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Abstract

We have to undo 3 models of innovation and production

1. Intrinsic and social motivations > material incentives

2. Challenges centrality of property rather than interaction of property and commons to growth

3. Questions centrality of firms in innovation process

Body

Peer production is significant in information production

This was not predictable by the economic model of motivation and organization

Peer production does this:

intrinsic/social motivations > material incentives

Challenges centrality of property

Questions centrality of firms

Commons governance (less hierarchy)

Peer production definition

Open innovation

Flash teams

Online labor markets

Firms need to change to include

Cooperative continuity

Motivational diversity

Social integrity (shared identity)

3 characteristics of peer production

Decentralization of conception and execution of problems and solutions

harnessing diverse motivations

Separating government and management from property and contract

FOSS

Free or open source software

Reasons the firm became less necessary 1 - transaction cost theory

Technology dropped cost of communications and distributed material capital needed for knowledge work

Allowed people to collaborate

Allowed pooling of knowledge and resources and coordination without firm hierarchies and markets

Material incentives

Knowledge is not perfect and can not be perfectly passed along

So when users of websites or whatever face problems, but it is not in the best interest of the firm to research solutions

So users come up with the solution themselves, then the firm “productizes” the solution

So it is hard to turn knowledge into a property or a contract with economic incentives - they are ‘lossy’

Commons

Better to elicit non-monetary motivations for knowledge

Other motivations

Status

Intrinsic

Better than extrinsic motivations (like money) because these are ‘lossy’

social

“Motivation crowding out”

The term “motivation crowding out” was coined in the economic literature to refer to an undermining effect of rewards and its definition extended to any effect that is opposite to the relative price effect of standard economic theory, whereby reduced costs should increase behavior, and increased costs should reduce it.

Commons definition

Group of institutional mechanisms that make control over property decentralized, uses social governance

And doesn't use property and contract

Commons innovation needs separation of property and contract, payment on one hand and governance of project on the other hand, investment in community management, understanding commons-based community

Routine tasks can have standard (market-based)incentives

But if a problem is knowledge intensive, creative, and complex, hard incentives are ‘lossy’

Firms are into exploitation and efficiency, but this is not a good space for exploration and experimentation

If a product space is ‘uncertain’ then FOSS is good

But if a space is understood, the firm can focus on optimization and ‘productizing’ the outputs of user innovation

Crowdsourcing

Peer production but has more narrow, pre-specified tasks from task manager

Does transaction cost reduction

But doe not leverage the knowledge-production characteristic that makes diverse moticartions and collaboration central

I think he’s saying that its different from peer production because there is still a boss distributing tasks

‘Undifferentiatied labor’ rather than diversity of creativity, knowledge, talent etc

Doesnt effect government or ownership, restructure innovation or learning, or create new motivations

Online labor markets

Ex. taskrabbit

Made more efficient market for skilled and unskilled labor

‘Did not shift conception from buying firm to external expert’

Challenge role of firms from transaction cost perspective but not a clear alternative for innovation strategy

Prize systems

Platform for competition that gives prises for creative problem solving

Decentralization of conception and execution

Leaving task design to the workers

Prizes for outcomes, not effort

So externalizing the cost of experimentation to the participants

Open collaboration innovation

Firm enter into contracts with suppliers or competitors, trade laborers/ work together

But is limited to participants in firms and doesn't leverage non-monetary motivations

Theory of the firm

Transaction costs existed, so it was cheaper to allocate projects through managerial hierarchies than doing so in the market

Summary

Internet innovation has changed the way that firms have to operate. It has allowed for innovation and production to occur outside of the constraints of firms and its hierarchies, so firms must now readjust in order to adapt to this changed working space. Peer production and the commons have made it so social motivations can be valuable rather than material incentives, that ownership of property and formal contracts are less important, and shows firms how hierarchy, monetization, and exploitation do not leave much room for innovation or experimentation.

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Technological change, and then innovation, soon became the keywords to advocate the
necessity and feasibility of endless growth.
• Technological change, and then innovation, soon became the keywords toadvocate the
necessity and feasibility of endless growth. → Who should drive innovation instead?
• Innovation today has become the holy grail of any capitalist organization that aspires to
growth and gain competitive advantages over its competitors. It has become a powerful
discourse reproduced by media, international organizations and governments that preaches
the transformation of any forms of organization – third sector organizations are
nonexempt– into sources of never-ending innovation streams.
• Technological determinism is based on the idea that technological change (often fuelled
by science, see Mokyr (2002)) is inevitable and the innovation pace in a given economy is
bound to increase indefinitely
• These dynamics are also evident in the way technology has been used as an instrument of
colonial domination in the global South silencing or erasing pre-existing ways of doing
things and ways of living (Pansera andOwen, 2018a) The narrative of the inevitability (and
thus the superiority of Western technology)of technological change has been often used
instrumentally to impose changes in the productive systems of the colonies (and former
colonies) that exclusively favoured the colonial powers(Escobar, 2004). → if extended to
global south and then thinking about china??
• Ivan Illich (1973) analyses the threats of uncontrolled economic expansion fuelled by
technological advances.
◦ conviviality = Geselligkeit
◦ He specifically points at six main threats of overgrowth: (1) biological
degradation,uncontrolled technological development can destroy ecosystems (e.g.
climate change);(2) radical monopoly, a condition in which who has no access to a
certain technology is excludedfrom social life (e.g. cars and highways, mobiles phones
etc.); (3) over-programming, the impossibilityof users to understand and manipulate
technology (e.g. overcomplexity, closed code, intellectualproperty rights etc.); (4)
polarization, increasing inequality caused by innovation; (5)obsolescence, the
necessity to keep producing and buying new products and (6) frustration causedby
the realization of one or more of these six mechanisms simultaneously.
◦ Accessibility refers to the possibility of laypeople to manage and control the tools. Do
people have access to the design and knowledge needed to create convivial
technologies? This could be a matter of open source licences, adequate
documentation and standards, and cultural barriers(such as gender norms or
discrimination). The central question is who can build or use itwhere and how.
Accessibility implies that all the stakeholders involved should be able to freelyaccess
and use the technology proposed and also be able to manipulate, modify, repair,
reuse it. → So how does this work in current social system with neoliberal markets?

• five examples of post-growth-oriented innovation:
◦ Appropriate Technology Movement (1970s to late 1980s)
1. for development
◦ Grassroots movements (1980s–ongoing)
1. According tosome authors, despite their limited impact, grassroots/social
innovations are an important alternativesource of knowledge and innovation

that should be taken very seriously (Tracey and Stott,2017). Smith (2005,
2007), suggests that small scale grassroots initiatives generate relevant
knowledgeto formulate alternatives for sustainable innovation policy. → how
can be heard?

◦ The Social Technology Network – Brazil – (2004–2012)
1. is the Social TechnologyNetworks (STN) launched in the first years of the
Lula da Silva presidency in Brazil with the ideaof combining the resources of
the Brazilian State and Public companies such as Petrobras andBanco do
Brasil with the existing social movements and civic society organizations.

◦ Social Cooperatives movements (mid 1970s–ongoing)
1. Social Cooperatives are worker-owned organizations that emerged in Italy in
the 1970s and were recognised by Italian legislation in the 1990s
2. forms of ownerships, funding, decision-making, leadership
andcommunication alternatives to the classic capitalist forms

◦ Open and collaborative production (mid 1980s–ongoing)
1. movements, practices and ideas – from the free/libre andopen-source
software movement, to citizen science experiments, to open design, to
communitybasedprototyping spaces such as fab labs and makerspaces – is
changing the scope and opportunitiesfor working in ways that are based on
openness and collaboration.
2. By making available the knowledge production through
nonproprietarysystems of knowledge production, open and collaborative
initiatives are able to drawon a much wider range of people, benefiting from
heterogeneous expertise.

—
Discussion:
• Innovation in capitalism organizations is pursued in a competitive environment and is supposed to
provide competitive advantages.
post growth is not set in competitive environment so is it set outside of capitalist society and how
would it ever become large scale in the current capitalist society?
Taking for example the Lucas Plan. Which worked impressively well, a great example of a post
growth structure and community based effort, and then was shot down due to liberal market
oriented government of Thatcher.
• They identify mainstream economics (market capitalism) as growth-oriented, whereas alternative
economies are labelled as ‘vitality oriented’.

-> how do post-growth -organizations can have a succesfull start and future within a growth-
oriented global society?

• economic growth is only possible through the appropriation and commodification of those
resources that were traditionally considered as common goods

• Example of alternative that can start the reformational process within existing system: Steward-
ownership is shifting the tide away from value-extraction and short-termism towards

stewardship, independence, and long-term purpose / re-envisioning the nature of corporate
ownership / post shareholder corporations.
it essentially relies on 2 principles:

1. self governance: Control remains inside the company with the people directly connected to
stewarding its operation and mission. With the control of the company held in a trust, it can
no longer be bought or sold.
2. profits serve purpose: Wealth generated by these businesses cannot be privatized. Instead,
profits serve the mission of the company, and are either reinvested in the company,
stakeholders, or donated. Investors and founders are fairly compensated with capped
returns/ dividends.

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Introduction

Within sustainability discourses, there are some which address the need to profoundly change the status quo, thus overcoming the Eurocentrism and narrowed perspective of dominant industrialized countries and moving towards a “pluriverse [, which] can be defined as a plural yet interdependent ecology of knowledges and practices, opening up space for alternative socio-cognitive and normative structures for social action towards socio-ecological sustainability.”

Buen Vivir as an example for such a pluriverse approach

Arrived at the academic and international policy stage in the early 2000s; was included in Ecuadors and Bolivias constitution

Arouse in a historio-political context in which indigenous struggle for recognition merge with the crisis’ of neoliberalism and development

BV appears as an alternative since it challenges modern/capitalist etc. notions by “(re)introducing notions of the intrinsic value of non-human nature and its symbiotic connection with humans and their societies (Pachamama or “mother Earth”) by stressing the collective as a conditions of possibility for the individual, and the non-material dimensions of human wellbeing, among others.”

Three constitutive elements of different strands of BV:

1. “life in harmony with oneself (identity),…

2. …with society (equity),…

3. …and with nature (sustainability)”

Eurocentric modernity and socio-ecological crisis: the need for transformation
Eurocentric modernity, critiques, and pluralist perspective

Distinction between modern and traditional societies in classical social sciences

Universalization of the European modernization process; an ontology which has been increasingly under scrutiny

The sustainability imperative and the plurality of human cultures

Debates on socio-ecological sustainability, i.e. the debates on cultural diversity, sustainability on an ecological as well as on a social level and the global societies future and the links between those elements; debates on the level of transnational institutions

Sustainability “made in Latin-America”

Differences between Northern – Southern debates on sustainability:

The debate on sustainability in LA is more directly linked to the “historical experience of colonisation, the current situation of the region in the (semi-)periphery of the globalized capitalist economy, and an extractivist economic matrix, with all its social, economic, environmental, and cultural consequences” -> differs from the global norths conceptual framework

While in the North, the problem is considered to be a rather material-technical one, in the South the issue is related to power: “relationships of domination, such as capitalist seizure or land-grabbing, post-colonial, patriarchal, or racial ones. Capitalism is not framed merely as a system of production and consumption, but rather as a system of power and domination”

In the South, the debates are more heavily and directly linked to certain territories and respective knowledges

“The pairing of ecological issues with structures and dynamics of power and domination implies that the search for sustainability futures is simultaneously a search for emancipatory futures.”

