Jonathan's Writings and Resources and stuff

What's Wrong with Education ?

2008-12-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

What follows is an edited version of a report I wrote for my PGCE qualification on “Quality” in the modern education system based on my own experience of teaching in a Further Education college.

I have changed certain aspects of the content so as not to identify the institution, although my scathing criticisms are of the adoption of TQM in what should be a part of the service sector and not of the college itself which, like all such institutions have no choice other than to play the TQM game. I argue below that the modern education system is not aimed at primarily meeting the needs of either students (as most such institutions constantly proffer) or ‘society’ in the broader context of social structures outside the corporate/capitalist ethos.

One thing I would have changed as a result of my experience is my general regard for the computer student-tracking system. I am now much more critical of this because, in ways I should have foreseen given what I have said below, it’s validity results largely from how staff determine which factors about students are important and how individual students are perceived by staff.

It’s pretty boring as well as I had to fulfil various criteria in terms of content, but if you are interested in such matters….read from about the section on “Quality Management at X FE college” if you don’t know how such places work or perhaps from “Criticisms of TQM in Practice” if you do.

TQM in Education – In Whose Interest?

In this piece I will examine the rise and influence of Total Quality Management (TQM) in education and relating it to my own experiences as a Humanities and Applied Social Sciences lecturer at X FE college. This will include a section on some of the ways in which my own teaching is evaluated. I will also assert the view that TQM primarily prioritises the needs of corporatism and individualist, economic growth rather than those of more communitarian needs such as equality and social justice.

What is Quality?

Dictionary definitions of quality tend to be concerned with issues connected with the characteristics that something has and also with its degree of ‘excellence’. Common-sense or street definitions lean towards the idea that quality really means high quality, so that a ‘quality’ item may have characteristics which include being precision designed and built, luxurious, robust and desirable. In other words the everyday understanding is an absolute definition of quality – that the item or service has been produced or delivered to the highest achievable, unsurpassable standard. Such a definition is now considered elitist in education where a relative definition is employed. This has two aspects to it – firstly that teaching, learning (and the increasingly complex systems put into place to optimise the learning environment) should measure up to pre-set specifications so that they can be tested, and secondly that customer requirements should be met.

Quality in education has been adapted from its original application to the commercial, private sector (see origins of this later in “Who is the main customer?”). Its first form was that of Quality Control. This concept requires the use of quality experts to test and evaluate finished products so that a characteristic of this method is that measures ensuring quality are made after the event resulting in a lot of waste when those products which don’t measure up are discarded.

The expert definition of quality (i.e. as evaluated by the quality controller) was later superseded by a producer definition within the within the concept of Quality Assurance. Rather than measuring quality after the event, quality assurance demands that systems are put into place so that a quality product is ensured before production begins. Rather than reliance on individual expertise there is a much greater emphasis on teamwork. Team members consult in order to decide how to employ best practice before, during and after the event so that production faults can be eliminated and processes and protocols guide good practice.

The move towards team, rather than individual involvement in quality demands that much more staff training. Corporations have become increasingly involved with initiatives such as investment in people because of the significance given to the need for team members to be kept up to date with best practice by attending appropriate seminars and the like so that they can be proactive in discussions within their own team in ensuring quality. With this came an evolutionary shift towards what would be termed Total Quality Management (TQM).

From production forms of quality control through corporatist team working and quality assurance the move towards TQM coincided with an increasing focus within public sector bodies to compete for markets i.e. to operate as a business. This meant that schools and colleges for example compete (and select) for students, directing their marketing activities towards prospective students and their parents. The publication of league tables and the formation of bodies to promote quality have played a central role here (and one to which we will return later).

