenty years the Nordic region's tax policies have protected their social models, encouraging and realising more equal societies and avoiding the financial crash which is now inflicting terrible damage on the most vulnerable and weakest sections of our society.
The big question facing our Government now as it begins to frame its second budget is: will it continue to progress inequality and ramp up social and economic decline in the pursuit of measures which are widely discredited or will it put in place fair and equitable taxation measures which share the burden of economic and social renewal?
Persistent and increasing inequality is a serious threat to both our economic prospects and our well-being. A new wave of research on the effects of inequality, growth and financial crisis all see inequality as a driver behind the unsustainable surge in household indebtedness which triggered the crash.
On the level of individuals, Joseph Stiglitz suggests that in the US people on lower incomes over-borrowed in order to maintain a rising standard of living in the face of stagnating real incomes. This borrowing, over time, became unsustainable and led to default and pressure on over-extended financial institutions such as Fanny Mae, precipitating the wider financial crash. A second set of theorists (Rajan, Fitoussi and Saraceno) argue that on the societal-level inequality is the driving force for policy choices which, in turn, lead to unsustainable household and governmental debt levels. In this scenario, neo-liberal economic policies use regulatory tools to facilitate low income households’ access to credit , particularly mortgages.
These policies encouraged low interest rates and financial deregulation to compensate for inadequate incomes. They also aided and abetted financial liberalisation and raising top incomes, seen as progressive policies by neo-liberals, through regressive taxation strategies. Policies such as these permeated the thinking of successive Fianna Fail coalition governments and, many people were convinced that that they represented a natural economic order. It appears that the current Government is also in thrall to these doctrines. While there is some overlap between these theoretical standpoints, they all clearly make valid links between inequality and the financial crash.
The consequences of inequality are also becoming clearer. Economic hardship, manifested as unemployment, wage reductions and income support cuts, is affecting all tiers of Irish society except those at the top who are becoming more and more adept at looking after themselves and their own. A recent report from the Irish League of Credit Unions found that 1.82 million adults, say they have less than 100 Euro a month spend after bills are paid. Poverty rates are on the rise with yearly increases in consistent poverty and at-risk–of-poverty rates being recorded by the CSO. Reductions in essential public services such as health and education, are weakening the social contract between citizens and the State.
The State is pursuing policies which openly discriminate in favour of the wealthy and against all other citizens. This policy direction is the road to economic and social ruin. While the left here appear not to have woken up to this reality – blaming the EU, the IMF and global capitalism for everything - world leaders in the US and France accept that government policy needs to be framed around re-distribution of wealth in order to balance the fiscal books and fulfil the social contract obligations of the State.
On the academic front, Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, who is recognised as an authoritative academic but not a firebrand, has pinpointed inequality, the closure of social mobility and diminishing social trust as threatening America’s economic future. The tax burden in Ireland, at 28% of GDP, is one of the lowest and most regressive in the EU. Sweden and Denmark and other Scandanavian countries have tax burdens of the order of 45.8 % and 48.2% respectively, and are not in the same economic disaster zone as us. Despite going against the economic orthodoxy we have been in thrall to for the past twenty years the Nordic region's tax policies have protected their social models, encouraging and realising more equal societies and avoiding the financial crash which is now inflicting terrible damage on the most vulnerable and weakest sections of our society.
The big question facing our Government now as it begins to frame its second budget is: will it continue to progress inequality and ramp up social and economic decline in the pursuit of measures which are widely discredited or will it put in place fair and equitable taxation measures which share the burden of economic and social renewal?
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Our problem is not the EU - our problem is ourselves
Colm O'Doherty: Earlier this year, in Davos, Enda Kenny spoke about moral failure and its responsibility for our economic crash. He said that easy access to credit had spawned greed to a point where it just went out of control completely and ended with a spectacular crash. There was an immediate outcry in Ireland on foot of his comments and he was accused of playing the blame game. However, with the referendum on the fiscal treaty now being debated across the country, it is timely to ask some hard questions about ourselves – can we be trusted run our own affairs in a fair, just and moral way? If we are not externally regulated, do we run the risk of handing over our country to greedy business people and greedy politicians as we have repeatedly done over the past thirty years? Greedy capitalism and the inequalities it rests on, triggered the economic crash.
As Finnish academic Antti Kauppinen points out the sub-prime loans given out in the US to poor people, who because of historical injustices were unable to access mainstream credit, triggered the world wide crash. Inequality lit the fuse which started the meltdown in the US. Inequality in Ireland has been well documented by Combat Poverty, the Irish Anti-Poverty Network and the OECD. Our fiscal policies are the core problem here. The policies which spawned our economic crisis have their origins in Leinster House rather than Brussels. Regressive taxation policies which re-distributed income from the least well off to the middle and upper classes through tax breaks encouraged reckless property speculation. These policies have been repeatedly endorsed by the electorate over the past twenty years. The tax base has been narrowed to a point where we have an extremely low tax-to-GDP ratio. At 28.2% in 2009, the total tax-to-GDP ratio here was the third lowest in the EU and the second lowest in the euro area. The ratio in Denmark for the same period stood at 48.1%. It is no wonder that we are reliant on bail-outs from the EU to fund public services. Clearly the State cannot fund essential education, social protection, activation and health services on an income which is lower than that achieved in Slovakia and Bulgaria. While this ratio was on an upward trend between 2002 and 2006, it has decreased by four percentage points from 2006 to 2009.
As Antti Kauppinen, commenting on the layers of greed capitalism which were enshrined in our tax system, said in a recent address to the Policy Unit in TCD:
In Ireland, we know the ethos of greed reached the highest offices in the land . From an outsider’s perspective, the number of former Taoisceachs and ministers hauled in front of tribunals is comical. If the elected representatives of people use their position for personal enrichment at the expense of ordinary people, why would businessmen hold themselves to higher standards? As if personal example wasn’t enough, Ireland as a country has pursued its self-interest at the expense of others with its now sacrosanct low corporate tax rate.
So rather than scapegoating the EU for the inequalities which have been key to the inflation of our home-grown economic bubble, we now need their assistance in protecting us from ourselves. We need to raise our corporation tax to pay for our public services. We need to widen our tax base so that the high earners and wealthy members of Irish society pay their fair share. The path to follow is greater austerity for the rich. At present a person earning over 32,800 Euro enters the 41% top tax rate and is paying the same rate of tax as an individual earning multiples of their income. Structural inequalities in Irish society are patterned by the differential opportunities available to individuals to gain economic, social and cultural capital. In simple terms, the dice are loaded in favour of the well- off promoting their class interests through a tax system which takes no account of their favoured position in an unequal society. Their social contract is more important and is afforded a superior status - they cannot be required to shoulder a greater share of the financial burden resulting from our economic crash because this would cause them to flee abroad.