The North rather goes into the direction of an ecological modernization with a form of governance which is directed at the individual, its responsibility and behavior/consumption

The Buen Vivir experiment
Buen Vivir: genealogy and key concepts

Glocal character of BV:

Inside-outward process: role of subaltern, local actors such as indigenous groups

Outside-inward process: role of foreign actors such as counter-hegemonic struggles

Three phases of BV:

1. “emergence (or primordial discursive shaping),…

2. …institutionalization (discursive hybridization or consensual assemblage), and…

3. …dislocation (or discursive diversification”

Five versions of BV:

1. BV emergence in Ecuador and its first diffusion in the region: primordial BV

2. Process of political consensus building and institutionalization in Bolivia and Ecuador: hybrid BV

3. Phase of discursive diversification and declinations: indigenist BV

4. Phase of location within statist governments: socialist/statist BV

5. Advocation of social movements to the direction of a post-developmentalist BV

Lessons from BV for a renewed conceptulisation of sustainability governance

Statist experience of BV in the case of Ecuador and Bolivia show disappointing results – they have “rather taken a business-as-usual pathway towards conventional development”

Negative lessons:

Possibilities of political revolution are limited if they do not imply an “effective transformation of the material base”

Seems to confirm the thesis that “premature institutionalization of a transformative programme in the form of a political party leads intro the trap of mere “politicking”, i.e. political actors becoming divorced from social and ecological realities and being trapped in the political game”

Institutionalization or the ‘arrival’ of a critical approach at the societies center weakens its transformative impulse

Positive lessons:

“powerful source of cultural transformation”: marginalized voices from the South are being heard, modern and non-modern ontologies are being both heard and institutionalized

…”unleashing a process of cross-fertilisation or cultural learning”

Processes in Bolivia and Ecuador triggered an democratization effect as more different actors became increasingly politically involved, but there are no significant changes in material-economic structures in the society

Three main actors:

Civil society: philosophical, activist and resistant role

State: while failing to successfully implement BV, the states played a role in getting BV up to another level and giving it global relevance

Intellectual sphere: intellectual input

Conclusions

BVs relevance lies mostly in the challenging of the frames in which sustainability is thought and action taken 🡪 discursive layer

Ambiguity is mirrored in several debates between in withing different strands of BV

“BV is rhetorically instrumentalised, but deprived, in practice, of its critical quality vis-à-vis the Eurocentric understanding of modernity. “

Three aspects that make BV special:

1. Has reactivated marginalized or forgotten approaches: “In this sense, BV can be defined as a retro-progressive utopia towards socio-ecologically sustainable futures.”

2. It put Bolivia and Ecuador to the center, presents it as a model

3. Formed a “worldwide unique living laboratory for the social-ecological transformation.”

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Abstract:

A ‘class ceiling’, i.e. structural barriers, prohibit a transformation to a sustainable system. Two structures are crucial here:

1. “the structure of state imperatives does not allow for the addition of an independent sustainability imperative without major contradiction.”

2. The state needs to legitimize its actions and existence – therefore the “environmental state has created an environmentally sustainable lifeworld, which continues to be predicated on a fundamentally unsustainable reproductive system” (???)

Introduction

Environmental states managed to introduce environmental standards in the domestic field, while increasing their economic activity – they did so by outsourcing their negative impact to the global biosphere [i.e. whereto?]

p. 18

Thus they managed to maintain their consumption standards while protecting their citizens from direct harms – which will arrive through ecosystemic feedback loops though

To actually change the situation and protect the citizens from the harm caused by environmental changes, deep transformations are necessary – far deeper than issued by environmental states so far

Main questions:

Do states actually have the capacity to do so? What are the chances?

Have environmental states sustained unsustainable societies?

Hypothesis of the author: “the further transformation of the environmental state is indeed curtailed by an invisible yet effective structural barrier that I call the ‘glass ceiling of transformation’”.

p. 19

… i.e. a barrier that seems invisible, which is not acknowledged and without legitimation and which in the case of the environmental issue is caused by certain structures: “the glass ceiling should thus be understood as a system boundary that may be shifted within certain dynamic parameters but not transgressed without first changing the underlying structure and identity of the system itself.”

The impossibility of a ‘sustainable imperative’

Definition of the environmental state: “’a state that possesses a significant set of institutions and practices dedicated to the management of the environment and societal-environmental interactions’, like environmental ministries and agencies, framework environmental laws and dedicated budgets” since the states recognize the environmental management as integral part of a civilized countries ‘job’; restricts itself to the management inside its domestic borders

Definition of the green/eco/sustainable state: “a normative-prescriptive concept exploring the possibility of a state that actively facilitates a societal transition toward strong and comprehensive ecological sustainability, including the possibility of granting precedence to ecological sustainability over economic growth.”

p. 20

“While the environmental state has been focusing on greening the ‘supply side’ of capitalism by seeking ‘more environmentally efficient ways of expanding output’, the green state would need to tackle the ‘demand side’ to reduce the flows of energy and matter that are basically processed and consumed”

Common literature suggest that the environmental state would evolve into a green/eco state, as if this was the normal evolutionary process; aided by the fact that the state imperative of sustainability was introduced

State imperatives were at the beginning threefolded:

1. Keep internal order

2. Defend against external threat

3. Raise resources to finance no. I & II

Two major transitions followed which added further imperatives:

1) the rise of the bourgeoisie and the imperative of
4. Economic growth/Accumulation

And the class struggle organized from the working class undermining the state’s stability and enforcing a
5. Democratization and the provision of welfare which serves to legitimize the state -> “electoral politics imperative”

p. 21

Together those imperatives form the “core of the modern democratic welfare state”

The addition of new imperatives are the result of social struggles

Some authors argue that the rising pressure to include environmental issues within the economic and the legitimation imperatives leads to transformation of the society in direction of an environmental state – but does this also lead to a green state?

Doubts of the author:

1. “logic of state imperatives is cumulative and does not permit fundamental contradictions” -> imperatives must be compatible

p. 22

-> the imperative of sustainability contradicts other imperatives, since it threatens stability, accumulation…

While the cumulation of imperatives never aligns perfectly, it tends to work as long as one imperative does not obstruct another one; which would not be the case with a sustainability imperative

p. 23

Studies show, that a decoupling of the environmental impacts from the ever-growing economy in time is barely possible -> imperatives of accumulation/economic growth which is inevitably linked to the states capacity to legitimize itself and sustainability must contradict each other

1. “the logic of imperatives is completed with that of legitimation, since legitimation is the form that subsumes all conceivable contents in terms of particular social demands” -> after the legitimation imperative, no others can be added… (?), thus the question of significance is, whether sustainability can be enforced through the legitimation imperative

Locating the glass ceiling: lifeworld and system sustainability

Definition of lifeworld: “The phenomenological concept of the lifeworld captures a ‘pre-theoretical, subjectively constituted world of perception’ (Dietz 1993, p. 20, my translation). It is the world of praxis, of the everyday, of the perceptible. The lifeworld is the realm where the intersubjective construction of meaning, culture and identity takes place within a material world of experience; it is the individual’s horizon of relevant action and communication (cf. Husserl 1954). Thus, the lifeworld is our material and cultural habitat, so to speak. Legitimation crises, Habermas points out, are always crises of the lifeworld. They occur when the textures of meaning, identity and institutional routine become ruptured. The lifeworld is thus the relevant domain of action for state legitimation.”

Lifeworld sustainability (LWS) then is the sustainability of a lifeworld in which “material abundance and well-being […] social security and cultural stability, including the typical health, education and social insurance provisions of a modern welfare state and the sustained reproduction of patterns of culture and identity” are granted and…

p. 25

…may include a healthy environment in the surrounding and “moral an rational consistency […i.e.] the sense that the desirable lifeworld can and should be sustained

Definition of system sustainability (SYS) “refers to the objective biophysical planetary conditions under which a given socio-economic regime can be sustained in the long run”, i.e if the global ecological, biophysical system is not destroyed on a planetary level

There is a systemic relation between LWS and SYS which enforces some transformations while avoiding others:

“LWS is the politically decisive dimension, whereas SYS is the ecologically decisive one” Environmental issues become relevant to LWS as soon as they directly threaten the electorates; SYS is rather the scientific, ethical level without being necessarily politically relevant

Action in favor of SYS can only be taken if it does not negatively interfere on LWS: “if environmental action does not improve but in fact deteriorate the subjective quality of the citizens’ lifeworld, it is politically very unlikely to be taken.”

p. 26

Here the glass ceiling comes into play: possible negative effects for the LWS inhibit changes in favor of the SYS

The reading implies, that the changes towards an environmental state was caused by negative effects of the destruction of the environment on the LWS, giving the state legitimacy or pushing the state towards a sustainable regulation of the domestic context to maintain a certain standard of the LWS -> very limited improvement for the SYS to maintain the LWS

p. 27

Big scale side effects of the pollution and destruction of the environment are “invisible and intangible” and thus seemingly do not affect the LWS (in the short run) thus the environmental state does not tackle those issues

Underneath the glass ceiling: stages of the environmental state

Three stages of the environmental state:

1. Focus on LWS and pollution control

2. “attempt to tackle systemic unsustainabilty by means that were compatible with accumulation and legitimation”

3. Transition towards SYS; state in which the environmental state hits the glass ceiling

Stage I: pollution control

1960s: first environmental consequences of the explosive growth and movement towards the consumer society affecting the lifeworld directly

States responded to the legitimation pressure and acted on the impacts of the lifeworld by issuing according laws, controlling pollution, acted through technology and presented solutions to the problems “within a growth-based capitalist society”

-> “the state’s success in ‘greening’ the lifeworld managed to disconnect them from the legitimation pressures of the lifeworld […] the systemic dimension of sustainability became ever more depoliticized”

Systemic critique was weakened by the states capacity to manage apparent problems

Stage II: sustainable development

1980s: fact that systemic problems were not resolved and less apparent problems with even stronger impacts appeared forced the states once again to act

Guidelines and all kinds of plans were issued to tackle the problems on a global scale -> sustainable development guided by ethical imperatives which though were no state imperatives with inherent powers

Market was activated as means to steer into a ‘green’ direction: “environmentally conscious consumers” were made responsible -> further economic growth in greenwashed sections

-> did not change much of course: environmental quality of first world citizens was further decoupled from an truly ecological state since the “burdens of systemic unsustainability” were outsourced

p. 30

Stage III: socio-ecological transformation

Urgency and time pressure to limit harms on environment became very much apparent with the 2000’s: “critical climatic tipping-points” have to be avoided -> shift becomes noticeable towards a “socio-ecological transition”

Glass ceiling becomes clear: while most people in the countries agree on the need to change on a discursive level, they do not agree when its about their personal, private decisions and freedom: they do not want to be restricted

“dialectic between lifeworld and system”: struggle to combine all the needs and demands: the state “needs to sustain too many things at once: economic growth, the prosperity of its citizens and the life support functions of the biosphere.” -> would be helpful if we would “redefine what prosperity means”

Conclusion: and the future?