A key characteristic of TQM is the sovereign position of the customer. A customer based focus is supposed to ensure that the customer gets what s/he wants, how s/he wants it and when s/he wants it. The movement away from the expert quality controller to team is stronger still – to the extent that each individual team member takes responsibility for their own application of quality issues in their own area and receives ongoing training to supplement their own expertise. Individuals are expected to self-manage and old management styles are turned upside down (as in the upside-down pyramid model, see www.harvardmaint.com/pyramid.html ). Lecturers are relatively free to operate within their own area as they see fit as long is seen to be effective in monitoring. As well as evaluation and observations to moderate quality, teams meet with co-workers and management staff in quality circles to brainstorm ideas (along with feedback from student results, testing bodies and so on) with a strong emphasis on continual improvement.

Bodies Involved in Quality Improvement

The following is a brief trawl through some of the significant systems and bodies employed with a view to ensure quality within the TQM philosophy.

ISO 9001:2000

The ISO 9000 series has become the worlds most dominant quality standard permeating many areas in the public and private sectors and it is now part and parcel of total quality philosophy and methodology and serves as the mainstay of TQM. Its main principles are customer focus, leadership, involvement of people, the utilisation of processes and systems, continual improvement, objectivity through decisions based on testable results and mutually beneficial supplier relationships. ISO 9001:200 focuses on standards for the systems in operation rather than standards of achievement. So the emphasis is on trying to ensure the delivery of appropriate systems which will include effective monitoring and feedback mechanisms to promote continual improvement. www.qualitymanual.co.uk

Investors In People

A staff-focused system launched in the early 1990s with an emphasis on national standards of good practice in staff training and development. Again the orientation is towards a business philosophy in improving competitiveness and the achievement of business goals. External auditors regularly meet with organisations employing IIP to collate evidence for the effectiveness of all the organisation’s commitment, planning and systems of evaluation utilized to meet current and future needs of staff in terms of maximising business outcomes. During an audit issues will be discussed with staff representatives and feedback will be delivered to the organisation in terms of actions to be taken in order to effect the development of people skills which promote business goals. http://www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA)

The QCA controls standards in education and training in schools and colleges. It works in tandem with the DFES (the Department for Education and Skills) and their work together can be seen as having two main strands; firstly on promoting inclusion by (an increasingly individually focused) development people’s learning so that everyone has access to reaching a level of educational achievement which is as high as possible and secondly, promotion of a competitive economy. Increasingly a considerable level of educational attainment is considered as a prerequisite for Britain’s economic success to correspond to changes from a predominantly production/manufacturing economy to a service one likely to rely heavily on a more highly educated workforce. Increasingly the QCA have thus been more heavily involved with the development of national occupational standards of training and appraisal systems in the workplace outside of schools and colleges. http://www.qca.org.uk/aboutQCA.aspx

The Learning and Skills Council (LSC)

Founded in 2001 the LSC’s remit covers F.E. work-placed training and development, learning in the community and guidance for adults. It does this partly by fostering links with important partners employers and business development quangos such as business link. The LSC also works alongside the learning and skills development agency which is, in effect a resource base for education and training in the post 16 sector and supporting quality management in colleges and increasingly in recent years, within work places.

The role of the LSC is twofold in firstly planning for the (immediate and long-term) future of post 16 education channelling funding in such a way as is thought to be most productive in terms of what might be thought of as “meeting the needs of society” i.e. in providing for the economic growth of the country. A stated mission is that by 2010 young people and adults in the UK will have “the knowledge and skills matching the best in the world” www.lsc.gov.uk. The organisation works through a raft of related structures such as business and employment services, connexions and training organisations as well as F.E. and sixth form colleges.

