Wallace McNeish

Resisting Colonisation: The Politics of Anti-Roads Protesting

Habermas (1976, 1987) argued that the incremental extension of state authority coupled with economic restructuring in advanced capitalism has generated an ongoing crisis of legitimation. A primary manifestation of this crisis is the growth of new movements of protest and resistance which are a reaction against the dominant paradigm of unmitigated capitalist growth and the concomitant expansion of a technical logic and instrumental rationality which impoverishes culture, democracy and the environment. Using quantitative data from a postal survey of the social and political attitudes of protesters affiliated to the national anti-roads coalition Alarm UK, and qualitative data from in-depth interviews with individual activists and protesters,1 I shall argue that the highly innovative and oppositional anti-roads protests which have taken place in recent years in the UK are a prime example of what Habermas describes as ‘resistance to the colonisation of the lifeworld’.

From revelation to revolution: apocalypticism in green politics

ABSTRACT Apocalyptic narratives in green politics have provoked much controversy about questions of rhetoric and framing. Critics argue that constant warnings about impending environmental collapse demoralise and demobilise the public, while advocates argue that dire predictions embody a realism necessary if the radical collective action required for a green transition is to be taken. This is not just a debate about the tactics of presentation; at a substantive ideological level, the multilayered questions raised by apocalypticism cut to the heart of significant divisions in the green movement between radical and mainstream currents concerning their orientation to structures of political and economic power. Comparisons with the contested historical tradition of apocalyptics in Christian theology shed light upon the dynamic tensions between movement insurgency and institutionalisation. Apocalypticism has played a key role in framing the green critique of capitalist modernity and is intrinsically connected to the formulation of utopic alternatives. In both theory and practice, it remains the animating spirit of radical environmentalism.

Contracting the Right to Roam

In recent decades, the emergence of environmental ethics has added extra dimensions of complexity to the leisure political terrain upon which the right to roam is contested. In this chapter, two very different but influential versions of the social contract will be juxtaposed to bring the key arguments into high relief. On the one hand, Hardin’s eco-Hobbesian Tragedy of the Commons (1968/2000) thesis, and on the other, Rawls’ Kant-inspired A Theory of Justice (1971). It will be argued that Hardin’s pessimistic, exclusionary and potentially authoritarian conclusions are incompatible with the allocation of rights and duties in liberal democratic societies. Hardin should therefore be rejected in favour of an interpretative development of Rawls which designates the right to roam as a primary social good that is compatible with a conception of justice as sustainable fairness—an ideal which can be used to inform an inclusive environmentally sensitive leisure citizenship.

Critical Perspectives on the Games Industry: Constructs and Collusion

Douglas Coupland’s satirical novel Microserfs (1996) explores the lives of a group of technology geeks who work as low-level programmers and testers at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond near Seattle in the mid-1990s. Through Daniel’s blog style diary entries their motivations, hopes and dreams are revealed as they are gradually tempted to relocate to Silicon Valley in California by the lure of being in at the start of a new and exciting games software project. Coupland draws upon months of observational research in both of the novel’s dramatic locations to capture the optimistic zeitgeist of the time in the American software industry, and anticipates the technology boom and dot.com bubble of the late 1990s. The novel is laced with ironic knowingness which reveals much about the difference between the projected self-image of the software industry, the realities of the business and the everyday lives of its workforce. The self-image of the software developers is that they are creative cultural entrepreneurs working in a cooperative, casual, flexible and open campus-style white space environment, where motivations to work long hours are derived less from financial reward than from artistic, technical and personal developmental compensations. In sociological terms, the developers are ideal typical members of Florida’s creative class who share a common identity through adherence to a creative ethos which is inseparable from their economic function, and determines similar social, cultural and leisure choices (Florida, 2004).

Aides à l’emploi des jeunes dans l’UE

Hilfsmassnahmen zur beschaftigung der jugendlichen in der EU ; ; Auf der Grundlage einer im Rahmen des europaischen Leonardo Programms in acht Landern durchgefuhrten Studie heben die Autoren eine gewisse Anzahl von Konvergenzen hervor : Ubergang von einer auf die Beschaftigung gerichtete Perspektive zu einer Achse, die Integration und Erziehung bevorzugt sowie die Entwicklung von Logiken, die hauptsachlich die Fragen von Standpunkt der Einstellbarkeit aus privilegieren ; schwache Berucksichtigung der Logiken des Angebots im Gegensatz zu dem, was behauptet wird ; Fortbestand von starken Ungleichheiten je nach Geschlechtern. Uber diese Konvergenzen hinaus erscheinen eine gewisse Anzahl von Unterschieden, die auf verschiedene Standpunkte im Hinblick auf die Begriffe von Integration und Burger zuruckzufuhren sind. Anhand der Konvergenzen und der Unterschiede kann man funf grosse Kategorien definieren.