Can the glass ceiling be broken? Three possible answers:

1. It can be broken when environmental issues invade the LWS in such a high degree, that the decoupling between LWS and SYS breaks down and the state needs to act accordingly to SYS -> dangerous option because in this case the destruction of the environment is quite advanced

2. A different system of life becomes more attractive from an LWS perspective -> would imply a quite radical change, such as “the collapse of the modern (capitalist) state’s functional architecture”

3. Introduction of “alternative models of democracy that do not exclusively rely on representation”: could go into the direction of local, direct democracy and decision making

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Part I of the paper presents a brief panorama of transition discourses (TDs)
◦ currently perceived crisis in different parts: While in Europe, for instance, the current conjuncture is marked by the crises of advanced capitalism, the downsizing of the welfare State, and the financial crisis in the Euro zone countries, in Latin America the model is seen as shaped by extractive policies and the vagaries of commodity prices, which may determine the continuation, or exhaustion, of this model. In both cases, the common denominator is the pressures exerted by neo-liberal globalization.
◦ Age of Separation (of individuals from community and of humans from the rest of the living world) to an Age of Reunion (Eisenstein 2013)
◦ Thomas Berry’s notion of The Great Work—a transition ‘‘from the period when humans were a disruptive force on the planet Earth to the period when humans become present to the planet in a manner that is mutually enhancing’’ (1999, p. 11;
1988)—
▪ who is evaluating the value and postion of differnt matters (nature, thoughts, religion, human, space, stars, etc ) ?? in the end it's the human

• Part II discusses succinctly the main postdevelopment trends in Latin America, including Buen Vivir (BV), the rights of Nature, civilizational crisis, and the concept of ‘alternatives to
development’
• Part III attempts a preliminary dialogue between degrowth and postdevelopment, identifying points of convergence and tension
◦ First, it is important to resist falling into the trap, from northern perspectives, of thinking that while the North needs to degrow, the South needs ‘development’; conversely, from southern perspectives, it is important to avoid the idea that degrowth is ‘‘ok for the North’’ but that the South needs rapid growth, whether to catch up with rich countries, satisfy the needs of the poor, or reduce inequalities; while acknowledging the need for real improvements in people’s livelihoods, public services, and so forth, it is imperative for groups in the South to avoid endorsing growth as the basis for these improvements; a key criteria is that growth and the economy should be subordinated to BV and the rights of nature, not the other way around.
◦ This takes place through two main venues: the well-known methodology of workshops (talleres), most often organized by political or social movement organizations, with participation by local activists and community leaders and non-refereed (often activist) publications and web-based communique ́s, declarations, booklets (cartillas), and so forth.

• The conclusion, finally, envisions the dissolution of the very binary of ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ by adopting a pluriversal perspective.

Definitions:
• degrowth:
◦ the transformation of the material base is that of the DG discourse
◦ DG “challenges the hegemony of growth and calls for a democratically led redistributive downscaling of production and consumption [...] as a means to achieve environmental sustainability, social justice and well-being”

• Buen Vivir
◦ Beyond the idea of interdependence between society and its natural environment
(crystallized here in the concept of Pachamama or “mother Earth”), in BV, ontological and epistemological plurality is constitutive of culture. BV thus implies a fundamental rupture with Eurocentric universalism (as well as the dichotomies therefrom derived, such as nature-society dualism
◦ (Good Life or collective wellbeing according to culturallyappropriate conceptions; sumak kawsay in Quechua and suma qaman ̃a in Aymara
◦ ‘‘constitutes an alternative to development, and as such it represents a potential response to the substantial critiques of postdevelopment’’

• post-extractivism
◦ The point of departure is a critique of the intensification of extractivist models based on large-scale mining, hydrocarbon exploitation, or extensive agricultural operations, particularly for agrofuels, such as soy, sugar cane or oil palm; whether in the form of conventional—often brutal—neoliberal extractivist operations in countries like Colombia, Peru ́ or Me ́xico, or following the neo-extractivism of the progressive regimes, these are often legitimized as the most efficient growth strategies. This transitions proposal demonstrates that ‘‘there is life after extractivism’’ (Gudynas 2012). Given the avalanche of highly destructive, extractivist projects all over Latin America and much of the world the usefulness of this framework to buttress critiques of the growth model and DG and PD strategies must be explored further

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ABSTRACT

The article explores complementarity between three discourses challenging conventional notions of (un)sustainable development – Human Development, Degrowth, and Buen Vivir and “outlines pathways for their realization”.

Human Development: transformative strengths in political terms

Degrowth: questions “unsustainable material-structural entrenchments of contemporary socio-economic arrangements ”

Buen Vivir: a space of cultural alterity + a critique of the Euro-Atlantic cultural constellation

Importance of compensation between them in order to achieve global new “Great Transformation”.

INTRODUCTION

There is the need for dialogue between natural sciences and social sciences; between economics and ecology. There is the need for a clear definition of “sustainability” itself.

Ecological Economics (strong sustainability standards) vs Environmental economics (weak sustainability standards)

p.2

Problem with the notion of “development” (/economic growth) as it remains unproblematized with the exception of a post-development theory in the late 90’ (see Escobar). “They were the first to fundamentally question the idea of global convergence towards the socio-economic model of the global North.”

The “mainstream techno-managerialist” Sustainable Development discourse lost its credibility. The idea that such a model is a mental, cultural and historical construct that needs to be deconstructed.

Arguments:

post-developmentalist critique needs to be mainstreamed

Ecological Economic as a powerful alternative to environmental economics

such mainstreaming only possible through synergie between the existing discursive forces

Aim:

synergic articulation of three discourses Human Development, Degrowth, and Buen Vivir

(​​”chosen as objects of analysis by virtue of their current visibility and their catalytic character in broader development-critical debates in the GN and GS)

2. Critical Analysis of Development

“from Rostow's ‘stages of economic growth’, through Dependency Theory and Endogenous Development, up to ‘sustainable development’”

The problem does not lie in essentially adequate development strategies; but rather lies in the concept of development itself. It  seems urgent to decouple the idea of ‘development’ from a unidirectional, mechanistic, and reductionist view of economic growth. He goes on to say that questioning itself is not enough, rather new narratives should be proposed.

p.3

HUMAN  DEVELOPMENT

Ideas strongly associated with the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP). Development as ‘development of the people by the people, for the people’.

Contributions:

1. from a pure economic-based understanding – the one measured in GDP

2. from a purely state-centred understanding to managed by the people

It mainstreamed the idea of a people-centred approach as the fundamental means to achieve sustainable development and was a successful exercise of co-optation, but nevertheless the ideas of development remain tied to Western, liberal democratic frameworks and to market economies.

It  offers the possibility of constructing a more socially- conscious notion of development but very little space to engage in systemic or macro-structural considerations of the limits and challenges.

TRANSFORMATION/TRANSITION DISCOURSE

The text builds on Escobar (2011) where they talk about transformation or transition discourses, which “seek to redefine the political-economic chess- board set by industrial societies and transcend the normative horizon of the development discourse thus opening up space for alternative conceptions of prosperity”.

These discourses are not a construct of 21st century nor a novelty

They typically arise from traditionally marginalized groups

Their critique is not limited to issues of social justice, but rather their critique of social injustice is rooted in a critique of social pathologies

despite their global aspirations these are typically localized experiments with alternative forms of collective organization (aspiration: bending developmental trajectories worldwide)

their aim is re-politicize the debate on socio.ecological transformation

no consideration of potential synergic common cause

p.4

DEGROWTH

GN

originating from 1972 (Andre Gorz), had revival in the 80’

aims to “challenge the inherent ecological and social unsustainability of a growth-obsessed political economy” + to “challenge the hegemony of growth and calls for a democratically led redistributive downscaling of production and consumption”

is “re-politicizing the otherwise ideological notion of development”

it involves a pro-active, transformative aim to move towards a model of (post)development that can dispense with a structural growth imperative (a systemic political, institutional and cultural shift is required)

prioritizing the maintenance of ecological integrity of the planet, embracing sufficiency, creating well-being

It promotes:

the creation of a different social-structure

transforming current institutions and rules

a diffrent balance of material and non-material forms of prosperity (time prosperity, relational goods)

non-capitalistic, community based forms of production , exchange and consumption

to regain centrality in social and individual life vs material consumerism

to gain distance from the growth imaginary and decolonizing society of its influence

It can be synthesized into two strands:

the culturalist (critique of development as an ideology)

the utilistarist

Arguments:

the universalization of Western affluence-standars is ecologically unstable

is has historically been proven unfeasible

where is has been achieved, it has not led to “happiness”

BUEN VIVIR

GS

“dialogical alternative to development”

arose from indigenous struggles for cultural and material recognition

converged with disenchantment of the masses with the neoliberal order

glocal convergence of multiple struggles at various scales

interdependece between society and nature

“implies a fundamental rupture with Eurocentric universalism” *

p.5

*

due to re-articulation, re-adaptation,.. no consensus definition is available and one could speak of Buenos vivires

a work in progress, dialogical platform rather than a clear concept

It can be synthesized into three strands:

the indigenist

the socialist

the academic

Common constitutive elements:

harmony with nature

vindication of the principles and values of the marginalized

the State as guarantor of the satisfaction of basic needs, justice, equality

democracy

It can be understood as a critical paradigm of Entropocentric modernity or as a new intercultural political project.

It seeks to:

re-politicize the collective reflection of socio-economic and ecological drifts of the current development paradigm

address the socio-ecological sustainability imperative

advocate a radical reorientation of the paradigm of endless growth

overcome the structures of industrial society

democratization of all spheres of social life

p.6

SYNERGY

1. Buen Vivir

first large-scale experiment of discursive articulation of modern and non-modern ontologies

it highlights the limitations of Eurocentric modern ontology: linearity, individualism, anthropocentrism, expansionism...

the success is limited due to lack of structural political preconditions

appears as a product and a source of cultural transformative waves, “matching marginalized voices with a global momentum for a discursive shift”

1. Degrowth

the tranformation of the material base as a condition of possibility for a broader societal transformation

it requires cultural preconditions to be fulfilled in order to be translated into an effective political program

there is a heterogeneity within growth-critical community (liberal-reformists, capitalism-critical, feminist,..), but liberal-reformist strand holds the most promise to lead the dialogue with the conservative as it seeks to transform existing structures, rather than dispensing them

p.7

1. Human Development

deeper resonance with established political views, both nationally as internationally

key resource to access the mainstream discursive arenas

the dominant notion of freedom should be de-empasized

it could hold the political key to help replace a growth-oriented politics

p.8

PRAGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

the three discurses are to be seen as “situated discursive productions”

it is not the lack of conceptual clarity but the particularities of diverse geo-historical contexts

the prevailing conditions in the GS and GN are mutually determining, thus it is necesary to avoid the trap of northern perceptions

p.9

CONCLUSION

Ecological Economics has failed “to systematically foster a debate and cross-fertilization”

a solution to address the weak, utilitaristic conceptions of sustainability: a synergy between HD, BV and DG

1. Buen Vivir

first large-scale experiment of discursive articulation of modern and non-modern ontologies

it highlights the limitations of Eurocentric modern ontology: linearity, individualism, anthropocentrism, expansionism...

the success is limited due to lack of structural political preconditions

appears as a product and a source of cultural transformative waves, “matching marginalized voices with a global momentum for a discursive shift”

1. Degrowth

the tranformation of the material base as a condition of possibility for a broader societal transformation

it requires cultural preconditions to be fulfilled in order to be translated into an effective political program

there is a heterogeneity within growth-critical community (liberal-reformists, capitalism-critical, feminist,..), but liberal-reformist strand holds the most promise to lead the dialogue with the conservative as it seeks to transform existing structures, rather than dispensing them

p.7

1. Human Development

deeper resonance with established political views, both nationally as internationally

key resource to access the mainstream discursive arenas

the dominant notion of freedom should be de-empasized

it could hold the political key to help replace a growth-oriented politics

p.8

PRAGMATIC CONSIDERATIONS

the three discurses are to be seen as “situated discursive productions”

it is not the lack of conceptual clarity but the particularities of diverse geo-historical contexts

the prevailing conditions in the GS and GN are mutually determining, thus it is necesary to avoid the trap of northern perceptions

p.9

CONCLUSION

Ecological Economics has failed “to systematically foster a debate and cross-fertilization”

a solution to address the weak, utilitaristic conceptions of sustainability: a synergy between HD, BV and DG

# data[].attributes.body
Myth of development (linked to concepts such as investment, exports and growth) has been used to legitimise the projected need for peripheral countries to adapt to the lifestyle of the
core countries by sacrificing their cultures, environment; enter in relations of dependence and capitalist destruction
-> does not seem desirable; the concept of development is increasingly under discussion in LA
– main schools of thought opposing the dogma of development in LA will be presented in the paper

Constructing the idea of development
• Definitions from dictionaries of development as “growing larger, fuller or more mature, making something active or visible, or as a process such as urbanization. [...] when it is used to refer to people it is defined as progress, well-being, modernization, and economic, social, cultural or political growth.”