Like so many other organisations involved in TQM the LSC uses strategies to improve the educational success of individuals and the wider economic success of the country. The primary impact in colleges is perhaps its role in providing, channelling and diverting funding. It is funding, and where it is targeted which largely determines what colleges do – which courses they put on or scrap. http://www.lsc.gov.uk/aboutus.cfm

The Office For Standards in Education (OFSTED)

OFSTED comes under the umbrella organisation the Adult Learning Inspectorate which is…

“…responsible for inspecting the quality of education and training for adults and young people in England, raising standards and reporting its findings back to both the Secretary of State for Education and the public” (http://www.lsc.gov.uk/Jargonbuster/Adult+Learning+Inspectorate+(ALI).htm)

OFTSTED itself is highly influential in the day to day activities and the long-term planning in schools and colleges. Founded in the 1990s their role is implementing and managing the school and college inspections. The reason for the enormity of its influence is this: If educational establishments are now operating in effect as businesses, then it is OFSED (along with results data and league-table rankings) which largely dictate how successful or otherwise an educational establishment is with an important bearing on activities, funding and even (e.g. in the case of ‘failing schools’) on the continuation of individual schools and colleges. A huge effect in terms of resources and staff-hours goes into meeting criteria used to measure the effectiveness of quality systems in place, how they are exorcised and what actually occurs in the classroom. http://www.ofsted.gov.uk.

Life Long Learning UK (LLUK)

LLUK has a major influence on the day to day activities of individual lecturers because it is largely responsible for setting the professional standards (formally FENTO standards) required of F.E. teachers. The standards relate to seven key areas which any proficient lecturer should demonstrate (Reece and Wlaker, 2003, Appx 1.): Assessing learner needs, planning and preparation of teaching, managing the learning process, providing support, assessing learner needs and planning future practice in light of self evaluation and reflection. The development and promotion of standards is a key way in which quality assurance is maintained. One of the outcomes on recent years is in the obligation of all F.E. teachers to have undertaken a teaching qualification endorsed by LLUK/FENTO. http://www.lifelonglearninguk.org

Quality Management at X FE college

The college has an array of quality systems certified to ISO90001:2000 maintained and revised by the business manager. The three overriding concerns in terms of quality measurement are retention (has the student stayed on the course?), achievement (what were her/his final grades?) and value added (how did student results compare with predicted results based on national findings?). Each student is allocated a minimum projected grade at the start of the year and progress is monitored by teams of teaching and managerial staff. Courses are analysed by teams and a review of each course is undertaken at the end of each term, special attention being given to underperforming courses. In addition external moderation of courses takes place from time to time (e.g. with a non-college representative of a relevant examination body). Course meetings are attended by teachers, managers and student representatives, feedback is analysed and action plans formulated to ensure continuing improvement.

Every year student (and staff) satisfaction surveys are carried out, results analysed and appropriate resultant action taken. Recently X FE college has also started to instigate focus groups with classes with a view to getting more qualitative data on student learning experiences.

All teaching staff are involved in regular classroom observations which may include peer observations and once per year an observation focussing on different or innovative forms of delivery. Staff are obliged to be attentive to the need to constantly develop and update their skills by attending appropriate meetings and seminars (e.g. on new legislation or on good practice). Teachers keep a continuing professional development file to log their teaching qualifications, reflections and plans for future development. Lecturers on the college payroll are required to spend 5 days in industrial experience outside the college for every 2 year period. Staff appraisals are devised to identify any issues needs and development requirements of individual teachers on the college payroll.

Computer databases and programmes are key to the colleges data analysis, the tracking of student progress (including student issues identified and targets set), course reviews, record keeping and so on as well as a comprehensive reference store for college policies and significant national policies (e.g. every child matters, Data Protection etc).

Quality audits are undertaken from time to time in curriculum or functional areas as well as college-wide audits. These are very important as failure to correct a single non-compliance identified in the event of an external assessment would result in the colleges removal of its certification to ISO9001.

Criticisms of TQM in Practice

In evaluating TQM we might start by suggesting generally that any system which understands and measures success in terms mainly of statistical data on retention, student results and value added is bound to be reductionist to an extent. To boil down all the experiences and mental processes that go into a classroom or school/college environment to sets of numerical data is going to miss out an awful lot of qualitative information. That said TQM emphasises an approach which looks at the processes involved not just final outcomes and there is a move to give increasing attention to the student experience or ‘voice’ (see appendix A).