By increasing the tax revenues available to the State we can reduce our level of borrowing from the EU and the IMF. At the very least, if taxing the rich is not an option, then they should have to pay more for services and receive less in state support so that funds can be directed at the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society. These are direct actions which can be taken here and now by Irish citizens. It should be obvious to everybody that a myth that was used as a fig leaf for our Irish model of greedy capitalism - that American levels of tax (low) can produce Scandinavian levels of public services (high quality and expensive) - was just a myth. What is hard to understand is why anti-treaty voices on the left have decided that the enemy is the EU, when it is clearly our own brand of greedy capitalism which has forced austerity on the less well-off citizens of our state. It is not hard to understand why the 'no' campaigners on the right want to blame the EU and cut us loose from fiscal regulation. Libertas and other neo-liberal voices supporting unfettered and de regulated capitalism are opposed to the managed capitalism promoted by the EU. Sinn Fein’s implicit view that everything native is good and that everything foreign is bad is consistent but doesn’t square with the facts.
Citizens voting on the treaty need to seriously think about the damage caused to our society by home-grown taxation policies which have clearly favoured the well-off and re-distributed funding from public services to speculators. They need then to make links between our fiscal insolvency, the ongoing need for financial support from the EU and these inequitable and unsustainable taxation policies.
As Finnish academic Antti Kauppinen points out the sub-prime loans given out in the US to poor people, who because of historical injustices were unable to access mainstream credit, triggered the world wide crash. Inequality lit the fuse which started the meltdown in the US. Inequality in Ireland has been well documented by Combat Poverty, the Irish Anti-Poverty Network and the OECD. Our fiscal policies are the core problem here. The policies which spawned our economic crisis have their origins in Leinster House rather than Brussels. Regressive taxation policies which re-distributed income from the least well off to the middle and upper classes through tax breaks encouraged reckless property speculation. These policies have been repeatedly endorsed by the electorate over the past twenty years. The tax base has been narrowed to a point where we have an extremely low tax-to-GDP ratio. At 28.2% in 2009, the total tax-to-GDP ratio here was the third lowest in the EU and the second lowest in the euro area. The ratio in Denmark for the same period stood at 48.1%. It is no wonder that we are reliant on bail-outs from the EU to fund public services. Clearly the State cannot fund essential education, social protection, activation and health services on an income which is lower than that achieved in Slovakia and Bulgaria. While this ratio was on an upward trend between 2002 and 2006, it has decreased by four percentage points from 2006 to 2009.
As Antti Kauppinen, commenting on the layers of greed capitalism which were enshrined in our tax system, said in a recent address to the Policy Unit in TCD:
In Ireland, we know the ethos of greed reached the highest offices in the land . From an outsider’s perspective, the number of former Taoisceachs and ministers hauled in front of tribunals is comical. If the elected representatives of people use their position for personal enrichment at the expense of ordinary people, why would businessmen hold themselves to higher standards? As if personal example wasn’t enough, Ireland as a country has pursued its self-interest at the expense of others with its now sacrosanct low corporate tax rate.
So rather than scapegoating the EU for the inequalities which have been key to the inflation of our home-grown economic bubble, we now need their assistance in protecting us from ourselves. We need to raise our corporation tax to pay for our public services. We need to widen our tax base so that the high earners and wealthy members of Irish society pay their fair share. The path to follow is greater austerity for the rich. At present a person earning over 32,800 Euro enters the 41% top tax rate and is paying the same rate of tax as an individual earning multiples of their income. Structural inequalities in Irish society are patterned by the differential opportunities available to individuals to gain economic, social and cultural capital. In simple terms, the dice are loaded in favour of the well- off promoting their class interests through a tax system which takes no account of their favoured position in an unequal society. Their social contract is more important and is afforded a superior status - they cannot be required to shoulder a greater share of the financial burden resulting from our economic crash because this would cause them to flee abroad.
By increasing the tax revenues available to the State we can reduce our level of borrowing from the EU and the IMF. At the very least, if taxing the rich is not an option, then they should have to pay more for services and receive less in state support so that funds can be directed at the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society. These are direct actions which can be taken here and now by Irish citizens. It should be obvious to everybody that a myth that was used as a fig leaf for our Irish model of greedy capitalism - that American levels of tax (low) can produce Scandinavian levels of public services (high quality and expensive) - was just a myth. What is hard to understand is why anti-treaty voices on the left have decided that the enemy is the EU, when it is clearly our own brand of greedy capitalism which has forced austerity on the less well-off citizens of our state. It is not hard to understand why the 'no' campaigners on the right want to blame the EU and cut us loose from fiscal regulation. Libertas and other neo-liberal voices supporting unfettered and de regulated capitalism are opposed to the managed capitalism promoted by the EU. Sinn Fein’s implicit view that everything native is good and that everything foreign is bad is consistent but doesn’t square with the facts.
Citizens voting on the treaty need to seriously think about the damage caused to our society by home-grown taxation policies which have clearly favoured the well-off and re-distributed funding from public services to speculators. They need then to make links between our fiscal insolvency, the ongoing need for financial support from the EU and these inequitable and unsustainable taxation policies.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Creating a smart society
Colm O'Doherty: The grade inflation in the formal education system controversy failed to get to grips with the critical issue around what constitutes knowledge and more importantly what is it for. The dominant thinking on education and knowledge infrastructure is that formal education is a commodity which generates economic growth through the market place. Our education system is now in thrall to a global phenomenon-building knowledge capital.
Economists define capital as that which has been invested. In the past a different type of investment generated economic growth. Investment of financial assets in physical capital - plant buildings and machinery- has been superseded by investment in human capital –education and training. Resources committed by governments or organizations or individuals to education and training are treated as investments within a capitalistic framework.
Formal education is increasingly viewed as a vehicle for investment , yielding individual wealth creation opportunities rather than social and cultural goods. Irish third level institutions are inordinately proud of the academic capitalism which not only informs their research strategies but their teaching and learning methodologies as well. Innovation and technology parks, enterprise centres, entrepreneurial boot camps and other commercialised forms of knowledge infrastructure rule the roost. The expansionist agenda of the marketeers is warmly embraced by third level institutions. Commerce has succeeded in capturing higher education by replacing educators with managers.
The essence of Enlightenment thinking is that knowledge is power but within our groves of academe the inverse relation also holds - power is knowledge. Power defines not only a certain conception of reality but all aspects of reality – physical, economic, social and environmental. Managerial power is based on ideas which have been developed chiefly in the worlds of manufacturing and commerce. There is no evidence that this approach to formal education produces smart citizens or more importantly a smart society. Students' “learning” is managed on behalf of the commercial sector by administratively tasked operatives. This process results in intellectual mediocrity rather than innovation, or enterprise or authentic learning.