• Idea became mainly linked to the process of economic growth as the latter was depicted as the solution for all kinds of problems such as inequality and poverty – social issues were put to the background.
• Process that started after the second World War and was the standard by the mid-20th century
• Idea that underdeveloped countries simply had to step into the footsteps of developed countries → linear process of “economic evolution, brought about by making use of natural
resources, guided by different versions of economic efficiency and profitability, and aimed at emulating the western lifestyle”

Early warnings and the dependency critique
• First critiques on the development dogma became widespread very soon with important points such as the need to differentiate between development and growth, qualitative and quantitative aspects of growth, the need to include social elements and the “acknowledgement of the social limits to growth”
• Famous figure: Raúl Prebisch and his critique on the economic dependency of LA bc of the sole production of single goods for export → lead to substitution strategies
• “insight that underdevelopment is not a phase that precedes development, but is rather its consequence and, to a great extent, the result of colonialism and imperialism” → focus on the genealogy of inequalities and power relations by considering history

p. 18
• Such proposals kept stuck with the ideas of economic growth and the materialist focus; they did not reflect on key principles of development such as “the ideas of “advancement”, “backwardness”, “modernization” or “progress”, or the need to take advantage of Latin
America’s ecological wealth to feed economic growth” → here, the alternative stands come into play Ecology and the limits to growth
• The Limits to Growth report by the Club of Rome was published around the same time and triggered awareness for environmental issues, as it clearly stated that continuous growth was impossible

p. 19
→ challenged LA dependency theorists with their ideas of the need to grow economically
• Answer from LA: Catastrophe or New Society? A Latin American World Model from the Bariloche Foundation in 1975 which basically proposes a systematic switch towards socialism leaving behind many ideas and aspects of the development dogma without solving environmental problems
Deconstruction, nuances and diversification

p. 20
• Presentation of different conceptualizations of development which “fed into the launch of the Human Development Index in 1990”, leading into the direction of self-reliance, endogeneity,
focus on individuals, ecological economy etc.
The emergence and diversification of sustainable development
• Appearance of the “concept of “sustainable development”” in the 1980s

p. 21
• Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1988 states:
I) Development should be aimed at human needs, including those of future generations
II) “admits the existence of limits”
III) U-Turn: “sustainable development must be aimed at economic growth” contradiction between those two elements is being neglected and they are being presented as being
mutually dependent
• Conceptualization of the term ‘sustainability’ was contradictory:

p. 22

critique that “”sustainable growth” is a “contradiction in terms: nothing physical can grow indefinitely.””

Retreats and resistances
• Fall of real socialism and rise of dominant neoliberalism which became established all over the world at the end of the 1980s → total neglection of the idea of the need of regulation and intervention

p. 23
• Three mentionable alternative viewpoints that developed in those years:
I) (eco)feminist perspectives: “questioned the male-centered bias, [...] revealed the contributions made by women that had been left invisible, particularly the care economy and other aspects of the non-commercial economy [...] ecofeminism [... as] a radical questioning of development”
II) Regulation school: “This approach “seeks to integrate analysis of political economy with analysis of civil society and/or State to show how they interact to normalize the capital relation and govern the conflictual and crisis-mediated course of capital accumulation”, according to one of its proponents.”
III) Dematerialization of development: reduction of consumption, “redirecting economies
to meet human needs”.

Turn to the left and contradictions
• Since 1999: retreat from neoliberalism in LA
p. 24
• Wave of leftist governments in LA with bigger role of the state and more plans to combat
poverty → did not question the idea of development as growth or include the idea of sustainability; were little intercultural or inclusive towards indigenous people

p. 25
• Many of those governments support export oriented extractivism, or rather neoextractivism or ‘progressive extractivism’: state-led extractivism “which promotes and legitimates mining or oil industry projects as necessary to sustain welfare benefits or cash payments to the poorest sectors of society” denying the social and environmental effects of extractivism

p. 26
• Approach is being criticized as extractivism leads to only little social justice: negative effects affect mostly poor people
• At the end, the change imposed through the shift to leftist governments is only limited

p. 27
• “This is a style of development that accepts the conditions of today’s capitalism, whereby the state has to reduce or compensate for some of its negative facets. This is a “benevolent capitalism” that aims above all to tackle poverty and inequality through corrections and
compensation.” → system is starting to break down as its ineffectiveness becomes apparent
A persistent debate, intermittent dialogue and co-option
• All development plans have failed, studies are “making it clear that what has prevailed in these decades is “maldevelopment””, still, the idea of development is very persistent

p. 28
The ideology of progress
• Development as ideology, which is understood here in a relational sense as providing a basis for organising the beliefs, subjectivities and values of individuals, and thus producing and reproducing a certain social order in its multiple dimensions, from the individual to the institutional (Eagleton, 1991). This ideological basis explains [for example] the irrational and emotional attachment to the idea of development, with warnings or contradictions constantly
ignored or brushed off.”

p. 29
• Critique of an ideology is needed to be fruitful → i.e. to be able to tackle the ideological basis

The post-development critique
• Post-development approach (1980s): post-structuralist approach which addresses development as a discourse, “including the organized ideas and concepts, but also the
institutional structures and practices” → allows for asking other questions by tackling the discourse such as the search for “alternatives to development” instead of changing
development approaches in its details

p. 30
• Also questions key principles of Marxist thoughts and other socialist currents since post-development questions “the linearity of history or the manipulation of Nature”

• Has similarities to indigenous ways of rationalizing or conceptualizing since both are not“embedded in the ideology of progress. These forms of knowledge in turn emerge as ideal
sources for building alternatives to development”

p. 31
The questioning of development as a critique of Modernity
• Need to address the “project of Modernity” to analyze the ideology of development profoundly
• Definition of Modern/Modernity: “Here, we adopt a broad defnition of the “modern” condition, which starts from the understanding that there is a model that needs to be universalised (thus dividing cultures into modern and non-modern), and that this is represented by European culture. It is a school of thought that adheres to a Cartesian knowledge system (whereby what is true/false can be determined and other forms of knowledge are excluded); its ethical stance restricts value to the human sphere, emphasizes different forms of utilitarianism, sees history as a temporally linear process – of progress from past conditions of backwardness to a better future – and stresses the duality that separates
society from Nature.”
• Elements become apparent when taking a closer look to the process of the Iberian colonization of Latin America: positivism, linear course of history which has to cumulate in the European way, domination and civilization of other races and religions etc.

p. 32
→ concepts of coloniality of power and knowledge
• To question development means to question modernity, imagining alternatives to development means to imagine alternatives to modernity
• Strategy to do so could be to “take up marginal or subordinate schools of thought”, as for example:
I) Radical biocentric environmentalism: Nature itself has particular values and does not only serve for human needs
II) Critical feminism: ethical alternatives, influenced by indigenous people
• Cosmovisions different than Eurocentrism

A provisional classification
• First critiques elaborated (see Early warnings and the dependency critique) would be
development alternatives, latter are alternatives to development
p. 33
→ i.e. development
alternatives: debates that take place between main schools of contemporary thoughts such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism; they remain within the project of Modernity

p. 34
→ i.e. alternatives to development; recognize the Eurocentrism within the project of Modernity and want to overcome this specific ontology

p. 35
• Are replacing duality of Eurocentric ontology with a relational ontology, by overcoming the separation made between Society and Nature etc. which are mainly inherent to indigenous people
• Example of Buen Vivir

p. 36
A provisional assessment
• Critical discussion of the development paradigm is coming to the center of the discourse; many
concepts which were uncritically accepted before are being viewed more critically and called
into question such as issues related to the environment and sustainability
p. 37
• Also key actors involved in the debates change, the distribution becomes more democratic,less elitist

# data[].attributes.body
Abstract
• Sustainability has become a key principles for various societal actors and for social change but there is nevertheless “no consensus over the goals and visions of the future associated with this concept”
• Three ideal-typical “trajectories of social change” that will be analyzed in connection to the topic of sustainability:
I) Modernization (such as ‘green economy’)
II) Transformation
III) Control
Introduction
p. 2
• Even though sustainability has become the “largely uncontested development model”, the way of realizing it and its implications are highly contested
• Three main ideal-types of social change :
I) Modernization: stick with the focus to a growing economy → ‘Green economy’
II) Transformation: critizise the modernization approach and call for rethinking, as
sustainability is not vereinbar with sustainability
III) Control: idea that sustainability issues could be solved by controlling, as for example
by “sociotechnical surveillance methods”

• Ideal types should be understood as imaginations of social change that compete with each other; this is a perspective which serves to analyze the currently ongoing social change;
trajectories interrelate and can appear in hybrid forms
➔ Text as proposal or guidelined for research programs
Theoretical framework: structures, practices, imaginations
• “Imaginations of sustainability are embedded in existent practices (Reckwith 2002) which are carried out in a variety of social fields (politics, economy, civil society, science) and which in turn structure the imaginations. [...] Thus, if we want to examine the different trajectories of sustainability, we must analyze which enabling and constraining sociomaterial structures suggest which practices to economic, political and civil society actors, and which affective/moral imaginations these practices are associated with.”;
• sociomaterial structures are for example and most relevantly infrastructures such as transportation or knowledge infrastructures since they are highly affected by a turn to
sustainability

p. 3
• Interdependence between practices, imaginaries and infrastructure as the mutually influence
each other, allow for certain forms of the other or limit them → as does the ecological system as a whole: it limits the possibilities of human practice as it’s finite
• Social practices: based on a “materiality of practices” (→ connection to the material infrastructure) and an “implicit logic”
• Imagination is relevant since it “tie[s] together cognitive, evaluative, and affective dimensions
– knowledge, values, and emotions” → to project social change with all its components, imagination is key

p. 4
• Structures, practices and imaginations are the three analytical concepts introduced to address
the three trajectories of modernization, transformation, and control Futures sturdies as present studies
• Sustainability is always directed to the future, so three research questions come to the center:
I) “Which imaginations of sustainability are promoted in which constellations, by which
actors?”
II) “How likely is it for one of the three trajectories [...] to prevail?”
III) “How do modern societies change respect to their basic institutional order and their relationship with nature it they are guided by certain imaginations of sustainability?”
• Trajectories are not supposed to do prognosis but to predict an unpredictable future better

Potential trajectories: modernization, transformation, control
Sustainability as modernization
• Idea of tackling environmental issues by technological progress and innovations to avoidneeding to change something about the industrialized structures and lifestyle “such as individualism, consumption, prosperity, and mobility”
• Practices are supposed to guide to ecological transformation as for example by “green consumption”; market, finance, competition are seen as possible motors for the change
p. 5
• There are conflicts between the logic of finance and the one of sustainability though; financial markets have already proven to not be fit to determine what is sustainable or desirable in
sustainable terms
• Main institutions behind the Green growth approach are such as World Bank, EU, UN or further corporations which are targeted by the economic transformation towards sustainability
• Populations in the Global North and South are affected differently: GS is “exposed to an “accumulation by dispossession” while the GN benefits “from a policy of “selective adaptation””
p. 6
• Boltanski & Chiapello: capitalisms ability to integrate critiques into its paradigms of “growth, crisis, profit increase, innovation”
Sustainability as transformation
• Transformation in the sense of profound and fundamental social and economic structures to overcome the competitive and growth related model of the current society which will not
allow for sustainability
• Idea of postcapitalism: idea of a way of modernizing ecologically, where all knowledge is freely accessible in the internet, the state provides a basic unconditional income etc. → structurally wise a very challenging approach which would require a strong state
• Degrowth concepts on the contrast do not follow the idea of a technologically advancing society but do rather focus on a weak state with local, self-determined initiatives and
alternative practices: “they represent a positive alternative imagination of sustainability which combines sufficiency and resource conservation with collective self determination, social
resonance, and ideals of “the good life””, as do similarly postdevelopment approaches
• Since transformation approaches address individual lifeworlds and behavior, they also address affective levels
p. 7
• Concept of convivialism (focus on coexistence in plurality and solidarity) and ecofeminism which both consist of certain practices and imaginations of how to life and are in need for
certain structures offered by the state
• Reference to Wrights Envisioning Real Utopias and his call for socialized spaces which are not controlled solely by capitalism or statism as another strategy of social transformation with its
own structure, imagination and practices