At X FE college student progress is monitored using a ‘student tracker’ computer program as well as through regular team meetings and resultant reviews of student progress and issues. Student issues are open to differing interpretation and misinterpretation however and depends partly on things such as the kind of communication which goes on between staff and students and/or their parents/guardians. For example while one student who is regularly missing deadlines and has poor attendance may be labelled as ‘lazy’ or ‘unmotivated’, another in the same situation may be viewed as managing very well in difficult home/private circumstances (i.e. it might depend on the students skill in communicating/providing evidence for problems outside their academic life). While words such as ‘lazy’ are deemed too subjective for use in reports and data records, they are still used in discussions with students in meetings and this affects how such reports are written and how the students are regarded by staff.

Similarly, although focus groups are giving a more qualitative insight into the experience of students and how well the college is meeting their needs, the findings are inevitably refracted through the attitudes and views (and biases) of teachers. Team meetings to discuss focus group findings which I have been involved with have tended to look at each point made by the students in turn and decide firstly whether or not it is a valid point. It could be said that this is where teacher professionalism comes in but nevertheless a certain amount of bias is bound to affect on the level of validity assigned to each point and how they are acted upon.

Student surveys are largely quantitative in nature and reveal little insight into students feelings about their courses but provide useful data and are arguably counterbalanced by the focus groups mentioned above.

Observations organised by the college not only allow teachers to develop their skills but also ensures that come an OFSTED inspection, staff should be adequately rehearsed to sail through an official observation. Graded or informal observations are very stressful for teachers and are limited by tight criteria which may restrict the scope of what a lesson may consist of and how it develops but the powers that be seem to be more aware of the stress involved as OFSTED, for example are introducing lighter touch observational methods in many instances. I can also say that observations do seem to become less stressful the more of them you experience! I have found peer observations particularly useful in developing ideas to bring to my own sessions.

Staff appraisals do not apply to agency staff such as myself, who may be largely left in the dark as to how the college views their progress, relying solely on informal feedback from colleagues (apart from the classroom observations).

The myriad of systems employed to deal with data is dominated by computerised systems. Some of these are more user-friendly than others. I find the ‘student tracker’ system (discussed earlier) particularly good as it easily allows access to any issues of individual learners, what agreements they have come to and update the files as necessary. On the other hand I have spent long periods looking for some document or other on the college Staff Information System and my heart sinks when I’m told “it’s on CIS”! Teaching staff (as with other public sector workers who operate business-orientated TQM systems now have to deal with enormous amounts of paperwork in order for the systems to work efficiently) all the ‘i’s must be dotted and ‘t’s crossed and this takes a lot of time and personal resources away from teaching itself.

In Whose Interest is TQM?

What makes a good college? One answer could be a college which looks to the individual needs of the students and helps them to achieve what they want in order to progress happily/successfully on to the next stage of their lives. Another possible answer is one which employs effective number crunching tools in order to produce desirable data outcomes which translate as ‘good results’ and push it high into the league tables and earn higher status (and economic rewards) for the institution and its staff. The two answers are not necessarily produced by the same thing. Two questions we might ask regarding this are to what extent does the data (results) reflect reality? And which customer in modern education, is given most importance?

How Valid is the Data?

