Suzan Ilcan

Capacity-Building: The Neoliberal Governance of Development

ABSTRACT In the post-cold war era of trade liberalization, a wide range of new economic and social processes is influencing the mechanisms of policy decision-making and the transformations of governance at international, national, and local levels. We consider many of these developments as taking place within a form of governance that can be referred to as “neoliberal governance.” This form of governance involves new ways of thinking about governing populations, regions, and groups that hinge on mechanisms of decentralization, privatization, and individualization. Within the context of developing a critique of neoliberal governance, in this paper we highlight the specific global knowledge practices that are linked to what we refer to as the knowledge economy of capacity-building.

Citizenship, Human Rights, and Social Justice

Despite continuous struggles on the part of disenfranchised and marginalized peoples throughout the world, and various initiatives undertaken by national states and international organizations, social justice remains an unattainable goal for many diverse groups and populations. By “social justice” we mean an equitable distribution of fundamental resources and respect for human dignity and diversity, such that no minority group’s life interests and struggles are undermined and that forms of political interaction enable all groups to voice their concerns for change. In light of this definition, we have been witnessing growing injustice in the past few decades, as access to resources is increasingly becoming more inequitable and new groups of people have become targets of racism and amplified vigilance due to their identity. These trends prompt us to interrogate the ways in which notions of citizenship and human rights (the two philosophical traditions rooted in principles of equality) have been employed by national and international agencies and organizations to either promote social justice or deny it. It is likewise important to explore how the use of certain concepts of citizenship brings about respect or disregard for human rights and, conversely, how human rights principles shape notions of citizenship. Human rights are distinct from citizenship rights. The notion of citizenship has three inter-related dimensions: political participation, rights and obligations, and membership in a political community (Cohen, 1999). The modern concept of citizenship links rights and political participation membership to a nation-state. The human rights tradition, institutionalized through the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, disassociates rights from membership in a bounded community by making rights universal (Teeple, 2005). Thus, the cross-border movements of peoples, such as labour migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, are subject to an international human rights regime (see Benhabib, 2004, p. 7). In this regard, human rights can be presented as conceptually distinct from citizenship, and some researchers (for example, Kiwan, 2005) believe they should not be conflated.

Spaces of Governance: Gender and public sector restructuring in Canada

While the literature on economic restructuring tends to understand neoliberalism as a uniform governance ideology or economic-political reality, we suggest that it is more useful to understand neoliberalism as a loosely knit assemblage of programmatic efforts that consist of various political rationalities and practices of rule that aim to manage social conduct. The paper focuses on the various ways that these efforts are connected to complex state rescaling processes in Canada. Specifically, the first part of the paper examines the restructuring of nation-state responsibilities in social service and security provisions. It illustrates the shift toward a new citizenship regime that renders women as active agents who are responsible for solving problems in an individualized manner. The second part of the paper exemplifies how neoliberal programmatic efforts create new spaces of governance, particularly those of flexibility through non-standard work. The massive rescaling of the public sector, the decreasing demand for womens ‘traditional’ occupations, and the increasing prevalence of women in non-standard work arrangements constitute women as political-economic subjects in new ways. We analyze these processes using data drawn from in-depth interviews with personnel in the Canadian Federal Public Service. We outline some of the implications these initiatives have had on public service programmes and various public sector groups. Additionally, we provide a selection of individual accounts of public sector restructuring and gendered work by professionals and contract workers employed in the public service, and offer empirical illustrations of the contentions surrounding neoliberal restructuring initiatives.

Syrian refugees in Turkey: pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights

ABSTRACT This article addresses the question of how to understand the relation among precarity, differential inclusion, and citizenship status with regard to Syrian refugees in Turkey. Turkey has become host to over 2.7 million Syrian refugees who live in government-run refugee camps and urban centres. Drawing on critical citizenship and migration studies literature, the paper emphasises the Turkish government’s central legal and policy frameworks that provide Syrians with some citizenship rights while simultaneously regulating their status and situating them in a position of limbo. Syrians are not only making claims to citizenship rights but they are also negotiating their access to social services, humanitarian assistance, and employment in different ways. The analysis stresses that Syrian refugees in Turkey continue to be part of the multiple pathways to precarity, differential inclusion, and negotiated citizenship rights.