Real learning is, however, taking place outside of the formal education system. Non formal and informal learning gained through volunteering is, according to a recent EU Report, Volunteering in the E.U., promoting social and economic cohesion. The Report provides evidence that, right across Europe, volunteering is a particularly powerful means to develop citizens commitment to their society and to its political life. Not only does volunteering make a direct contribution to our economy (between 1% and 2% of GDP), but it provides education and training opportunities that deliver significant added benefits to volunteer , local communities and society in general. Volunteer work provides important employment training and a pathway into the labour force. It is also a useful way for young people to test out potential careers and therefore make an informed choice about future education and training pathways.
There is now a growing body of evidence indicating that well-being is better correlated with equality, health, work satisfaction and positive relationships than with marginal gains in income. Our crash has revealed the folly of relying on financial markets to steer and supply both economic and social development. In the education sector, the ascendancy of an economic or business model has contributed to a fragile and brittle culture of competitive individualism where what counts as knowledge is determined by economic vicissitudes. The only way to rescue this situation is through a rehabilitation of the belief in education as an expression of collective action for the benefits of interdependence and generalised wellbeing.
The state needs to discontinue its present educational policy of using third level institutions as a funding conduit for opportunist capitalism. This is not smart behaviour. On the other hand, Volunteering in the EU provides us with a framework for post crash learning based on a politics of common interest. The E.U. Report calls for the non formal and informal learning accruing from volunteering to be taken into account when measuring the well-being and the wealth of Member States. Volunteering provides a platform for pursuing both individual and collective well- being and making them mutually supportive.
It is somewhat ironic, given the evidence of the value of volunteering to the development of a smart society, that the government is disbanding 180 voluntary management boards in the Community Development Programme. An unintended consequence of our formal educational policy is the creation of a disconnect between competitive individualism and collective life. This damages the community and trust which are vital to the smooth running of an economy. A new educational agenda incorporating the values of non formal and informal learning is a better bet for post crash civic renewal and sustainable improvement in levels of collective well-being than the boom and bust possessive individualism of the so called smart economy.
Economists define capital as that which has been invested. In the past a different type of investment generated economic growth. Investment of financial assets in physical capital - plant buildings and machinery- has been superseded by investment in human capital –education and training. Resources committed by governments or organizations or individuals to education and training are treated as investments within a capitalistic framework.
Formal education is increasingly viewed as a vehicle for investment , yielding individual wealth creation opportunities rather than social and cultural goods. Irish third level institutions are inordinately proud of the academic capitalism which not only informs their research strategies but their teaching and learning methodologies as well. Innovation and technology parks, enterprise centres, entrepreneurial boot camps and other commercialised forms of knowledge infrastructure rule the roost. The expansionist agenda of the marketeers is warmly embraced by third level institutions. Commerce has succeeded in capturing higher education by replacing educators with managers.
The essence of Enlightenment thinking is that knowledge is power but within our groves of academe the inverse relation also holds - power is knowledge. Power defines not only a certain conception of reality but all aspects of reality – physical, economic, social and environmental. Managerial power is based on ideas which have been developed chiefly in the worlds of manufacturing and commerce. There is no evidence that this approach to formal education produces smart citizens or more importantly a smart society. Students' “learning” is managed on behalf of the commercial sector by administratively tasked operatives. This process results in intellectual mediocrity rather than innovation, or enterprise or authentic learning.
Real learning is, however, taking place outside of the formal education system. Non formal and informal learning gained through volunteering is, according to a recent EU Report, Volunteering in the E.U., promoting social and economic cohesion. The Report provides evidence that, right across Europe, volunteering is a particularly powerful means to develop citizens commitment to their society and to its political life. Not only does volunteering make a direct contribution to our economy (between 1% and 2% of GDP), but it provides education and training opportunities that deliver significant added benefits to volunteer , local communities and society in general. Volunteer work provides important employment training and a pathway into the labour force. It is also a useful way for young people to test out potential careers and therefore make an informed choice about future education and training pathways.
There is now a growing body of evidence indicating that well-being is better correlated with equality, health, work satisfaction and positive relationships than with marginal gains in income. Our crash has revealed the folly of relying on financial markets to steer and supply both economic and social development. In the education sector, the ascendancy of an economic or business model has contributed to a fragile and brittle culture of competitive individualism where what counts as knowledge is determined by economic vicissitudes. The only way to rescue this situation is through a rehabilitation of the belief in education as an expression of collective action for the benefits of interdependence and generalised wellbeing.
The state needs to discontinue its present educational policy of using third level institutions as a funding conduit for opportunist capitalism. This is not smart behaviour. On the other hand, Volunteering in the EU provides us with a framework for post crash learning based on a politics of common interest. The E.U. Report calls for the non formal and informal learning accruing from volunteering to be taken into account when measuring the well-being and the wealth of Member States. Volunteering provides a platform for pursuing both individual and collective well- being and making them mutually supportive.
It is somewhat ironic, given the evidence of the value of volunteering to the development of a smart society, that the government is disbanding 180 voluntary management boards in the Community Development Programme. An unintended consequence of our formal educational policy is the creation of a disconnect between competitive individualism and collective life. This damages the community and trust which are vital to the smooth running of an economy. A new educational agenda incorporating the values of non formal and informal learning is a better bet for post crash civic renewal and sustainable improvement in levels of collective well-being than the boom and bust possessive individualism of the so called smart economy.
Tuesday, 9 February 2010
A disastrous approach to disaster capitalism
Colm O'Doherty: The captivation of our Fianna Fail-led government by the Milton Friedman /Chicago School policy trinity of privatization, government deregulation and reduced social spending is critically harming our well-being. Our economic crisis has allowed free marketeers to instigate orchestrated raids on the public sphere. The crisis opportunism of disaster capitalism is activated through networks of rule which underpin the governance strategies facilitating our so- called recovery. Economic ideology masquerading as technical and uncontentious adjustments has been engaged to finesse this asymmetrical relationship between power and rationality - power produces rationality and rationality produces power, but power has the upper hand in the dynamic and overlapping relationship between the two.
The hallmark of disaster capitalism - economic shock treatment - is manifested through coercive policies which decouple individual well-being from social well-being, and privilege private gain over common good. The atmosphere of crisis generated by the failed policies of successive Fianna Fail-led administrations has paved the way for an economic settlement which overrules the expressed wishes of citizens and has handed the country over to economic technocrats. As Naomi Klein puts it in the Shock Doctrine (2007,140,) “If an economic crisis hits and is severe enough – a currency meltdown , a market crash, a major recession –it blows everything else out of the water , and leaders are liberated to do whatever is necessary (or said to be necessary) in the name of responding to a national emergency”.
Thus, our recession has provided those economic zealots in thrall to the fundamentalist doctrine (Capitalism and Freedom ,1962) of Milton Friedman with an opportunity to reduce all regulatory obstacles to profitmaking , sell off all public assets , cut back funding of social programmes and keep taxes low. The dominance of this ideological vision is strongly reflected in the competiveness, securitisation and flexibility discourses filling the airwaves.