Sustainability as control
• Authoritarian model: aimed at the imagination of a possible environmental emergency in which democracy needs to be suspended and the power given to a sovereign
• Aimed at resilience, defined as “the capacity of ecological as well as social [or individual] systems to absorb stresses and shocks by changing while at the same time maintaining their
old structures and functions (Folke et al. 2010; Walker and Cooper 2011).
It refers to forms of coping with crisis and adapting to emergencies once they have occurred.” → becomes relevant with disruptive social change which becomes most probable with the environmental crisis
• Imaginations/structures/practices that go into the direction of technological involvement for environmental control
p. 8
→ are “expertocratic [...], largely divorced from normative debates or democratic-deliberative procedures”
• Plans involving military: imaginations of the climate change causing security threats
• Scientific or technological responses with the aim of controlling climate change are in conflict with democratic and participatory imaginations of society
• Sustainability as control generally “is a curbing, not a prevention of disasters that guides the practices of segregation, externalization, surveillance and force. This particular future of sustainability, characterized by division, obtains its imagination from an ideal of salvation – which may manifest as a privilege, as an ideal of immunity, and/or as a hypertrophy of security”
Conclusion
• Described trajectories will not appear as pure types but rather in interrelated forms
• Interrelation of transformation and control: noticeable tendencies into those directions as liberal democracy is seen as “impediment for any socioecological change” → could lead to an authoritarian social transformation into the direction of an envisioned “ecological regime of hyper-morality that uses indisputable arguments (“We need to save the world”) to justify severe and far-reaching measures of social control”
p. 9
• Capitalism and liberalism is in crisis already; if there is nothing done to confront the crisis, social uprisings will lead to disruptive changes

# data[].attributes.body
Abstract:

Two main propositions of the text:

1. “Many forms of human suffering and many deficits in human flourishing are the result of existing institutions and social structures.” -> Critical Social Science

2. “Transforming existing institutions and social structures in the right way has the potential to substantially reduce human suffering and expand the possibilities for human flourishing.” -> Emancipatory Social Science

To actually participate in transforming the society, social science should face four main tasks:

1. Specify moral principles to judge social institutions

2. Use those principals to diagnose and critique the standards of social institutions

3. Respond to the critique by developing viable alternatives

4. Propose a theory of transformation to realize the proposed alternatives

Focus of the article lies on alternatives to capitalism

p. 2

Capitalism nowadays is perceived as system without alternative, which is surprising as capitalism shows its problems in a more pronounced way than ever -> new development as socialism for a long time was seen as an alternative to capitalism

Investigation of transforming into alternative systems from the perspective of ‘real utopias’

Foundations

Repetition of the two main propositions (see abstract)

Controversies in social sciences when the origins of the sufferings are being discussed as many different causes are being identified such as capitalist economy, structures such as racism and sexism, technology etc.

p. 3

Hayek (1988) attack on radical reformers and thus preoccupation on emancipatory social science: “The cure could be worse than the disease due to unintended and uncontrollable effects of attempts at deliberate social transformation.” -> the risk of unintended effects are bigger, the bigger the reform is

-> ‘real utopia’ as a concept is supposed to respond to the concerns: “A real utopian holds on to emancipatory ideals without embarrassment or cynicism but remains fully cognizant of the deep complexities and contradictions of realizing those ideals.”

Repetition of the four main tasks (see abstract)

Moral Principles

Three main moral principles:

1. Equality

2. Democracy

3. Sustainability

p. 4

Equality

Definition of the equality principle: “In a socially just society, all people would have broadly equal access to the social and material conditions necessary for living a flourishing life.” -> includes four critical ideas (underlined)

Access, not opportunity -> equality not equity in terms of accesses to opportunities

Socially just mean to have “material and social conditions necessary to flourish […] includes such things as social respect, community, solidarity and trust.”

p. 5

Democracy

Definition of democracy principle: “In a fully democratic society, all people would have broadly equal access to the necessary means to participate meaningfully in decisions about things that affect their lives.” -> necessary condition: self-determination of individuals

-> difference to the principle of personal freedom which also bases on this conditional value: as soon as the self-determined decisions taken by an individual affect other people, they are supposed to be able to participate in the decision taking process

Society is not democratic, if (I) it fails to allow for equal access for every member of the society, or it (II) fails to include the collective society in decision-making processes

Sustainability

Definition of the principle: “Future generations should have equal access to the social and material conditions to live flourishing lives at least at the same level as the present generation.”

p. 6

Diagnosis and Critique

Society and its institutions can be judged according to the extend they fulfill or not the described values

To explore realistic utopian alternatives to capitalism, the economic system will be analyzed through the presented values

Equality

While capitalism allows for human flourishing in many parts of the world, the system “also inherently generates high levels of inequality in access to those conditions.”

Through redistribution mechanism those inequalities could be avoided but institutions that have been proven to be able to do so are noncapitalist institutions which made the economic (part)system less capitalist wherever they worked

p. 7

Democracy

“Capitalism generates severe deficits in realizing democratic values for three reasons: by excluding crucial decisions from public deliberation, by allowing private wealth to affect access to political power, and by allowing workplace dictatorships”

Sustainability

“Capitalism inherently threatens the quality of the environment for future generations because of imperatives consumerism and endless growth in material production. The world is finite; endless growth in material…

p. 8

…consumption is simply not compatible with long-term sustainability of the environment.”

Consumerism in inherent to the capitalist logic of endless growth

Alternatives

Terms in which alternatives should be judged with:

1. Desirability

2. Viability (asking for unintended or negative side effects)

3. Achievability

Two main thoughts on picturing alternatives:

1. Society can be thought as an organism or ecosystem, you can’t just rip out viable parts

p. 9

1. difference between ameliorative reforms (reform small aspects of a bigger corpus to improve them) and real utopians which propose real alternatives, moving beyond to cause more profound changes

Examples

Participatory budgeting: ordinary citizens instead of technical experts create city budgets in meetings or popular assemblies (e.g. Porto Alegre, Brazil)

p. 10

Wikipedia: “best known example of a more general model of nonhierarchical cooperative economic activity: peer-to-peer distributed production with open source property rights.”

Public libraries: increased access to material conditions

Solidarity finance: pension funds managed by unions or else for their members (e.g.: Quebec Solidarity Fund)

Worker-owned cooperatives: workers take over firms (e.g.: Hotel B.A.U.E.N)

p. 11

The Quebec social economy council

Urban agriculture with community and land trusts

Internet-based reciprocity economy in music

Randomocracy

Unconditional basic income

p. 12

A general framework for the analysis of real utopian alternatives to capitalism

Definition of power: “power is the capacity to do things in the world, to produce effects. This might be called an “agent-centered” notion of power: people acting individually and collectively, use power to accomplish things. With this broad definition of power, we can distinguish three kinds of power deployed within economic systems: economic power; rooted in control over the use of economic rule making and rule enforcing over territory; and what I term state power, rooted in control over rule making and rule enforcing over territory; and what I term social power, rooted in the capacity to mobilize people for cooperative, voluntary collective action. Expressen as a mnemonic slogan, you can get people to do things by bribing them, forcing them, or persuading them. Every economic system involves all three forms of power, connected in different ways.”

Three types of economic structure:

1. “Capitalism is an economic structure within which economic activity is controlled through the exercise of economic power”

2. “Statism is an economic structure within which economic activity is controlled through the exercise of state power. State officials control the investment process and production through some sort of state administrative mechanism.”

3. “Socialism is an economic structure within which economic activity is controlled trough the exercise of social power. This is equivalent to saying that the economy is democratic.”

p. 13

Ideal-types, do not exist in pure forms but do rather mix up and build hybrids -> idea is to strengthen the socialist part in the triangle between the three parts

A visual vocabulary

Visual depictions of the possible interplays between the three systems

Configurations of socialist empowerment: elements for building a socialist hybrid

See figures in the paper: different possible configurations

p. 19

The Seven Configurations Together

Summary: three different clusters of configurations “each corresponding to different political traditions of socioeconomic transformation: “[I] a socialist cluster, [II] a social economy cluster, [III] and a social democratic cluster.”

All base on the idea that power over the state and the economy is subordinated to the social power, i.e. “power rooted in voluntary cooperation for collective action.”

Transformation

To transform a capitalist configuration into the direction of socialism, means to democratize it. This does not imply that the capitalism and statism are being cut out but rather that they have a less dominant position while the socialist element gains centrality and that the other two elements are being subordinated

p. 20

The condition is that capitalism does not maintain its dominance over the other two elements -> big skepticism towards this point, as capitalism has proven to be very strong in maintaining its dominance and doubters state that they believe that capitalism has to be broken down to allow for more socialism

Three “logics of transformation” can be identified from the history of anti-capitalist struggle:

1. “Ruptural transformations envision creating new emancipatory institutions through a sharp break with existing institutions and social structures.”

2. “Interstitial transformations seek to build new forms of social empowerment in capitalist society’s niches and margins, often where they do not seem to pose any immediate threat to dominant classes and elites. […] The central theoretical idea is that building alternatives on the ground in whatever spaces are possible both serves a critical ideological function by showing that alternative ways of working and living are possible, and potentially erodes constraints on the spaces themselves.”

3. “Symbiotic transformations involve strategies in which extending and deepening institutional forms of social empowerment involving the state and civil society simultaneously help to solve practical problems faced by classes and elites.”

Problem of each transformation process:

1. Normally ended up in authoritarian statism instead of democracy

2. Can succeed in improving the situation for the members of society but do not manage to erode capitalist structures

3. Eased the problems of capitalism but stabilized the capitalist system per se

Idea: mixing the transformation processes to profit from their benefits while easing their problematic aspects: “I think the best prospect for the future is a strategic orientation organized around the interplay of interstitial and symbiotic strategies, with perhaps periodic episodes involving elements of ruptural strategy.”

Conclusions

The transformation process should strive towards “institutional pluralism and heterogeneity” and thus the process itself “suggests strategic pluralism”

# data[].attributes.body
Abstracts

learning is based on a horizontal, reciprocal process, rather than a hierarchical, individualized, top down approach

Evolution and learning not the same -> change does not happen even if people learned

Problem of learning:

1. who is learning?  Shift: single actor -> interaction/collective perspective (Habermas)

2. What do they learn? Acquire knowledge and learn how to learn, does not solve the problem why they learn

The theoretical Problem

Epigenesis -> cultural evolution ->  learning as a mechanism secondary to natural evolution

Cultural evolution = theory in which learning proceeds

Social evolution = learning of societies constitute for social evolution

-> only thematised with the beginning of “modern societies”

-> western ideology?? -> anyway the idea of cultural evolution and learning is practiced as such

Contrast to “traditional societies”:

Western religion

Learning as a process which betters the world and guides the way to god

Learning theory:

God = education of the social world, which tries to learn as best as it can

Eastern Religion

Idea of perfection

-> becoming identical with the cosmos etc.