The data systems employed are complex and a detailed analysis is beyond the scope of this piece. However certain issues are clear. Firstly a college can obtain good results by selecting students who achieved well at school in the first place. The results thereby being largely a reflection of the selection procedure rather than in-house education, though a growing emphasis on value added is likely to alleviate this problem to some extent. Another issue involves the motivations (and biases) at work in how data is produced. It is well known that in business ‘creative accounting’ is often used to reduce overheads such as tax (e.g. a night-out which put down as a business expense). If a colleges funding, prestige (and the pay levels of its staff) is directly influenced by its results (i.e. attendance, achievement and value added data) then it makes sense that an ambitious college must employ clever accountants. Similarly the success of individual teaching staff is dependant on their results so teachers are also under pressure to cook the books to some extent. I know that for instance on some struggling courses (i.e. ones which may be pulled, possibly putting some staff out of work if results don’t improve), teachers are sometimes under pressure to ensure that all the remaining students pass. The resultant marking may not then be as objective as in other circumstances! I also know of several cases where teachers have understandably made sure that students complete necessary tutorial forms even when the students have not actually done the work which these forms represent. In this way staff and students knowingly play the game, colluding with each other in order to avoid ‘unnecessary’ paperwork and extra hoops to jump through (in my experience A level tutorial workload is regarded with cynicism by many staff and students alike). Arguably the main role of data produced in general is in being seen to do the right thing rather than actually doing it.

Who is the main customer?

TQM demands customer sovereignty but as Bottery (2003) points out, it is not clear “just who in education is the customer? student? parent? local community? business? Government?” etc.

As a teacher my main concern is the students as my main day to day activities revolve around helping them with their assignments and exam preparation. However this is not to say that this is the case for all teachers – for more ambitious teachers their status in the college/education system may be their prime concern.

We have to go back to the 1980s, Thatcher and the New Right to look at the origin of the perceived need to instil a business ethos in the public sector. The Right saw the public sector as being inefficient, unresponsive and run by “self-serving professionals” (ibid:62). At the same time “…public sector agendas concerned with questions of inequality were downplayed or even dropped” (ibid). The Thatcher years saw corporate/consumer versions of quality dominate and massive levels of inequality in Britain (e.g. mass unemployment – see Pierson, 1998). Successive (even Labour) governments have continued many Thatcherite themes and favoured corporate managerialism over equality Notwithstanding a raft of equal rights legislation and policies on things like the minimum wage, inequality remains an enormous problem. It could even be argued that a kind of corporate/capitalist hegemony imbues staff, learners and parents that in playing the game, it is the rules of the business ethic which must be adhered to and thus the economic ‘needs’ of the country in general and the profit margins of individual businesses.

Botters (2003) suggests that in embossing managerialism/corporatism, some important public sector values such as equality, justice and community have either been dropped or subsumed by private, managerialist values which promote the efforts of the self-interested individual over the needs of the many. For example it is clear in my short experience of teaching that articulate parents with the time and ability to arrange persuasive, skilfully played out meetings (so the middle classes have an important advantage) and adept as at getting their ‘problem’ son or daughter back on the course or given extra attention - from empathising middle class staff.

The idea of the student or parent as a customer assumes consumer choice (e.g. which they can exorcise by choosing a ‘better’ college). In reality students are often likely to go to their nearest college (and again, the middle classes are more likely to move area based on performance leagues). Even staff are reluctant to accept learners from too far away as they may end up dropping out (and spoiling the stats).

Recently myself and colleagues had the upsetting task of seeing some students thrown off a course primarily on their failure to meet attendance requirements (their motivation and written work had improved dramatically, a point which teaching staff urged on management). The said students were on a care course and the teachers involved saw them as having the right personal qualities to make excellent carers. Students seem more likely to ‘succeed’ if they are adept at playing the game and effectively producing appropriate documentary evidence for absences and delayed work (in a minor reflection of corporate concerns with producing effective documentary data), something which again ‘pushy parents’ and confident students are more proficient at.