Fianna Fail and their coalition partners have articulated these political rationalities in a populist idiom - the idiom of frontier politics. Here, politics finds expression through economic sequestration of social citizenship. Abolition of social rights is viewed as a pragmatic “structural adjustment”, and the task of politicians is to follow the money from crisis to crisis. Opposition to frontier politics within the political system is finite, as Fine Gael is also in thrall to economic fundamentalism and Labour lack political muscle. Civil society is the only real opposition, and civil society in Ireland has been shaped and nurtured by the very politicians it now has to challenge and oppose. The capacity of civil society to act as a counterweight to the economic shock therapy now being administered has been undermined by the cut backs and closures imposed on community development/family support projects, and by the tightening of revenue streams for voluntary service providers.
The trade unions are the only remaining force in civil society capable of challenging the Government’s disaster capitalism doctrine, as the Catholic Church’s power has been compromised. However, the trade unions are now engaged in a form of action which is focused on some of the symptoms of our political malaise rather than its root cause. Industrial action which, in the main, impacts on fellow citizens will further weaken civil society and plays into the hands of the Government. What is needed here is a co-ordinated, strategic political campaign organized and directed by the trade union movement targeting Fianna Fail and their coalition partners. Solving our political crisis by confronting a Government who are bent on protecting the wealthy by impoverishing large sections of the population should, logically, be the first step in reforming our ailing economy.
The hallmark of disaster capitalism - economic shock treatment - is manifested through coercive policies which decouple individual well-being from social well-being, and privilege private gain over common good. The atmosphere of crisis generated by the failed policies of successive Fianna Fail-led administrations has paved the way for an economic settlement which overrules the expressed wishes of citizens and has handed the country over to economic technocrats. As Naomi Klein puts it in the Shock Doctrine (2007,140,) “If an economic crisis hits and is severe enough – a currency meltdown , a market crash, a major recession –it blows everything else out of the water , and leaders are liberated to do whatever is necessary (or said to be necessary) in the name of responding to a national emergency”.
Thus, our recession has provided those economic zealots in thrall to the fundamentalist doctrine (Capitalism and Freedom ,1962) of Milton Friedman with an opportunity to reduce all regulatory obstacles to profitmaking , sell off all public assets , cut back funding of social programmes and keep taxes low. The dominance of this ideological vision is strongly reflected in the competiveness, securitisation and flexibility discourses filling the airwaves.
Fianna Fail and their coalition partners have articulated these political rationalities in a populist idiom - the idiom of frontier politics. Here, politics finds expression through economic sequestration of social citizenship. Abolition of social rights is viewed as a pragmatic “structural adjustment”, and the task of politicians is to follow the money from crisis to crisis. Opposition to frontier politics within the political system is finite, as Fine Gael is also in thrall to economic fundamentalism and Labour lack political muscle. Civil society is the only real opposition, and civil society in Ireland has been shaped and nurtured by the very politicians it now has to challenge and oppose. The capacity of civil society to act as a counterweight to the economic shock therapy now being administered has been undermined by the cut backs and closures imposed on community development/family support projects, and by the tightening of revenue streams for voluntary service providers.
The trade unions are the only remaining force in civil society capable of challenging the Government’s disaster capitalism doctrine, as the Catholic Church’s power has been compromised. However, the trade unions are now engaged in a form of action which is focused on some of the symptoms of our political malaise rather than its root cause. Industrial action which, in the main, impacts on fellow citizens will further weaken civil society and plays into the hands of the Government. What is needed here is a co-ordinated, strategic political campaign organized and directed by the trade union movement targeting Fianna Fail and their coalition partners. Solving our political crisis by confronting a Government who are bent on protecting the wealthy by impoverishing large sections of the population should, logically, be the first step in reforming our ailing economy.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Hunter commentators and the vanity of ignorance
Colm O'Doherty: It’s true, every cloud has a silver lining. The ongoing political crisis - stemming from the failure of politicians to increase social well-being in a period of economic growth and then reducing the well–being of vulnerable groups - creates an opportunity for hunter commentators in the media to “kill” those who stand in the way of the hunters.
As Bauman points out in Liquid Times (2008), hunters are unlike gardeners, not interested in social order or social progress. They are the economistas whose sole task is another kill or financial coup big enough to fill their game bags to capacity. It is not their duty or responsibility to make sure that the forest or society is looked after and replenished. In fact, as one of their ilk declared yesterday in the Irish Times, it’s not their responsibility to know anything about how society works – it’s not her worry.
Sarah Carey in her piece yesterday paraded her ignorance on how the state is run and declared that it doesn’t matter who is at fault in creating our financial destruction, as long (the implication is) as she can continue to gather a few trophies for herself. Yesterday the trophy heads belonged to the people who provide us with electricity. Her piece was titled Sorry boys, it’s your turn to share the pain now. Her message is clear – we should all become hunters now – because the alternative is relegation to the ranks of the game, i.e those on social welfare.
The culture of hunting in our society is very strong, and commentators receive their licence to hunt from a media/ political establishment that likes to hunt in packs. It stands to reason that, in a world populated mostly by hunters, ignorance of the consequences or realities of individual actions becomes a source of pride or vanity. The 'I don’t know what happened, I only want it fixed' attitude is an abdication of responsibility and a badge of honour for hunters. Yes, hunters do vote, but presumably they vote without taking any responsibility for how things pan out. Through their hunter-commentator platforms they provide perfect cover for the politicians who have run the country into the ground.
As Bauman points out in Liquid Times (2008), hunters are unlike gardeners, not interested in social order or social progress. They are the economistas whose sole task is another kill or financial coup big enough to fill their game bags to capacity. It is not their duty or responsibility to make sure that the forest or society is looked after and replenished. In fact, as one of their ilk declared yesterday in the Irish Times, it’s not their responsibility to know anything about how society works – it’s not her worry.
Sarah Carey in her piece yesterday paraded her ignorance on how the state is run and declared that it doesn’t matter who is at fault in creating our financial destruction, as long (the implication is) as she can continue to gather a few trophies for herself. Yesterday the trophy heads belonged to the people who provide us with electricity. Her piece was titled Sorry boys, it’s your turn to share the pain now. Her message is clear – we should all become hunters now – because the alternative is relegation to the ranks of the game, i.e those on social welfare.
The culture of hunting in our society is very strong, and commentators receive their licence to hunt from a media/ political establishment that likes to hunt in packs. It stands to reason that, in a world populated mostly by hunters, ignorance of the consequences or realities of individual actions becomes a source of pride or vanity. The 'I don’t know what happened, I only want it fixed' attitude is an abdication of responsibility and a badge of honour for hunters. Yes, hunters do vote, but presumably they vote without taking any responsibility for how things pan out. Through their hunter-commentator platforms they provide perfect cover for the politicians who have run the country into the ground.