-> series of lifes (not centred on one individual life)

Modern societies

Replaced god as the educator

Intellectuals = educator

1) Marx and his idea of development of the forces of production

Cognitive learning process which allows humans to control the environment and use it for their    purposes -> Transform nature in an economic good

2) Herder Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts -> moral perfection

Learning as a self-organising process which moves society to-> moral universalism (ethical tradition) or mastery of nature (cognitive/scientific)

Sociology of knowledge

Society as a learning entity in itself a social construct

-> constitutive of the culture of modern society

-> increased speed

-> modern society create new type of reflexive knowledge

How do societies learn?

Actors

Idea of sociology:

Micro-level basis of macro-learning (individual level)

Socialisation

-> the idea that society socialises its member by inculcating norms and values

-> link systemic perspective and individualist actor perspective (Parson & Habermas)

Habermas - communicative action

-> stems from language theory (constructivism,piaget, communicative competence etc.)

-> evolution of social systems can be explained by an “action theory”

-> constructive action of individual actors -> socialisation

Cultural evolution

individual learning capacities -> reproduction of capacities -> raise level of possible individual learning process

Modernity

-> disregards the educational model -> too hierarchical for modern thought

Thereby can not be considered a theory for learning

-> sociology of intellectuals is not key

-> alternative model:

An alternative theoretical option: interactionism

Non-psychological and non-individualistic theory

Social relationships as the basis of learning (not individuals)

(also includes classical education theory, as hierarchical relationships are a social relation)

Modern culture is perceived as the outcome of a collective enterprise -> collective discussion, argumentation, organization etc.

-> modern society: individualist to relational theory of social action

Luhmann -> evolutionary learning process -> reconstruction of the self-prganizing process of social systems -> learning is something that takes place in the process of interaction

-> critique: leaves out individuals

Two models of interactionism

1. add rationalistic assumptions about the relational character of social reality

-> change of preference structure as the result of a series of rational choice situation (individual makes choices)

-> conceive learning as the effect go national cooperation

-> societal learning = effect of of the social coordination of learning process of individuals

-> example: emergence of the state, dietary norms, bargaining, contractual norms

1. Habermasian individualist theory of action

-> Habermas input “individuals base their capacity to act rationally upon specific cognitive and moral competences”

-> micro-social situations are necessary to develop competences

-> differentiate between individual and non-individual learning

-> collective learning processes (miller 1986)

-> generalisation, objectivity and truth -> in order to solve cognitive inconsistencies

-> collective learning can be blocked ->

Example:

-> body of knowledge is accepted by its mere authority “authoritarian learning”

-> “ideological learning” -> moral and normative questions -> objectivity can be suppressed

-> “regressive learning” -> radical -> principle of truth is given up

“rationality of discourses is tied to the social organization of those discourses”

The narrative foundation of a social order

-> we are too obsessed with Max Weber (YES) rationality does not explain anything

-> problem: knowledge at the center

-> option three -> go beyond meaning and assumption -> DRAMATURGICAL THEORY

-> “move towards a way in which action is made meaningful in the course of action and interaction”

-> pre-cognitive basis for understanding and explaining social processes -> reciprocal recognition of actors in social situations -> identity construction

-> social order beyond or before a normatively justified order narrative order

-> rationality is a kind of narrative that justifies rational action

“actions are related to each other not by some implicit rational standard but by some narrative order that makes one’s action meaningful in relation to the actions of others”

How does learning take place? -> something new is generated

What do we learn?

What do societies learn?

Substantive knowledge and procedural rules

-> when societies learn they produce culture

Culture and society are distinct from each other

Two types of learning:

-> substantive learning -= learning process that accumulates knowledge

-> rule learning = society learns how to learn -> experienced-based knowledge that is passed on

The production of knowledge

Substantive learning as the focus of cultural evolution -> Piaget -> Habermas + Weber

“Reconstruct the accumulation of technological knowledge as well as the rationalisation of moral order towards universalism”

Habermas: moral rationalisation through history

-> simplified knowledge is produced

-> we need to reconstruct the basic assumption of this knowledge

1. ideal movement behind the Real movement of ideas

2. Reconstruct paradigmatic structures and show their temporal structure

3. Critique cognitive arrangements through which cultures describe each other

The production of rules for learning. The learning of learning

-> knowledge is organised

Ruler learning is social learning -> reproduced knowledge in social life form

Model of self-organizing learning processes -> communication processes structured by rules

Rules of communicating knowledge becomes key to societal learning

Three levels of increasing inclusiveness

1. Interpersonal level

-> learning through direct communication

-> situation of collective learning -> structure of equality and discursively of interaction

Habermas -> underlying rational practice of well-socialised social actors

-> scientific societies -> practiced procedures for producing knowledge (not just generated it)

1. Organisational level

-> knowledge for self improvement

-> how is knowledge stored? Knowledge is key for social life that is organisational

-> dependant on environment of organisation -> survival of organisation is dependent upon its capacities to reduce uncertainties of its environment

1. Institutional level

-> rules that coordinate organisational actors

-> enable communication between actors + constrain the mode of cummincation by normative and cognitive rules

-> Public space in which discourse takes place

-> discursive universes + discursive practices

-> modern societies are shaped by discursive rules and practices

-> intellectuals and journalists contribute to institutional learning -> restructureing

-> rule system based on free speech and critical debate

Why do societies learn?

HABERMAS: BECAUSE NOT LEARNING IS IMPOSSIBLE

-> human nature to learn (individualist)

Optimistic theory -> enlightenment

Or..

Learning as a reaction to uncertainty

-> people, organisations and institutions need to recognise their rules -> change state of uncertainty -> learning through communication

Modern societies = uncertainty as normal -> learning is a central analytical and political category (environmental risk research)

Revolution =  narrative order of society is destroyed -> maximum uncertainty

-> societies learn when narratives no longer provide certainty

“the rule learning of society is thus a condition of changing the mode of accumulating knowledge

Rationality, evolution and learning

Learning is a reaction of human beings to uncertainties regarding their institutionalised experience

-> knowledge does not provide the answer

Communication about what is shared knowledge -> on each level (interpersonal, organisational and institutional)

Rules of social relation of communication have to be found in order to.

1. acquire new knowledge

2. Store such knowledge

3. And transmit such knowledge given the natural and or social turnover of actors in communication settings

Why is it so hard to change the world?

-> because societies don’t like to learn

-> stick with what they know and to the rules that stabilise this

Only societies that produce risks are societies in which social actor really have an option to change the world!!

-> the riskier the more likely the degree of learning

but: too much learning is confusing -> changing knowledge and norms go beyond human intentions

-> learning itself becomes a risk

Would it be better for social evolution to stop learning processes=

-> too late for that!

We live in a learning society -> social evolution is speeding up because social learning increases

“we try to change the world by everyday learning, organisational learning and institutional learning -> yet society evolves rather independently from social learning processes

-> effects are determined by systemic consequences (evolution)

“As much as we make society, society makes us”

Learning and evolution are distinct -> should we give learning up?

“they do not change the world, but they provide the elements for changing the world”

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Key functions of public sphere in the multicrisis of the Anthropocene 

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Key functions of public sphere in the multicrisis of the Anthropocene 

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Legitimacy & Efficacy of the Public Sphere in a Geostorical context

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Legitimacy & Efficacy of the Public Sphere in a Geostorical context

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SESSION 4:
Democracy & Globalization

-> transboundary effect of global interconnectedness, which overpowers the Westphalian system

-> formal structures of liberal democratic state hold, but how effective and legitimate are they? -> stopping authoritarianism

-> elite capture of decision-making process -> which are no more responsible to their co-citizen -> but to other global forces and shareholders

-> current trends into a deglobalization: protecting the boundaries of the nation-state

-> neoliberal globalisation led to post democracy (c Crouch)

-> aristocratization of democracy: formal democracy needed for purposes of social stability, yet real politics unfolds through informal channels driven by private interest concerns.

-> emegernece of the “competititor state” in the global capital market -> offering a business-friendly atmosphere to gain investor confidence -> austerity, deregulation and privatisation of productive activities

-> tate no longer independent regulator agent but rule-taker in the global scenario -> dominant transnational cooperations become rule makers

-> mission of the state shifts from regulating economic activity and providing for social welfare to attracting global capital and fostering economic growth as primary political objective

Post-truth: emotions and the reemergence of populism

-> Political relevance of emotions and the affective turn in social sciences -> from rationalistic to an emotional public sphere? -> how can a critical discourse emerge through emotions and post-factual statements?

-> digitalisation and emotions are erasing the boundaries of the private and the public -> intimacy exposition. Blogosphere -> self-realisation in the private sphere rather than in the public sphere

-> publicness and the mask: Rousseau -> which kind of public sphere is one sustained on anonymity -> using pseudonyms or nicknames?

-> from free speech to surveillance and control through algorithms -> segmented and Taylor-made audiences -> society of singularities

-> crisis of futurism -> future is plenty of risks and the promise to control them is unrealistic and not persuasive anymore -> liberal elites in different parts of the world failed in giving certainty to the illusion that they were capable for controlling the risks and to guarantee that the future will be better than the present

-> liberal elites were part of what Blühdorm defines as simulative politics -> make sustainable and to reduce risks in relation to what is clear that is unsustainable and that escapes from our control
-> the new populist - authoritarian wave as a reaction to this -> implies new challenges and problems for the global public sphere -> solutions rather than diagnosis: tend to deglobalize the public sphere and reduce civilian attributes

Post-ecologist condition: see photo

1. there are problems like resource shortages, climate change, species extinction, epidemics and so forth which constantly provide proof of the ecological unsustainability of the established system which no technological or managerial ingenuity has so far managed to fix.

2. late-modern society and its pattern of identity construction are firmly based on the principle of exclusion which breeds social conflicts, nationally and internationally, which in the long term no security and surveillance technology can keep under control. These conflicts are a persistent reminder of the social unsustainability of democratic consumer capitalism.

3. late-modern societies are severely threatened by what may be described as a crisis of self-referentiality which provides evidence of the normative or cultural unsustainability of the established system

from a sociological point of view the paradigm of symbolic politics is an unsatisfactory conceptualisation of late-modern society’s eco- politics and late-modern politics more generally

->

co-political oppression and alienation; it conceals the post-ecologist resolve to defend the ecologically exploitative and destructive system of democratic consumer capitalism

-> politics as merely symbolic

late-modern societies are framing and processing their environmental problems primarily in ways (as sketched in Figure 3) which are radically different from those promoted by the progressive social movements

And if these late-modern practices are measured against the standards of ecologism, they can be described as post-ecologist irrespective of the question of to what extent ecologism ever represented something like a collective movement outlook and identity

Does it really matter whether we describe contemporary eco-politics as symbolic or as simulative politics? More precisely the question is: Is there any eco-political or other benefit in knowing that – if this could be shown to be true – late-modern societies are engaging in simulative politics, with the critical discourse of symbolic politics being no more than one of the phenotypes of this simulative politics?

there is certainly a lot of benefit in knowing that contrary to its own self-descriptions late-modern society is engaged much more in reproducing the principles of unsustainability than in overcoming them.