Although students are given at least a nominal status of being the main customer (e.g. in college mission statements), I would argue that a modern college’s paramount concern is in producing ‘successful’ data which may be at odds with student experiences on the ground and that this is primarily for individualist, economic benefits. The divide between rich and poor evidently remains a serious issue in education (as in the UK) along with lack of social mobility. In spite of reams of policy on equality and diversity TQM appears to be doing little to hinder this gap and may even exacerbate it by favouring those with middle class orientations and promoting a managerial bias. Furthermore I would go on to suggest that education has not only become a by-product of the dominant business ethic but that it has become one of the systems for perpetuating and perhaps accelerating a business/managerial/corporate culture (see Gramsci, 1971 for the concept of a capitalist hegemony). As Tuckmann (1995) argues, TQM internalises the values and concepts of the market into every relationship so that even nominally liberalist egalitarian concepts like ‘empowerment’ and ‘participation’ are redefined within managerially defined notions of the concepts (e.g. someone is empowered…within in the allocation of business agendas).

The emphasis on the need for education to fulfil the economic needs of the country may be laudable but in ignoring communitarian needs it is also extremely blinkered. In a context of a globalised world in which national inequalities are wide and international ones extreme (and likely to be exacerbated by environmental changes) the reaffirment of more communitarian values in education is surely paramount, rather than a system primed mainly towards short-term economic ‘needs’ of the country.

Appendix Index

Appendix A: Representing the Learner Voice

Appendix B: Lesson Plan Pro-Forma

Appendix C: Example of Focus Group Student Feedback

Appendix C: Simple Survey on Classroom Activities
Websites Used
(All checked/accessed on 10/08/07)

http://www.harvardmaint.com/pyramid.html

http://www.qualitymanual.co.uk

http://www.investorsinpeople.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx

http://www.qca.org.uk/aboutQCA.aspx

http://www.lsc.gov.uk/aboutus.cfm

http://www.ofsted.gov.uk.

'We Are The Traffic'Inertia, Resistance and Potential for Change in an Auto-Hegemony

2007-09-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

'We Are The Traffic'Inertia, Resistance and Potential for Change in an Auto-Hegemony

1) Introduction
The Twentieth century has been the century of the car. Throughout the Western world, cars have come to dominate the minds of transport planners, been the subject of immense levels of state subsidy and developed into an 'essential' consumer item among the comparatively wealthy. Indeed the privately owned car has developed into a symbol of national industrial pride and individual affluence, synonymous with personalised freedom and status. As cars have become the dominant factor in the transport systems of industrial nations, they are have also increasingly been the focus of attention in relation to environmental concerns.
Throughout their history, cars have been the subject of efforts to control or diminish their 'negative' aspects, particularly in terms of public safety. In recent times, the continual growth of increasing car-domination as a dynamic, has itself become a subject of criticism as environmentalists and other interested groups have pointed to the 'folly' of continuing a pattern of development which both assumes, and provides for ever increasing car-use. Every attempt to control the 'negative' aspects of cars, (whether successful or not) have taken place during this continuing upward trend, and all overt efforts to question the logic of continuous car-growth itself have so-far failed to curtail it. Indeed, as corporations and governments pay ever more lip-service to the need to limit the car, nothing, it appears, seems able to stop its continued dominance and proliferation.
This study includes the perhaps novel idea that what might easily be portrayed as 'failures' in attempts to curtail car-growth may actually form part of the same dynamic of continued car-domination. The attempt will be made to illustrate that many of the efforts to restrict cars, and the promotion of transport 'alternatives', 'integration' and/or 'diversity' may conversely help to both legitimise car-use and help promote the cars' positive association with images of individual status and freedom thus continuing this mode of transports' pre-eminent position. Endeavours to provide for increased pedestrianisation, growing cycle-networks and high-technology rail links are subsumed into the dominant dynamic of car growth and the overriding car-first ethos. This is perhaps best illustrated in countries which have put into practice models of ecological modernisation, in which modernised transport systems, while making 'alternatives' more attractive, nevertheless remain merely alternative to the still-dominant car.
It will be argued here, that it is primarily in the social sphere in which long-standing symbolic associations of cars and 'freedom' are, to an extent, being undermined by new, countering images which symbolically connect 'the car' with images of 'destruction' and 'dependance'. Just as 'the car' has been perhaps the symbol of industrialist pride, for many environmental groups it has also become symbolic of short-term capitalistic greed and unbridled ecological destruction. The car's symbolic meaning in political and public realms has become contested, as contradictions concerning conceptions of freedom and dependance which surround it are increasingly revealed.