Friday, 4 December 2009
Shopping Outside the Box
Colm O'Doherty: Last week the Irish Times carried two stories which when examined together provide an instructive commentary on contemporary Irish citizenship. On November 25th (the day after the Public Sector strike) we were informed by the Times that Hordes of Southern Shoppers had invaded (sic) Newry, and on the 28th November we learned that Up to 6000 Irish investors were wooed (sic) by the desert state of Dubai.
The Newry story was heavily freighted with images of irresponsible citizens (hordes, invading), lacking in patriotism, engaging in abnormal and un-natural activities. The tone of the Dubai story was measured and represented the investors as victims – kids in a sweet shop, innocents abroad.
The bad shoppers in Newry were represented as amoral deviants – refusing to play by the rules. What these two stories highlight is the manner in which citizenship is now defined. An understanding of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is essential to this analysis. Maintaining power by persuading people that dominant attitudes are common sense is the hallmark of governing citizens. So shopping in Dubai for personal benefit – to the tune of approximately 600 million Euro - is legitimate and patriotic, while shopping in Newry for basic items such as food and consumer durables is a betrayal and unpatriotic.
Irish entitled citizens – bankers, investors, entrepreneurs - are encouraged to shop for property across the globe, but Newry is off limits to citizen consumers, particularly the treasonous public sector who dared to take industrial action and shop outside the state. There is clearly a political agenda here. and it is really worrying that the Irish Times, in its biased reporting, appears to be complicit in this manufactured moral panic.
In this regard the Times is supporting the dominant economic classes who harness the state’s autonomous power but are not subordinated to it. This alliance allows them to operate freely within the Irish state and between states. Meanwhile, the consumer class are disciplined for their moral treason in venturing beyond their compliant worker roles and legitimate designated shopping perimeters.
The Newry story was heavily freighted with images of irresponsible citizens (hordes, invading), lacking in patriotism, engaging in abnormal and un-natural activities. The tone of the Dubai story was measured and represented the investors as victims – kids in a sweet shop, innocents abroad.
The bad shoppers in Newry were represented as amoral deviants – refusing to play by the rules. What these two stories highlight is the manner in which citizenship is now defined. An understanding of Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is essential to this analysis. Maintaining power by persuading people that dominant attitudes are common sense is the hallmark of governing citizens. So shopping in Dubai for personal benefit – to the tune of approximately 600 million Euro - is legitimate and patriotic, while shopping in Newry for basic items such as food and consumer durables is a betrayal and unpatriotic.
Irish entitled citizens – bankers, investors, entrepreneurs - are encouraged to shop for property across the globe, but Newry is off limits to citizen consumers, particularly the treasonous public sector who dared to take industrial action and shop outside the state. There is clearly a political agenda here. and it is really worrying that the Irish Times, in its biased reporting, appears to be complicit in this manufactured moral panic.
In this regard the Times is supporting the dominant economic classes who harness the state’s autonomous power but are not subordinated to it. This alliance allows them to operate freely within the Irish state and between states. Meanwhile, the consumer class are disciplined for their moral treason in venturing beyond their compliant worker roles and legitimate designated shopping perimeters.
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
The Fetishists of Farmleigh
Colm O'Doherty: The conceit at the heart of the Global Economic Forum at Farmleigh was that it lacked the will and resolve to make any alternative to "more of the same"realistic. It is hardly surprising that it elevated "celebrity crisis management"over a genuine inquiry into what Irish citizens want from capitalism.Our current political crisis has been aggravated by economic growth which binged on consumer credit.
Advice from rich entrepreneurs only serves to validate a complacent self-serving worldview where growth for its own sake without any judgement of its wider value in society is promoted.There is a general awareness amongst most thinking people that this recession was triggered,to a large degree,by profligate consumerism-and the mountain of debt that accompanied it.
Farmleigh should have been an opportunity,therefore,to consider the case for a less consumer-oriented society. Instead of fetishising money-capital growth -"Ireland needs to monetise its culture businessman Dermot Desmond told the conference"(Irish Tines, 21/09/09)-we should be thinking about whether we want less consumption and more and better public services. Ironically one of the key note speakers, Dr.Craig Barrett, former head of Intel, did argue for more investment in a public service, education, but only so that it could be the lackey of the self-serving growth for growth's sake merchants.In order for a real debate to have taken place on what kind of ireland we want to live in the Forum needed the participation of social scientists from disciplines other than the dismal science of economics.
The social sciences can and should contribute to a greater understanding of the workings of our society and the dynamics of Irish social life. In so doing, they provide us with a mirror upon which we can gaze in order to understand not only what we have been and what we are now, but to inform ideas about what we might become.
Economists are not only incapable of this - they reduce everything to crude instruments of value - but they break the cardinal rule of social scientists by being prescriptive at every turn. They do this continually because they assume that they can predict human behaviour with certainty, ignoring the fact that a necessary condition of human freedom is the ability to have acted otherwise and to imagine and practice different ways of organising societies and living together.
Advice from rich entrepreneurs only serves to validate a complacent self-serving worldview where growth for its own sake without any judgement of its wider value in society is promoted.There is a general awareness amongst most thinking people that this recession was triggered,to a large degree,by profligate consumerism-and the mountain of debt that accompanied it.
Farmleigh should have been an opportunity,therefore,to consider the case for a less consumer-oriented society. Instead of fetishising money-capital growth -"Ireland needs to monetise its culture businessman Dermot Desmond told the conference"(Irish Tines, 21/09/09)-we should be thinking about whether we want less consumption and more and better public services. Ironically one of the key note speakers, Dr.Craig Barrett, former head of Intel, did argue for more investment in a public service, education, but only so that it could be the lackey of the self-serving growth for growth's sake merchants.In order for a real debate to have taken place on what kind of ireland we want to live in the Forum needed the participation of social scientists from disciplines other than the dismal science of economics.
The social sciences can and should contribute to a greater understanding of the workings of our society and the dynamics of Irish social life. In so doing, they provide us with a mirror upon which we can gaze in order to understand not only what we have been and what we are now, but to inform ideas about what we might become.
Economists are not only incapable of this - they reduce everything to crude instruments of value - but they break the cardinal rule of social scientists by being prescriptive at every turn. They do this continually because they assume that they can predict human behaviour with certainty, ignoring the fact that a necessary condition of human freedom is the ability to have acted otherwise and to imagine and practice different ways of organising societies and living together.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Commission on Taxation Report Another Indicator of Political Crisis
Colm O'Doherty: It would be naive to think that a Commission on Taxation composed of political insiders and handcuffed to the taxation equivalent of the status quo – keeping the overall tax burden low - would reverse the regressive taxation policies which have played such a big part in destabilizing our economy. My limited perusal of Part 1 of the Commission on Taxation Report – Executive Summary and List of Recommendations - gives me no reason to doubt my own instincts on the direction taken by the commission. The taxation policies recommended here are based on the presumption that “lower tax rates on a broad base are better than higher rates on a narrow base" because "having a broad tax base allows tax revenue to be raised from a wider range of sources and enables rates of tax to be kept low”(Commission On Taxation, 2009;2).