Governing through empowerment: Oxfam's global reform and trade campaigns

Abstract Within the context of globalization and governmentality studies, this essay analyses Oxfams global reform and trade campaigns as a form of governance. These campaigns are based on advanced liberal programmes of empowerment which aim to shape poverty relations and the conduct of the poor in the ‘developing’ world. Oxfams campaign to ‘Make Trade Fair’ and its influential report on ‘Rigged rules and double standards’ serve as a basis from which to understand the organizations governing practices, and how these are embedded in the NGOs programme statements and policy documents. Following Barbara Cruikshanks insights on the will to empower, we argue that self-management and self-empowerment have been tirelessly put forward by Oxfam as solutions to poverty which have in turn obscured this organizations means of government.

Peasant struggles and social change: migration, households and gender in a rural Turkish society.

This article sheds light on the interrelationship of seasonal migration, subsistence production and peasant relations in a community (Sakli) located in Turkeys northwestern countryside. Most studies argue that rural outmigration is either an adaptation to persistent unemployment or a phenomenon resulting from pressures and counterpressures in the social relations of production. These approaches tend to overlook the specific features of rural culture and power in determining conditions for seasonal migration and its effects on social relations. While migrant labor is understood by local villagers as forming part of a continual battle to preserve local tradition and kinship ties, this article shows how it reduces the dominion of landlords while creating internal household differentiation and gendered hierarchies.

Global Governing Organizations Order-Building and Waste Management

This article concerns how particular global governing organizations are involved in global order-building. Drawing upon studies of globalization and governmentality, it suggests that global governing organizations generate multi faceted connections among peoples and territories, and engender new dislocations and social injustices for various groups and populations. Through the use of archival research, policy documents and field interviews with United Nations policy and research personnel, the article demonstrates how global order-building attempts to interconnect and make interdependent certain parts of the world and particular social practices while making others redundant and undesirable. In expanding Baumans concept of order-building, the author argues that global order-building is premised on waste management initiatives to control seemingly unruly lives and social practices. It operates through ‘technologies of agency’ seeking to enhance possibilities for individuals and groups to undertake self-improvement initiatives. Global order-building shapes new forms of conduct dependent upon many types of knowledge, capacities and skills, with shifting effects for questions of social justice.

The Folding of Liberal Government: Contract Governance and the Transformation of the Public Service in Canada

“Supply correct abstract” Despite renewed interest in the Schmittian problematic of the exception as the constitutive principle of the political, the full significance of Schmitts political philosophy remains underestimated. Starting from Schmitts account of the relation between the constituted order and its constitutive principle, the decision on exception.

Responsible Expertise Governing the Uncertain Subjects of Biotechnology

Viewing biotechnology as a lens through which to analyse new ways of governing populations, in this article we consider how the United Nations has globally communicated biotechnology’s risks, uncertainties and opportunities to develop and expand what we refer to as ‘responsible expertise’. We specifically examine the activities of UNESCO and the FAO to show how these organizations operate as agencies of rule by, on the one hand, marshalling expertise about biotechnology to identify populations ‘at risk’ and, on the other, capturing the imagination of people as responsible subjects with appropriate expertise to manage their own uncertain futures. As an orientation that engages both expert knowledge and moral judgement, the promotion of responsible expertise around the world signals a strategic shift in the UN’s efforts to tame bio-technology for the everyday decision-maker.

Circulations of Insecurity: Globalizing Food Standards In Historical Perspective

The new millennium is a time to reflect on the standards that feed our perceptions of change and uncertainty in our so-called modern world. In the context of this volume, it is especially useful to explore how our contemporary views of food insecurity, especially as defined in terms of disease, malnutrition and overpopulation, have their links to earlier efforts to create order and reduce risks related to the production and supply of food around the world. This chapter identifies and discusses various ways in which the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations relied on modern scientific thinking and practice to standardize approaches to thinking about world food and agriculture issues immediately following World War II. At the time, this approach paralleled other interests and initiatives to continue control of specific national and local territories and their production and trade efforts, as well as to reduce the political risks posed by food insecurities in a Cold War world. More specifically, this chapter emphasizes how building a global model of food consumption was based on an effort to set aside the diversity of food and people in the world and to make these categories comparable. This was accomplished through a process that involved mapping food and human bodies, and rendering them separable from their localities, and then stabilizing them as representations of standardized units that could be compared. In addition, we consider the ways in which the FAO has been involved in identifying, managing, and communicating information on risks related to food production and consumption, as well as global food stability and security. This attention to the relations of risk and food standardization is critical to understanding current international thinking about improving and stabilizing food production.