2) Capitalist Expansion and the Dynamic of Car Expansion

'Those who have taken the pains to search below the surface for the great tendencies of the age, know what a giant industry is struggling into being there. All signs point to the motor vehicle as the necessary sequence of methods of locomotion already established and approved. The growing needs of our civilisation demand it; the public believe in it, and await with lively interest its practical applications to the daily business of the world.' (From issue 1. of 'The Horseless Age', 1895, illustrated in Flink, 1970: 22).
Thus, as the end of the nineteenth century approached a discernibly favourable leaning towards the car could already be felt. The car seemed then (and at least until recently), as representative of a leap into a bright, scientific future in which technological advancements promised a modern, more affluent and more 'free' world. The notion of a world of motorised private traffic seemed also to forge a 'natural' bond with individualised conceptions of 'freedom' in a free-market, liberalised economy. The car could thus come to symbolise techno-scientific advancement , individual autonomy and capitalist industrial expansion, in short; everything that had come to be accepted as 'good' about liberal democracy in North American and European countries (Freund and Martin, 1993: 82), indeed, the degree of motorisation in a country often being taken as the measure of its level of democratisation (ibid).
The century that followed the pointed prediction made in 'The Horseless Age' (above), did indeed witness the emergence of a powerful car industry and a remarkable proliferation of 'horseless carriages' that came to dominate the transport systems and even entire urban landscapes of the 'developed' nations. The development of a major car industry can be seen as a product of an advanced capitalist society, shaped by its imperatives (in the movement of actors and products chasing profit), but it is also more than this, because a mature transport system based on individualised private transport, itself plays a prominent role in the promotion and reproduction of capitalist expansion:
'In general, auto-truck transport systems have provided capitalist enterprises with a new flexibility to reach markets and to de-centralize production......Auto-centered transport has an affinity with global capitalism not only because it is part of its infrastructure, but because it requires resource and energy-intense consumption.' (Freund and Martin, 1993: 172).
Paterson warns us against taking the massive expansion of the car industry for granted (Paterson, 2000: 262) and emphasises the degree to which a successful car industry (along with the related industries involving oil production and processing) has appeared to be a necessary precursor for high levels of economic success and the advancement of the capitalist system itself. Paterson asserts that this is not only due to the inherent flexibility (including acceleration of the movement of goods and people between places) offered by auto-transport (Paterson, 2000: 264, also noted by Freund and Martin,1993: 172) but also because of the symbolic significance of an association between the car and economic development. More generally, Paterson notes cultural assumptions which relate transport growth with the development (thus 'growth') of modern economies by both academics and transport planners (Paterson, 2000: 263). This is not least because a key factor in the economic reorganising of industrial production and the stimulation of the economy was instigated by the car industry itself, in the use of the assembly line, though a process named through its origins in the car industry: 'Fordism' (ibid: 262). This injected new stimuli for cycles of economic growth. 'Fordism ' therefore became central in 'legitimising the car's expansion, enabling the car to become perhaps the symbol of progress for most of the twentieth century' (ibid:262-263).
Paterson also emphasises the extent to which states have actively promoted the expansion of the car industry, indicating four facets of state promotion of the car that began in 1910 and continues to the present (Paterson, 2000: 265-268), these being; 1) road building, 2) the progressive downgrading of public transport, 3) the subsidisation of car-based infrastructure compared with other forms of travel and 4) incidences of collusion between states and the car industry to remove competition (Paterson, 2000: 266). Provision for cars demanded extensive programmes of well surfaced roads and associated infrastructure for parking, refuelling and so on. Much of this infrastructure was primarily or solely designed for cars and built at the either de facto or overt exclusion of other (potential) road users, seen for example in parking lots designed to be physically too small to allow the entrance of buses (ibid), and the eventual spread of motorways 'designed and regulated to be used solely by motorised transport - bicycles and pedestrians (being) explicitly excluded by them' (ibid). As states put greater investments into private-car initiatives, public transport has correspondingly been downgraded and neglected. If railways had been the previously 'dominant' form of travel (at least in terms of long distance, cross-country journeys), Western nations have tended to heavily prioritise road funding over that of rail and other means of public transport (Wolf, 1996: 75-81).
Furthermore, the kind of language surrounding the funding of differing means of transport has been used in such a way as to place the funding of car-related infrastructure in a positive light and that of other kinds in a negative one. Funding of public transport initiatives has continually been referred to in terms of 'subsidy' while that for roads has been talked of within the language of 'investment' thus placing public transport in a relatively precarious position when it comes to justifying the demand for tax-payers money, (more aspects of symbolic differentiation between car-based transport and other kinds is a subject that will be returned to later).
Paterson's fourth facet of state promotion of the car is that regarding incidents of direct collusion between states and car manufacturers and related industries to remove competition (that is; other transport options), such as in the systematic buying-up and dismantling of tram lines by motor-based companies, to reduce competition for cars (see Paterson 2000: 267-268).
In addition, states viewed the car as symbolising unstoppable technological progress to which the only credible response within an environment of inter-state competition was to 'take the lead' rather than be left behind by more progressive seeming countries (Wolfgang Sachs, 'For the Love of the Automobile' cited in ibid: 268), a response which was enhanced by the association of a strong car industry with military prowess (ibid), an alliance, (or at least a perceived alliance) not lost on Adolf Hitler in his instigation of the Autobahn system (which became the model for the UK's motorway network and the U.S.A.'s interstate highway system) (Freund and Martin, 1993: 83) and promotion of the Volkswagen car, in his advancement of automobility as a 'folk right' in Germany (ibid). Cars have since been systematically been promoted across the globe by international political and economic institutions. The World Bank has for instance, consistently supported private sector initiatives which aid the liberalisation of motorised transport (Whitelegg, 1997:51). The car as a primary symbol of liberation, democracy, technical and military expertise has thus received official sanction for strategies for its promotion and proliferation.