Broadening out the tax base means taxing those on social welfare, taxing child benefit, a water tax, a property tax and a fossil fuel (carbon) tax. Broadly speaking, these recommendations strongly reinforce existing levels of income inequality. These are essentially “social taxes” – taxes on individuals' participation in society - and they bear as heavily on those with average or below average incomes as they do on the wealthy. Their re-distributive impact will be in line with existing arrangements, i.e transferring income from the least well off to the better off. Complying with its “light touch, hands of the wealthy" imperative, the Report prioritises economic rather than social integration. Social integration is a function of the labour market. As a social policy instrument the Report favours the free movement of capital (low corporation tax) and promotes the interests of the economic elite (no wealth taxes). It is at its core a market–making, not a market-correcting social policy.
In short, it is further evidence of a government in deep denial of the reality it has unleashed on the majority of its citizens. So where does the retreat of the state from the function – promoting the wellbeing of its citizens- on which it claims its legitimacy leave us? This Report further erodes the social foundations of social solidarity and adds to our ongoing political crisis.
Broadening out the tax base means taxing those on social welfare, taxing child benefit, a water tax, a property tax and a fossil fuel (carbon) tax. Broadly speaking, these recommendations strongly reinforce existing levels of income inequality. These are essentially “social taxes” – taxes on individuals' participation in society - and they bear as heavily on those with average or below average incomes as they do on the wealthy. Their re-distributive impact will be in line with existing arrangements, i.e transferring income from the least well off to the better off. Complying with its “light touch, hands of the wealthy" imperative, the Report prioritises economic rather than social integration. Social integration is a function of the labour market. As a social policy instrument the Report favours the free movement of capital (low corporation tax) and promotes the interests of the economic elite (no wealth taxes). It is at its core a market–making, not a market-correcting social policy.
In short, it is further evidence of a government in deep denial of the reality it has unleashed on the majority of its citizens. So where does the retreat of the state from the function – promoting the wellbeing of its citizens- on which it claims its legitimacy leave us? This Report further erodes the social foundations of social solidarity and adds to our ongoing political crisis.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Creating a Truly Democratic Culture
Colm O'Doherty: Michael D. Higgins article in the Irish Times on Saturday sought to engage with the real issue facing Irish people – “what sort of society we wish to create”. He takes issue with the essentialism of the economic model position, and argues that its dominant ideas have infiltrated our thoughts as common sense when they make no sense at all.
If we search behind current political statements and policy debates, we are confronted with a culture of compliance and a misleading active citizenship discourse. Our broken economy has generated a financial crisis which is being played out in the media, but the continuing malfunctioning of our political system is not being discussed to the same degree. What is lacking are clear policy alternatives to the imposition of a market logic onto political processes.
There is no debate and discussion taking place in any forum on what alternative forms of social relations might be substituted for economic ones. A friend of mine, commenting on the political culture of compliance in this society, wondered if Ireland had in any way profited from the Enlightenment, as most people still believed in the divine right of a certain political party to reign. Within our culture of compliance, the government is pre-occupied with altering the behaviour of citizens rather than vice versa. The main development during the life of successive governments has been to instrumentalise citizens, reducing politics to the achievement of goals established not by people themselves, but by a small governing elite – speculators, builders, bankers – who believe they know best. Civil society has been mobilised in support of this political agenda. Successive governments have, under the guise of supporting its independent role, been intent on influencing and controlling it, and using community and voluntary organizations as deliverers of services. Over the past decade, the state has not only become more active in controlling its citizens, but it has also been asking more of them. To do this it has recourse to new governance strategies in which self-regulation of conduct becomes a cornerstone of social order. The best basis for social order is then realised through self-responsible individual citizens, who are competent free market actors, who compete, work, save and consume in pursuit of their own interests.
The services provided by community and voluntary groups are regarded as goods and are consumed by customers. Those who seek to uphold the rights of an entitled citizenship through purposeful collectivism are labelled unpatriotic. It is of the gravest concern that the illusory nature of economic growth, based on credit,house price inflation and commercial service expansion, is not disrupting the longstanding managerial politics based on a culture of compliance. The divide-and-rule policy stratagems of this and previous governments are underwritten by the iron law of the economic model, which is that markets and trade only function through the promotion of a spurious meritocracy. A cult of success which dresses up selfishness as socially desirable esteems those with “entrepreneurial skills”, and the “unproductive” are deemed to be without merit unless they adapt their behaviours to service the economic good and become self-actualizing citizens. What one can do in economic terms, and what one can offer, become more important than relational skills which contribute to the interpersonal economy and increase wellbeing.
Real active citizenship is urgently needed to challenge this culture of compliance supporting the political status quo. An active citizenship not just about learning the rules of the game and how to participate within existing models and structures, but encompassing active learning for political literacy and empowerment.
If we search behind current political statements and policy debates, we are confronted with a culture of compliance and a misleading active citizenship discourse. Our broken economy has generated a financial crisis which is being played out in the media, but the continuing malfunctioning of our political system is not being discussed to the same degree. What is lacking are clear policy alternatives to the imposition of a market logic onto political processes.
There is no debate and discussion taking place in any forum on what alternative forms of social relations might be substituted for economic ones. A friend of mine, commenting on the political culture of compliance in this society, wondered if Ireland had in any way profited from the Enlightenment, as most people still believed in the divine right of a certain political party to reign. Within our culture of compliance, the government is pre-occupied with altering the behaviour of citizens rather than vice versa. The main development during the life of successive governments has been to instrumentalise citizens, reducing politics to the achievement of goals established not by people themselves, but by a small governing elite – speculators, builders, bankers – who believe they know best. Civil society has been mobilised in support of this political agenda. Successive governments have, under the guise of supporting its independent role, been intent on influencing and controlling it, and using community and voluntary organizations as deliverers of services. Over the past decade, the state has not only become more active in controlling its citizens, but it has also been asking more of them. To do this it has recourse to new governance strategies in which self-regulation of conduct becomes a cornerstone of social order. The best basis for social order is then realised through self-responsible individual citizens, who are competent free market actors, who compete, work, save and consume in pursuit of their own interests.