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Rethinking Populism in the Digital Age – Arias Maldonado
=> transformations of the public sphere in the digital era + ow populists actors create their
publics and address them
- what is new about today's populism?
- we witness "a populist Zeitgeist" -> but populism not new phenomenon
- Novelties -> examining 2 related phenomena: digitalization of public sphere +
increasing political relevance of emotions
- new about populism less in its ideological content/ its ambivalent relationship to
democracy than the way it operates with help of digital technologies in order to
mobilize political emotions -> intersection of populism with digital
- populism has become affective performance
- populism as a political style
- substantive elements of populism -> the people + the elite -> antagonistic
relationship, charismatic leader, anti-intellectual stance, emotional communicative
register, identification with idealized homeland, repertoire of action that features
polarization, provocation + protest
- perhaps populism not an ideology or movement, but dimension of political culture
- Populism as ideology-> "chameleon-like": can adopt different ideological colors
- Populism as strategy-> goal= gain or retain social support and/or political power
(-> problem with this approach= by focusing on strategies lose sight of what is
specific about populism => category of the "people")
- Populism as discourse-> not group of political beliefs, but particular kind of political
expression that makes itself explicit in texts + speeches
- Populism as a political logic-> creates chain of equivalent demands from different
social groups whose common feature is opposition against same enemy or system
- populism is not a political logic but the logic of the political
- people is made + in fact it is the populist who constitutes it
- Populism as a political style-> performative aspects of populism-> aesthetics qualities
Populist leaders + movements create or disturb public's subjectivity through number
of discursive + non-verbal tools -> giving shape to the people
-> populism is political style that employs antagonism people/elite, exhibits "bad
manners" + stages a crisis or threat to acquire public support
nothing forces us to choose just one of them
- to recognize emotional quality of populist style + understand how such technique can
be politically effective -mobilizing enough popular support
- affective core of populism reveals itself in display of emotional language - verbal +
non-verbal, in relationship between the leader + the followers, as well as in make-up
of a collective subject (the people) against its enemies (elite, or establishment)
- leader embodies abstraction that the "people" is -> comes to personify the people
- turning negative feelings aroused in the public against elite -> into positive feelings
towards leader + communitarian project
- different societies are sensitive to different charismatic styles
- mark of the outsider = most commonly shared feature
- anti-establishment narrative
- sense of belonging is key aspect of political emotionality

- content of beliefs less important than feelings that we experience
- there is no we without them
- people + elite are "empty signifiers", i.e. containers filled with different contents
depending on type of populism involved or political culture of a society
- political space where we can be affected is beyond consciousness since body + brain
given answer to external stimuli before we are aware of them
- digitalization of public sphere is revolutionary phenomenon -> seems to favor the
kind of political performance that populism excel at + facilitate deployment of
affective strategies: political emotions, populism, new information technologies
seem to converge in new public sphere
- societies are increasingly medialized, democratic communication is at center of
politics as never before
- citizens are co-protagonists in creation of opinion: vertical mass communication has
given way to mass self-communication -citizens create + distribute content that can
be instantaneously discussed in both directions
- online activity facilitates creation of communities by dropping costs of cooperation +
hence creation of new publics
- Digital technologies reinforce trend through which democracy becomes battlefield
for influence
- distrust of mainstream media + conventional politicians, social networks make it
easier for populist movements -> post-factual democracy where facts have lost
persuasive value in public debate -> if facts lose value, political performance
becomes more important -> populist style is thus favored by digitalization
- democracy's ideology as rule of the people by the people for the people -> feeling of
being a people, reinforced by direct communication through social media = key to
contemporary success of populism -> bonding
- convergence of 3 related phenomena: rise of populism, increasing sentimentalization
of democracies + digitalization of public sphere <= reinforce each other

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Yasuni ITT Initiative: to keep the maintenance of underground oil in block ITT in Ecuador Amazon in exchange for international compensation, which ultimately failed because it didn’t receive the expected contribution from the international community

All public goods suffer from under-provision precisely because they are public

Relationship with ITT is that the development of the initiative is linked to the limitations that usually arise in the treatment of global public goods

dominance of the national perspective (most countries see it as a local proposal with mainly local benefits)

costs for corrective action (face the cost of exploiting the oil & dealing with the interests that those sector represents

risk for carbon commodification

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"As a methodologically grounded approach, critical cosmopolitan sociology has a very specific task:

to discern or make sense of social transformation by identifying new or emergent social realities."

Page 28: structure of the paper:
1. Notion of critical cosmopolitanism within the cosmopolitan tradition through a critical reading of different approaches

2. An alternative theoretical conception of critical cosmopolitanism with a focus on how it opens up a different vision of modernity

3. Methodological assumptions of a critical cosmopolitan analysis.

The overall aim of the paper is to see the complexities of cosmopolitanism as an emergent social phenomenon that has major implications for a critical social theory of modernity and sociological inquiry.

Page 28: 3 broad strands of cosmopolitanism:
1. Moral cosmopolitanism
2. Political cosmopolitanism
3. Cultural cosmopolitanism

Page 34: ‘liquid modernity’, which is characterized by social forms based on transience, uncertainty, anxieties and insecurity and resulting in new freedoms that come at the price of individual responsibility and without the traditional support of social instituons.

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Session 2:
The Westphalian system (started with the peace of Westphalia 1648) -> ended the war in Europe

1. Sovereignity of the state: Principles of territorial integrity; political self-determination; and non-intervention in domestic affairs of other states.

2. Legal equality of states: states became the primary institutional agents in an interstate system of relations with no superior sovereign power -> anarchic international system

Nation states: corresponds to the Westphalian system. -> emergence of nationalism in the 10th century -> legitimises states were assumed to corresponds to nations - groups of people united by language and culture.

Unpredecendeted multidimensional interconnectedness of contemporary globalisation yields transboundary impacts that destabilise the Westphalian world order -> need for governance of transboundary issues

-> why transnational public sphere? -> because of the existence of discursive arenas that overflow the boundaries of both nations and states

Main aim of the article:

To reformulate the critical theory of the public sphere in a post-westphalian era, in a way that it can still serve its purpose of criticising the establishment, keeping its original promise to contribute to struggles for emancipation, now at a transnational level.

-> conceptual starting point: Classic Public sphere theory taken as an important critical conceptual resource from where to start (Habermas-structural transformation)

Two main features of Public opinion:

Normative legitimacy: Ps as a space for the communicative generation of public opinion -> who participates and in what terms? How and who can participate?

Political efficacy: PS as a vehicle for marshalling public opinion as a political force. Publicity must hold officials accountable and assure that the actions of the state express the will of the citizen.

Problematizing the classic theory of the public sphere

In general, public spheres are increasingly transnational or post-national with respect to each of the constitutive elements of public opinion

-> the WHO of communication, previously theorised as a Westphalian national citizenry, is often now a collection of dispersed interlocutors, who do not constitute a demos

-> the WHAT of communication, previously theorised as a Westphalian national economy (enhancement of resource-stock and distribution), now stretches transnationally to a global community of risk, which however is not reflected in concomitantly expansive identities and solidarities.

-> the WHERE of communication, once theorised as the

Fraser combines critical theory with feminist theory

- Normave legitimacy and political efficacy

Page 7: The concept of the public sphere was developed not simply to understand communication flows but to contribute a normative political theory of democracy.

Page 7-8:Together, these two ideas – the normative legitimacy and political efficacy of public opinion – are essential to the concept of the public sphere in democratic theory.

P 9: Tacitly, however, Habermas’s account of the public sphere rested on at least six social-theoretical presupposions, all of which took for granted the Westphalian framing of polical space

1. Structural transformation correlated the public sphere with a modern state apparatus that exercised sovereign power over a bounded territory.

2. Structural Transformation conceived the parcipants in public sphere discussion as fellow members of a bounded polical community

3. Structural Transformation conceived a principal topos of public sphere discussion as the proper organization of the political community’s economic relations. 4. Structural transformaon associated the public sphere with modern

media that, in enabling communication across distance, could knit spatially dispersed interlocutors into a public.

5. Structural Transformation took for granted that public sphere discussion was fully comprehensible and linguistically transparent.

6. Finally, Structural Transformation traced the cultural origins of the public sphere to the leers and novels of 18th- and 19th-century print capitalism.

These six social-theoretical presupposions tie Habermas’s early account of the public sphere to the Westphalian framing of polical space.

Page 22: In public sphere theory, as we saw, public opinion is considered efficacious if and only if it is mobilized as a political force to hold public power accountable, ensuring that the latter’s exercise reflects the considered will of civil society.

Page 19: Could public spheres today conceivably generate legitimate public opinion, in the strong sense of considered understandings of the general interest, filtered through fair and inclusive argumentation, open to everyone potentially affected? And if so, how? Likewise, could public spheres today conceivably render public opinion sufficiently efficacious to constrain the various powers that determine the condions of the interlocutors’ lives? And if so, how?

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Castells - the more parcipaon, the more legimacy.

“although networks are an old form of organization in human experience, digital networking technologies and characteristics of the information age, powered social and organizational networks in ways that allowed their endless expansion and reconfiguration, overcoming the traditional limitations of networking forms of organization to manage complexity beyond a certain size of a network"
-> network society does not depend on social institutions
-> digitalisation:
1) decentralization of operations and focusing of control,
2) increasing the effectiveness of networks relative to hierarchical structures.
-> social media: not public sphere -> full of advertisement

Public diplomacy, as the diplomacy of the public, not of the government, intervenes in this global public sphere, laying the ground for traditional forms of diplomacy to act beyond the strict negotiation of power relationships by building on shared cultural meaning, the essence of communication.

Page 78: “The public sphere is an essenal component of sociopolical organizaon because it is thespace where people come together as cizens and arculate their autonomous views to influence the polical instuons of society."

Page 79: The material expression of the public sphere varies with context, history, and technology, but in its current pracce, it is certainly different from the ideal type of eighteenth-century bourgeois public sphere around which Habermas (1989) formulated his theory.

Page 79: Important space for public sphere:
● Physical spaces
● Media

Page 81: Globalization is the process that constitutes a social system with the capacity to work as a unit on a planetary scale in real or chosen time"

● Capacity
● Institutional capacity
● Organizaonal capacity

Page 82: The growing gap between the space where the issues arise (global) and the space where the issues are managed (the nation-state) is at the source of four distinct, but interrelated, political crises that affect the institutions of governance:

● Crisis of efficiency
● Crisis of legitimacy
● Crisis of identity
● Crisis of equity

Page 91: Public diplomacy is the diplomacy of the public, that is, the projection in the international arena of the values and ideas of the public.

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Transnationalisation of the Public Sphere

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Transnationalisation of the Public Sphere

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SESSION 1
-> With globalization: civil society is no longer territorially bound -> new possibilities for political emancipation -> wider web of potential alliances and greater variety of actors

-> new risks and greater insecurity -> global terrorism, war etc.

-> GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY = new form of politics -> both an outcome and an agent of global interconnectedness. -> Post 1989 reaction to the overbearing state that arose from the heritage of war and of cold war

-> lack of agreed definitions -> ambiguity -> turns into a common platform for deliberation for neoliberals, post-marxists etc. -> weakens the understanding of the phenomena

definition: sphere or ensemble of interactions in-between the economy and the state

-> interactions are purposeful and tend to be non-violent, self-organising and self-reflexive

-> actors in these interactions are: associations (legally protected non-governmental institutions

-> political and economic center of power

Related to CIVILITY

-> mutual respect, tolerance and confidence, regularity of behaviour, respect for law and control of violence

Perspectives on Civil Society

Republican perspective —> CS with the state

-> John Locke & Adam Smith

-> concept of civility —> consent-based rule of law and control of violence. Requires a state with a public monopoly of legitimate violence

-> societas civilis distinguishes civil societies not from the state but from the non-civil societies -> state of nature absolutist empires and from war

Marxist perspective —> CS over the state

-> Hegel, Marx, Engels and Gramsci

Hegel: includes the market as a realm of differenciation, intermediate between the family and the state

Marx&Engels: state is subordinated to CS, which embraces all the material relations -> instrument of the dominant classes!!!

