Patricia Mooney Nickel

A Critique of the Discourse of Marketized Philanthropy

Philanthropy has received increased attention in recent years and is an important focus for social theorists concerned with discourse. The authors argue that the transformative potential of philanthropy—its potential to represent the need for and bring about social change—is increasingly lost in the current market-based discourse of philanthropy that includes consumption of products (i.e., cause-related marketing) and consumption of media and celebrities (i.e., “charitainment”) as the basis for benevolent human relations. This marketization of philanthropy depoliticizes the relationship between the market and the negative impacts it has on human well-being, thereby making philanthropy less likely to catalyze substantive social change. In this article, the authors argue that in fast capitalism philanthropy must be distinguished from the market, narrate on behalf of the marginalized, and be rewritten independent of the necessity of the market and marginality.

Philanthropy in an Era of Global Governance

The contemporary emphasis on philanthropic action represents a significant shift in the locus of responsibility for human well-being. Once regarded as the province of national governments, social policy is increasingly regarded as the legitimate enterprise of non-state philanthropic actors. We contend that global governance has created space for the emergence of philanthropic governors who make social policy through the accumulation and discretionary redistribution of wealth, thus depoliticizing discourse about global governance by reducing the visibility of the market and its negative impact on human well-being. First, we demonstrate how philanthropy and social policy are related as the politics of well-being. Second, we explore how philanthropic governing capacity as the redistribution of wealth becomes depoliticized and subsequently ends vital discourse about the relationship between the market and well-being. Finally, we conclude that philanthropic governing capacity raises serious questions about who is responsible for human well-being in an era of global governance.

Philanthromentality: celebrity parables as technologies of transfer

The way in which individualised acts of attention-seeking by celebrities become entertaining scripts of subjectivity for a population that is increasingly aware of an overall decline in well-being offers a lens into the ways in which excessive celebrity selves and their philanthropic temperance have become ascetic cues directed at the stability of a global governing regime. In this essay I argue that modern-day parables of philanthropic celebrities powerfully govern the oppositional impulse as they impart as sense of ‘benevolence’ in the form of an individualised disposition towards well-being and entitlement. I begin by considering how celebrated parables are continuous with previous governing practices aimed at the management of sense of well-being. I then observe the role of contemporary neoliberal parables of philanthromentality in the construction of a new asceticism of global capitalism, to which celebrities contribute. I conclude that these parables represent technologies of governing that operate through the celebration of a philanthropic ascetic that facilitates the continued suppression of imagination about alternatives.

Public Sociology for Human Rights as Rites of Rule

This article critically considers Michael Burawoy’s ‘public sociology for human rights’ through the lens of Timothy W. Luke’s ‘rites of rule’. The author argues that, while admirable in its stated aim, public sociology for human rights neglects to reveal its roots in governmentality and thus does not recognize the empirical practice of human rights within cosmopolitan global governance as a shift to consolidated contragovernmentality. The author concludes that public sociology for human rights as it is currently framed stabilizes the practice of human rights as rites of rule in an attempt to stabilize knowledge and the relations that it orders.

Public Administration and/or Public Sociology Disciplinary Convergence and the Disciplinary Dispersion of Public Sentimentality

Lately, disciplinary vocabulary seems to be outpacing disciplinary transformation. Disciplinary turns of phrase are intensified in public administration not only because it is literally a governing vocabulary but also because the discipline has never been an easily definable area of scholarship or practice. Although public administration research thus far has been focused on transformations within the discipline, my focus here is outward, toward sociology as a “contributing discipline.” I explore through the lens of the disciplinary convergence of public administration and public sociology the disciplinary dispersion of a public sentimentality that hopes to diverge with the world as it is.Lately, disciplinary vocabulary seems to be outpacing disciplinary transformation. Disciplinary turns of phrase are intensified in public administration not only because it is literally a governing...

