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6 Co-optation and exclusion: controlled policy integration in Japan To the extent that the problem of global warming arises from existing socio-economic activities, tackling it will entail an institutional metamorphosis towards a more sustainable form of socio-economic system. This will require a realignment of broad policy goals, which itself may require changes in policy-making institutions. Such changes have been referred to as policy integration, which is the theme of this chapter. The integration of environmental concerns into general economic policy in
The capacity of the organisational grammar of projects and networks to incorporate and placate radical forces, even the ones openly hostile to capitalism, is its inherent trait (→ C is for curatorial mode of production ). The new spirit of capitalism evolved in response to the radical spirit of countercultural dissent, in particular the workers’ and students’ upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, which new management tried to placate, incorporate and, eventually, disarm. This capacity for co-optation is transmitted to other project-based social
The labour movement in Lebanon narrates the history of the Lebanese labour movement from the early twentieth century to today. Trade unionism has largely been a failure, because of state interference, tactical co-optation and the strategic use of sectarianism by an oligarchic elite, together with the structural weakness of a service-based laissez-faire economy. The Lebanese case study holds wider significance for the Arab world and for comparative studies of labour. Bou Khater’s conclusions are significant not only for trade unionism, but also for new forms of workers’ organisations and social movements. The failure of trade unions reveals a great deal about Lebanon’s current political moment and how it got there, but also how events are set to affect future movements. The book challenges the perceived wisdom on the rise of the labour movement in the 1950s and 1960s and its subsequent fall during the post-war period from the 1990s onwards. What is perceived as a fall after the end of the civil war was merely the intensification of liberal economic policies and escalating political intervention, which had already been in place since independence in 1943. Hiding under the guise of preserving sectarian balances, the post-war elite incorporated the labour movement into the state to guarantee their command of the hollowed-out state. Beyond controlling the labour movement to avoid a challenge to the system, the post-war period was characterised by political forces, using the General Confederation of Workers in Lebanon (GCWL) as an instrument in their disputes over power, rents and benefits.
cover for governments and institutions to co-opt and channel criticism ( de Waal, 2015 : 31–6). In humanitarian action, activism manifested in the form of the Cambodian March for Survival, in 1980, when many aid representatives organised a demonstration at the Thai-Cambodian border to allow cross-border assistance into Cambodia ( Weissman, 2011 : 179). While activism is a confrontational form of realising change, advocacy relies on building relationships
example, all the contributions give insight into the need to understand the political context in which humanitarianism operates, whether to deliver medical care, to prevent aid being co-opted, or to ensure the dignity of aid recipients used by agencies in their fundraising and communications. This issue is an important and timely reminder that politics matter in any humanitarian response, not least when dealing with infectious disease. Works Cited
. , Roberts , A. and Tornhill , S. ( 2018 ), ‘ Corporations, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Feminism Co-opted? ’, in Nölke , A. and May , C. (eds), Handbook of the International Political Economy of the Corporation ( Cheltenham
become important sources of political finance ( Geneva Call, 2021 ). In Yemen, the selective allocation of humanitarian aid is a means of rewarding constituency leaders ( al-Iriyani and Nasser, 2021 ). The DRC case study of Kasai was notable in that there was no substantial humanitarian operation to be co-opted, and the resources from those relief operations were insignificant compared to those available from mining ( Maxwell and Fitzpatrick, 2021 ). Humanitarian aid may
participants’ concerns over its constitutive elements: ‘scholar’ and ‘activist’. Next, we explore another set of concerns around the scholar-activist identity, this time related to the currency the term carries. This currency, we show, makes the term susceptible to institutional co-optation and to being overclaimed by academics. With these problematics in mind, and notwithstanding some value in the identification, we suggest that scholar-activism is more usefully thought of as something that one does , rather than something that one is . Claiming a
This chapter examines labour relations from 1992 – the year billed as the start of the reconstruction period – until the last wage rise in 2012. This salary increase poignantly exemplifies the total co-optation and breakdown of the labour movement. The reconstruction period witnessed an active movement between 1992 and 1997, followed by fragmentation and total deactivation from the early 2000s. How and why did the labour movement fall apart, and what were the implications for Lebanon’s sectarian-liberal model
many reasons, and mass protest against racist violence formed part of a wider movement of Black rebellion. Where will this all end? Rebellion, repression and co-optation in the 1980s Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, militarised policing, mass imprisonment of suspect communities and other forms of violence were generally reserved for Britain’s colonies. The account of the repression of strikes in Trinidad earlier in the chapter provided one example. Kenya and Malaya (detailed in Chapter 4 ) provide key cases in which the army and police were