Gramsci: against Marx -> it is not the economic structure that governs political action but the interpretation of it -> structure ruled by superstructure -> theatre of history are ideological and cultural struggles for HEGEMONY

Radical perspective —> CS against the state

Context of emergence: latin america under military dictatorship in the 80s and Eastern Europe under communist totalitarianism

-> emphasis on self-organisation and autonomy -> creation of independent spaces from the state and its control over culture, ideology and political organization -> from the power of capitalism

Main actors: social movements an protest groups!!

Neoliberal perspective —> CS despite the state

CS seen as a more passive instance complementing or even substituting the state

CS between the state, the market and the family

-> non-profit NGO’S and philanthropist are the fundamental actors of CS

“CS a realm of stability rather than struggle, of service provision rather than advocay, of trust and responsibility rather than emancipation”

Postmodern perspective —> CS i ndifferent towards the state

-> defines itself in opposition to the universalist and wester-biased vision of activist and neoliberal visions of CS

-> Essence: Multiplicity focus on identities and culture - universal Principe = tolerance

-> governing principle: avoid harm

-> plurality of global CSs? -> set of globally organised networks such as islam, nationalistic diasporas etc.

SUMMARY:

-> notions of PS & CS have a normative, critical component -> civility as a foundational characteristic

-> public sphere rather related to COMMUNICATION

-> civil society rather related to ACTION

Kaldor argues that the concept of “civil society” has had a renaissance since the emergence of civil rights, feminist, and environmentalist movements in the 1970s and the end of the Cold War. She seeks to develop a new set of definitions that takes into account the effects of “globalization” on the development of a global civil society.

De-territorialization: Kaldor argues that previous notions of civil society were delimited by territorial borders, distinguishing between “civil” and “uncivil” societies (she does not mention colonialism at all in this context). She argues that this territoriality is being undermined by the end of the Cold War and increasing global economic interconnection. This has “opened up new possibilities for political emancipation as well as greater risks and insecurities” (2).

“State-centered approaches” (6) are being challenged or replaced by international/global movements, institutions, and treaties: e.g., humanitarian and human rights law, the international criminal court, international peacekeeping (7). However, the “absence of a global state” seriously calls into question the effectiveness of such institutions.

There is a greater opportunity for the linking of interest-groups across diverse regions of the world. Kaldor acknowledges two simultaneous and contradictory processes:
1.) “global civil society is in the process of helping to constitute and being constituted by a global system of rules, underpinned by overlapping inter-governmental, governmental and global authorities”.
2.) “new forms of violence, which restrict, suppress and assault civil society, also spill over borders so that it is no longer possible to contain war or lawlessness territorially” (2).

Global civil society as an “answer to war”: “civil society has always been linked to the notion of minimizing violence in social relations, to the public use of reason as a way of managing human affairs in place of submission based on fear and insecurity, or ideology and superstition” (3)

She discusses 5 definitions of civil society:
1.) Based on Hobbes and Kant, a “societas civilis” which is dependent on the existence of a state with a public monopoly of legitimate violence. In this case, civil society is not separate from the state, but contingent on it (7).
2.) Based on Hegel and Marx, civil society is the “arena of ethical life in between the state and the family”, including “markets, social classes, civil law and welfare organizations”. In this definition civil society is contrasted with the state (7), and the “market society is a condition for individual freedom”. “For Hegel, this was the telos of history; for Marx, civil society was merely a stage towards the telos of communism.” (11)
3.) Based on the opposition of (activist) civil society against the Soviet Union in Central Europe in the 1970s and 80s, civil society here presupposes a state or rule of law but insists on restraints on state power: it constitutes and demands “an extension of participation and autonomy”; “citizens can influence the conditions in which they live both directly through self-organization and through political pressure”. 🡪 At the transnational level, this requires the existence of a “global public sphere” in which “non-instrumental communication” can occur (8).

4.) The neoliberal version: NGO-ization, privatization, deregulation, the growing mobility of capital are creating a global sphere influence that is replacing or curtailing the power of individual states.

5.) The postmodern version: questions the universalism of previous conceptions of civil society, although it does promote the universal ideal of “tolerance”; critiques the concept of “civil society” as Eurocentric; whereas the activist version defines civil society as mainly including “civic-minded or public-spirited groups” and a “shared cosmopolitanism”, the postmodern conception emphasizes that there are other important components, including national and religious identities, as well as the recognition of “multiple identities as a precondition for civil society”; classical and modern Islamic conceptions of civil society play an important role here as well (9-10). Postmodern conceptions also take into account the role of groups advocating violence.

“All versions of civil society are both normative and descriptive. They describe a political project, i.e. a goal, and at the same time an actually existing reality, which may not measure up to the goal.” (11)

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Public Sphere
Critical-rational discussion arena (autonomous from the state and the church which had been all-powerful in feudal/monarchical societies of Western Europe by the end of the 18th century.

-> how is this arena involved within the context of the welfare state? -> how did it change communication with mass media?

-> Habermas: growth & decline of the public sphere by considering the main interlinked political, social, cultural and philosophical developments

The public sphere provides a platform where tensions between public and private interests could be handled

-> necessary for organising collective life

State (public interests) —> PUBLIC SPHERE <— Market (private interest)

Preconditions and Attributes of the bourgeoise public sphere of the 18th century

-> growth of a reading public -> network of public communication

-> relevance of a FREE associational life for the discussion of public issues

-> protagonist is the bourgeoisie and it is dominated by male owners

-> emancipatory element -> reflexivity

-> driver for the universalisation of civil rights

Structural transformation in the 20th century

-> advent of industrial capitalism and mass urbanisation

-> marxist hermeneutics of history -> philosophical developments

->rendered limits of liberal constitutional order evident -> there is social tensions

1) -> Welfare state -> turned critical-rational discussion space more inclusive, but also turned it into a self-interested space of competition for resources of the state

2) -> the rise of commercial mass-media -> turned culture-debating public into a culture-consuming audience -> shift from active to passive

-> both developments blurred the boundaries between STATE,MARKET and SOCIETY -> particularising public debate -> generalised particularism (Habermas)

The relationship between public and private spheres changed in the course of the expansion of the democratic right of participation and the social-welfare state’s compensation for class specific disadvantages

The public sphere, simultaneously restructured and dominated by the mass media, developed into an arena infiltrated by power in which, by means of topic selection and topical contributions, a battle is fought not only over influence but over the control of communication flows that affect behaviour while their strategic intentions are kept hidden as much as possible

From the liberal to a radical democratic public sphere (the theory of communicative action 1981)

Modernity -> as an unfinished project -> power of critical thinking of modernity through intensified democracy -> transition from a liberal to a radical democratic public sphere

-> public sphere potentially assumes the role of the regulation of society: new balance between the forced of social integration

-> POWER OF SOLIDARITY: can prevail over the power of control resources (money and administrative power)

Public sphere: open realm of communication on issues of public/common concern, which tries to regulate the relationships between state and market

-> rational generation of communication is always in tension with the manipulative development of media power

-> Habermas view of the emancipatory potential of rationality is foundational to modern theories of democracy

But discourses do not govern -> they produce meaning which make shared understanding possible -> they can persuade, mobilise and provide/withdraw social legitimation to decisions made by political actors —> actor dimension as flip-side of discursive dimension

Global transformation of the public sphere: three revisions:

The first revision of the global public sphere is the establishment of a robust private sphere. This private sphere, enabled and strengthened by access to the welfare state and improved civil rights, gives citizens outside of just elite circles the time and autonomy to be meaningfully engaged in their societal problems and democratic processes. Ostensibly this restructuring of democratic rights gives the public the time and resources to pursue even more egalitarian and liberating political systems, but Habermas mentions that this may or may not be the case given the evident freeze of progress in the liberal world order due to state intervention and some other factors.

The second revision of the GPS is the change in the infrastructure of global discourse, with global mass media completely changing how people interact and the freedom by which they do so. The change in the way information is spread is also vitally important to this section i.e. the increased potency of advertising, the blend of education and entertainment, etc. Because of this increased “media power” mass media becomes a much more relevant phenomenon in public manipulation, with access to capital being one of the main assets that provides influence on the GPS. This means that despite an increase in available information, interest groups curate and corrupt what information is being shown (keep in mind that this was written in 1992, so this is not really referencing the internet, though the continued transformation of the GPS could arguably be following the same pattern)

The third revision of the GPS is the conceptualization of the “public opinion” which, in short, is the idea that majority rule is something to be captured from society. This means that interest groups or individuals who wish to shape society in some way need to gain active or passive support from the masses often meaning that opposing interests seek to change what is assumed to be the popular or default perspective on an issue (with or without that perspective being the majority opinion). Essentially, the goal is to make certain opinions or positions become taken for granted by those not paying attention, and therefore largely unchallenged.

Habermas then goes on to say that these processes of transformation and mobilization of the public sphere are relevant only insofar as they affect the legitimation or de-legitimization of public administration: “discourses do not govern.” Structural changes must happen on the structural level, communication can only affect the administration of political change through changing of opinions, which then either leads to increased or decreased stability of the relevant regime.

Habermas

Public sphere coincided with the emergence with liberal philosophical thought
-> public sphere in the beginning of capitalism -> established horizontal relationships between people of the same social status -> thriving & positive place

1830's shift -> rise of consumerism & industrialisation
Welfare state -> increase of cooperation and development of mass-media -> private and public sphere shifted
Emergence of authoritarian state -> growth of advertisement -> content created for profit
-> change on the public sphere (ability of accommodating debates diminished)
-> public debates are dictated by public relation (public is influenced by ad-compains)
-> less horizontal, rational, critical environment but influenced by a hierarchical and bureaucratic system
-> mass media operates in a single vertikal direction

Hope of the public sphere
-> fundamental to democracy
-> all citizens should have the ability to engage in society and express their views

internet
-> is this new space an effective public sphere?
-> or does it divide and acts as an echo chamber which further isolates
-> public debates online are centred on the press (still traditional media)
-> rational discussion is limited -> new media new politics -> the internet has fewer gatekeepers than traditional public sphere

# data[].attributes.body
Desai analyzes the contribution of public goods (PGs) throughout time to assess the current state of provision of global public goods (GPGs). He argues for the need of rethinking and reconceptualizing the notion of national public goods in order to understand the provision of global public goods. The author points out that the current concept of PGs is based on national PGs where state institutions play a significant role in the provision of PGs. He summarizes three characteristics (the three Ps) that are essential to the provision of PGs. Desai highlights that there is no equivalent to the state on a global level. Thusw, the provision of GPGs is usually decentralized (polarity of unilateral and bilateral agencies, private and voluntary, public-private partnerships). Desai describes this current state of the provision of GPGs to have a “neomedival character” based on his assessment of the history of the GPs.

Three Ps of public goods provision:

Preference revelation (what goods the public wants in the public domain and what it is willing to pay for them)

Political bargaining (how decisions are made on which goods to include in the public domain, how much of these goods to include, and how to make them accessible to all)

Production of these goods by public or private agents

Before 18th century: provision of public goods through the interest of rich, powerful population groups

18th and 19th century: European states began to provide merit goods through the public treasury

20th century: provision of public goods a political process

Conclusion:

Need for rethinking and reconceptualizing notion of national public goods including three Ps

Considering the change in provision throughout history -> preferences for national and global public goods differ due to different development in countries (poor countries might prioritize national public goods)

Today’s stage of providing global public goods “neomedival age” -> demands from scattered groups around the world (intensity of preferences differ) -> provision of global public goods much likely only in the form of crisis response

Political parties usually a force to help people that are deprived of public goods -> not existent on global level, might be replaced by civil society organizations

Financing of global PGs has to be done through cooperation of nation-states -> concerted national action required to make global PGs a priority

# data[].attributes.headline
Public Sphere, Civil Society, Public Goods & Citizenship 

# data[].attributes.subject
Public Sphere, Civil Society, Public Goods & Citizenship 