The services provided by community and voluntary groups are regarded as goods and are consumed by customers. Those who seek to uphold the rights of an entitled citizenship through purposeful collectivism are labelled unpatriotic. It is of the gravest concern that the illusory nature of economic growth, based on credit,house price inflation and commercial service expansion, is not disrupting the longstanding managerial politics based on a culture of compliance. The divide-and-rule policy stratagems of this and previous governments are underwritten by the iron law of the economic model, which is that markets and trade only function through the promotion of a spurious meritocracy. A cult of success which dresses up selfishness as socially desirable esteems those with “entrepreneurial skills”, and the “unproductive” are deemed to be without merit unless they adapt their behaviours to service the economic good and become self-actualizing citizens. What one can do in economic terms, and what one can offer, become more important than relational skills which contribute to the interpersonal economy and increase wellbeing.
Real active citizenship is urgently needed to challenge this culture of compliance supporting the political status quo. An active citizenship not just about learning the rules of the game and how to participate within existing models and structures, but encompassing active learning for political literacy and empowerment.
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Voluntary activity and active citizenship: latest CSO figures
Colm O'Doherty: The 'message' that Irish Times Social Affairs Correspondent Carl O’Brien has taken from the recent CSO Report on Community Involvement and Social Networks 2006 – “community spirit is alive and well” (Saturday 1st August, 2009) – is overly simplistic. While the CSO Report does provide us with some useful statistics, we should be careful not to read too much into them. Indeed, it can be argued that the CSO Report reveals that in Ireland, as in the UK and Australia (Home Office, 2001; Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006), voluntary activity is largely the preserve of well-educated, middle aged, middle class men and women. What we can therefore take from this Report is that some form of 'community spirit' appears to exist within specific demographic sections of Irish society.
Three major limitations of the Report are that it does not contextualize its data:
• It does not provide us with a social policy context or compass within which we can situate these statistics.
• There is no “quality context” within which the quality of people’s social networks or their social value is analysed.
• The “motivation context” is absent.
It is misleading. without an appropriate social policy analysis setting out the unique trajectory of Irish voluntary activity. to draw any conclusions from these statistics. Voluntary activity is an important social asset in Ireland , the UK and Australia. In all three countries, it is increasingly viewed as a mechanism for social inclusion, civic engagement and the promotion of social cohesion. In the UK and Australi,a voluntary and mutual aid societies developed in the context of social need triggered by urbanization and industrialization and the associated breakdown of traditional local forms of welfare provision. Voluntary structures and endeavours were unevenly distributed, and services were often restricted to certain identified populations.
While nation states such as Australia and the UK were prepared to guarantee citizen welfare through the development of state welfare services, the Irish state – a weak state – continued to rely on the voluntary sector to provide such services. The weakness of the Irish state – a consequence of the Catholic theory of subsidiarity and civil war politics – led to the growth of voluntary action based on charity. Within Ireland’s uneven welfare pluralist society, the voluntary and community sector has, in many instances, been the sole provider of care.
Under this policy arrangement, volunteers are more focused on fundraising for basic equipment for primary schools and hospitals, and are less engaged in initiating and supporting activities which generate positive social change. Despite the rhetoric of “active citizenship” contained in the Taskforce on Active Citizenship Report (2007) and a succession of policy documents committing the state to supporting a vibrant community and voluntary sector, a great deal of voluntary effort has been expended on a “finger in the dyke” effort to plug the gaps in the state’s social protection frameworks.
The quality of voluntary effort is glossed over in the CSO Report and the Irish Times article.
Respondents to the QNHS (Quarterly National Household Survey) were asked if they had been actively involved in voluntary or community groups in the previous twelve months. Active involvement was defined as attending meetings, being a committee member, or taking responsibility for some activity, but it specifically excluded attendance at mass or church services.
Overall active involvement in voluntary and community groups was reported by 28% of persons aged 15 years and over. Sports groups were most frequently reported (11%), while the least frequently reported form of group involvement was involvement in a political group (1%). (CSO Report, 2009:8)
We should be perturbed about the very low level of active citizenship which this headline statistic reveals, and we should also recognise that there are qualitative differences between voluntary effort focused on hard-to-reach groups ( marginalized young people, immigrants, socially excluded communities, the disabled) and voluntary work with large scale mainstream semi-commercialised bodies (sporting bodies, artistic and cultural organizations). Participation in mainstream cultural/recreational voluntary activities is attractive because it boosts credentialed human capital levels (thereby enhancing career prospects) through social and leisure networks. This type of volunteering, as O’Brien points out, is growing as unemployment levels increase and is associated with the “project of the self”. This trend in volunteering is reflected in, and perhaps related to, an increase in individualism in countries with some shared cultural characteristics such as Australia, the UK and Ireland. An individualism framed around personal values, lifestyles and a self-interested engagement with volunteering – a “polishing of your CV” opportunity. In this regard volunteering becomes less of a social contract creating social capital, and more of a consumer choice underpinning the formation of human capital.
The CSO Report tells us that certain sections of society (older people on their own, insecure tenants, rural dwellers, the unemployed, non-Irish nationals, the less educated, people with disabilities, individuals with a poor health status) have low levels of participation in civic activities, and consequently low levels of social capital. The Government is responsible for developing policy and practice frameworks which ensure that volunteering is not primarily a project of the self, with little benefit for others, and that it is a real force for social inclusion and social cohesion. In the face of the McCarthy Report’s recommendations that we scrap the Family Support Agency, the Community Development Programme and the Active Citizenship Office, the future development of volunteers, as collective citizens who are contributing to the development of social capital through contact and trust-making in their different neighbourhood and community structures, looks bleak.
My final point is that we need to fund and engage in ongoing medium-term, fine-grained, qualitative research into social network and community activities, and their contribution to social capital formation, if we are to increase our understanding of voluntary activity in a meaningful fashion.
Three major limitations of the Report are that it does not contextualize its data:
• It does not provide us with a social policy context or compass within which we can situate these statistics.
• There is no “quality context” within which the quality of people’s social networks or their social value is analysed.
• The “motivation context” is absent.
It is misleading. without an appropriate social policy analysis setting out the unique trajectory of Irish voluntary activity. to draw any conclusions from these statistics. Voluntary activity is an important social asset in Ireland , the UK and Australia. In all three countries, it is increasingly viewed as a mechanism for social inclusion, civic engagement and the promotion of social cohesion. In the UK and Australi,a voluntary and mutual aid societies developed in the context of social need triggered by urbanization and industrialization and the associated breakdown of traditional local forms of welfare provision. Voluntary structures and endeavours were unevenly distributed, and services were often restricted to certain identified populations.
While nation states such as Australia and the UK were prepared to guarantee citizen welfare through the development of state welfare services, the Irish state – a weak state – continued to rely on the voluntary sector to provide such services. The weakness of the Irish state – a consequence of the Catholic theory of subsidiarity and civil war politics – led to the growth of voluntary action based on charity. Within Ireland’s uneven welfare pluralist society, the voluntary and community sector has, in many instances, been the sole provider of care.