Haute Philanthropy: Luxury, Benevolence, and Value

Abstract In this essay I investigate the relationship between luxury, ostensible benevolence, and value as they are manifest in the production and reproduction of the pecuniary subject. I use haute philanthropy as a contrast medium through which we can understand the contemporary practice of value and subjectivity in relation to governing. I draw theorists of pecuniary relations together with contemporary understandings of subjectivity and suggest a framework for understanding under what conditions it becomes possible to portray global consumption of luxury as the cosmopolitan practice of benevolence. Against the image of a benevolent cosmopolitan subject, I argue that haute philanthropy facilitates reification of the hierarchy of pecuniary subjectivity upon which the sustained consumption of luxury depends.

Culture, Politics, and Governing: Contemporary Ascetics and the Pecuniary Subject

In Culture, Politics, and Governing, the study of contemporary ascetics provided me with a way to approach the practice of knowledge production and its intersection with cultural production that was able to take into account the institutionalization of authors and artists and the ways in which their practices were both governed and governing, often through valorization. Recently, I have worked to extend this framework to settings that are less obvious as sites for the production of governing knowledge: what Max Weber and Foucault discussed as ascetics, generated through what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called the culture industry. The contemporary culture industry produces an art of living genre that encourages pecuniary subjects who treat the self as a site for the production of value from which to practice valorized ascetics.In Culture, Politics, and Governing, the study of contemporary ascetics provided me with a way to approach the practice of knowledge production and its intersection with cultural production that was able to take into account the institutionalization of authors and artists and the ways in which their practices were both governed and governing, often through valorization. Recently, I have worked to extend this framework to settings that are less obvious as sites for the production of governing knowledge: what Max Weber and Foucault discussed as ascetics, generated through what Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno called the culture industry. The contemporary culture industry produces an art of living genre that encourages pecuniary subjects who treat the self as a site for the production of value from which to practice valorized ascetics.

Celebration and Governing: The Production of the Author as Ascetic Practice

This essay explores the power relations inherent to the contemporary practice of celebration of author production and present relations of governing. I explore such practices of celebration as a lens for understanding the role of valorization of the author in knowledge production, arguing that celebration can act as an ascetic technology that governs potentially transformative critical subjectivities. I begin with an exploration of the relationship between celebration and governing. Next, I consider the production of the author within this regime of governing as a production of celebration, focusing on the ways in which contemporary knowledge production prizes visibility as a source of valorization. Finally, I conclude that the valorization of visibility achieved through celebration discourages critical thought about the underlying assumption that productivity and quantification manifest in visibility are the exclusive foundations of judgment about contemporary knowledge production and its contribution to human well-being.

The Institutionalization of Author Production and the Performance Imperative as an Ontological Fiction

On 16 May 1967 Alexander Solzhenitsyn signed his name to an open letter to the Fourth Writers’ Congress in the Soviet Union. The letter — addressed to the Congress, members of the Soviet Writers’ Union, and editors of literary newspapers and magazines — called for the abolition of all censorship and “defence of Union members subjected to slander and unjust persecution.”1 Solzhenitsyn typed 250 copies of the letter and, to avoid spreading the risk of being associated with its contents, addressed the envelopes in his own hand.2 In the letter, Solzhenitsyn challenged the Union’s use of “censorious labels” such as “ideologically harmful” and “depraved.”3 In support of his claims, Solzhenitsyn detailed his own experience, listing eight specific instances of the persecution to which he was subjected, including the confiscation and sequestering of his writing with the effect of his work being “smothered, gagged, and slandered.”4

North American Critical Theory after Postmodernism

North American Critical Theory after Postmodernism explores the emergence of a generation of critical theorists whose lives and scholarship unfolded in the midst of what has been called ‘the postmodern turn.’ I locate this generation in the 1970s and 1980s in the work of Ben Agger, Andrew Arato, Robert J. Antonio, Seyla Benhabib, Craig Calhoun, Nancy Fraser, Douglas Kellner, and Timothy W. Luke. While certainly not a comprehensive list of the North American critical theorists who belong to this tradition, each of these authors offers a contemporary statement on critical theory, builds on the work of Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School, and engages sagaciously with postmodernism1 without proposing a radical break from the tradition of emancipatory telos and the practice of immanent critique. This unique engagement results for each author in an evolving and distinctly political perspective on varying contemporary themes.