Under this policy arrangement, volunteers are more focused on fundraising for basic equipment for primary schools and hospitals, and are less engaged in initiating and supporting activities which generate positive social change. Despite the rhetoric of “active citizenship” contained in the Taskforce on Active Citizenship Report (2007) and a succession of policy documents committing the state to supporting a vibrant community and voluntary sector, a great deal of voluntary effort has been expended on a “finger in the dyke” effort to plug the gaps in the state’s social protection frameworks.
The quality of voluntary effort is glossed over in the CSO Report and the Irish Times article.
Respondents to the QNHS (Quarterly National Household Survey) were asked if they had been actively involved in voluntary or community groups in the previous twelve months. Active involvement was defined as attending meetings, being a committee member, or taking responsibility for some activity, but it specifically excluded attendance at mass or church services.
Overall active involvement in voluntary and community groups was reported by 28% of persons aged 15 years and over. Sports groups were most frequently reported (11%), while the least frequently reported form of group involvement was involvement in a political group (1%). (CSO Report, 2009:8)
We should be perturbed about the very low level of active citizenship which this headline statistic reveals, and we should also recognise that there are qualitative differences between voluntary effort focused on hard-to-reach groups ( marginalized young people, immigrants, socially excluded communities, the disabled) and voluntary work with large scale mainstream semi-commercialised bodies (sporting bodies, artistic and cultural organizations). Participation in mainstream cultural/recreational voluntary activities is attractive because it boosts credentialed human capital levels (thereby enhancing career prospects) through social and leisure networks. This type of volunteering, as O’Brien points out, is growing as unemployment levels increase and is associated with the “project of the self”. This trend in volunteering is reflected in, and perhaps related to, an increase in individualism in countries with some shared cultural characteristics such as Australia, the UK and Ireland. An individualism framed around personal values, lifestyles and a self-interested engagement with volunteering – a “polishing of your CV” opportunity. In this regard volunteering becomes less of a social contract creating social capital, and more of a consumer choice underpinning the formation of human capital.
The CSO Report tells us that certain sections of society (older people on their own, insecure tenants, rural dwellers, the unemployed, non-Irish nationals, the less educated, people with disabilities, individuals with a poor health status) have low levels of participation in civic activities, and consequently low levels of social capital. The Government is responsible for developing policy and practice frameworks which ensure that volunteering is not primarily a project of the self, with little benefit for others, and that it is a real force for social inclusion and social cohesion. In the face of the McCarthy Report’s recommendations that we scrap the Family Support Agency, the Community Development Programme and the Active Citizenship Office, the future development of volunteers, as collective citizens who are contributing to the development of social capital through contact and trust-making in their different neighbourhood and community structures, looks bleak.
My final point is that we need to fund and engage in ongoing medium-term, fine-grained, qualitative research into social network and community activities, and their contribution to social capital formation, if we are to increase our understanding of voluntary activity in a meaningful fashion.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
An Bord Snip Nua and the Active Citizenship Office
Colm O'Doherty: While I have previously argued that the active citizenship agenda of the Cowen and Ahern governments has lacked policymaking substance and commitment to positive social change, I take issue with the recommendation in the McCarthy Report that the Active Citizenship Office be wound up and its work halted. The paltry savings to be gained from this cutback – the 2009 allocation for this programme is just €56,000 – suggests that the sub text here is the removal of the symbolic threat which the Active Citizenship agenda poses to the pivotal role of money in our society.
As Ingham (Ingham, I. (2008) Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press) makes clear “It is the money-capital of capitalism that drives the endless pursuit of profit and gives the system its dynamism and flexibility; in short, the creation and control of money-capital is the locus of power in capitalism. It is here that the decisions about when and where the material provisioning for human wants are taken” (p. 206).
Despite its limitations, the State’s Active Citizenship project has affirmed social value as a counterbalance to individual utility maximisation. As Bauman (Bauman, Z. (2008) The Art of Life, Cambridge ; Polity Press) suggests, “pretending that the volume of and depth of human happiness can be taken care of and properly served by fixing attention on just one index –GNP – is grossly misleading. When it is made into a principle of governance, such a pretence may become harmful as well , bringing consequences opposite to those intended and allegedly pursued”(p. 8). The Active Citizenship Agenda recognises that social capital theory does point towards the need for a different approach to governance when markets and the apparatus of the state fail to renew civic involvement and produce those “collective goods which enable beneficial cooperation and restrain self-defeating hedonism and opportunism in social exchanges” (Jordan, B. (2008) Welfare and Well-being –Social Value in Public Policy, Bristol, Policy Press, p.89).
Active citizenship is synonymous with community governance. Community governance is manifested as – voluntary effort, community participation, community development, educational /training initiatives. These collective goods which underpin the interpersonal economy are needed more than ever to reduce the damage to our society brought about by the subordination of social to economic value under the flawed governance structures of the financial and speculative property markets. The retention of the Active Citizenship Office and the continuation of its work will provide a “space” for articulating and dispensing coherent collective systems of meaning , purpose and integrity, capable of creating cultures of social, rather than purely individualistic monetary, value.
Dr. Colm O’Doherty lectures in Applied Social Studies at the Institute of Technology, Tralee
As Ingham (Ingham, I. (2008) Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press) makes clear “It is the money-capital of capitalism that drives the endless pursuit of profit and gives the system its dynamism and flexibility; in short, the creation and control of money-capital is the locus of power in capitalism. It is here that the decisions about when and where the material provisioning for human wants are taken” (p. 206).
Despite its limitations, the State’s Active Citizenship project has affirmed social value as a counterbalance to individual utility maximisation. As Bauman (Bauman, Z. (2008) The Art of Life, Cambridge ; Polity Press) suggests, “pretending that the volume of and depth of human happiness can be taken care of and properly served by fixing attention on just one index –GNP – is grossly misleading. When it is made into a principle of governance, such a pretence may become harmful as well , bringing consequences opposite to those intended and allegedly pursued”(p. 8). The Active Citizenship Agenda recognises that social capital theory does point towards the need for a different approach to governance when markets and the apparatus of the state fail to renew civic involvement and produce those “collective goods which enable beneficial cooperation and restrain self-defeating hedonism and opportunism in social exchanges” (Jordan, B. (2008) Welfare and Well-being –Social Value in Public Policy, Bristol, Policy Press, p.89).
Active citizenship is synonymous with community governance. Community governance is manifested as – voluntary effort, community participation, community development, educational /training initiatives. These collective goods which underpin the interpersonal economy are needed more than ever to reduce the damage to our society brought about by the subordination of social to economic value under the flawed governance structures of the financial and speculative property markets. The retention of the Active Citizenship Office and the continuation of its work will provide a “space” for articulating and dispensing coherent collective systems of meaning , purpose and integrity, capable of creating cultures of social, rather than purely individualistic monetary, value.
Dr. Colm O’Doherty lectures in Applied Social Studies at the Institute of Technology, Tralee
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