3) Vicious Cycles of Car Growth, Congestion and Exclusion: The Contradictions of Freedom and Dependance

Danger and Disenfranchisement -The Non-Motorist as a Victim of the Car
A growing awareness is developing that in the Western nations, transport systems have been developed which are so dominated by cars as to effectively create a kind of positive-feedback mechanism through which a greater physical dependency on cars is created in many people (dependencies of a more social/symbolic variety will be tackled in some depth later) resulting in more people who are able to use cars doing so, which in turn, leads to even greater reliances on cars. As we have already seen, the association of automobility with successful economic development is a notion that has pervaded the minds of transport planners as well as others. It is no surprise then, that urban planning has long been premised on the prioritising of car transport, thus promoting a double-edged trend of both increased motorisation, and increased motor-priority.
The prioritisation of cars over other forms of transport has occurred at an implicit as well as at an overt level, because high levels of motorised traffic can make other methods of travel far less attractive:
'The urban system has moved so far in the direction of satisfying the needs of the person in the car that it acts as an efficient deterrent to those who struggle on as pedestrians or cyclists...these disincentives to walk or cycle create a powerful inducement to own and use a car, thus exacerbating the problem for others and adding to the pressure for yet more car ownership and use' (Whitelegg, 1997: 136).
Pedestrians who have no access to a car often need, for example, to continually cross busy roads to get about in in their everyday lives, a relatively basic manoeuvre that nevertheless becomes very stressful and dangerous in the presence of heavy car use (ibid), something that has become a factor in discussions about 'the school run', in which parents who (in an 'ideal world') say they would like their children to walk or cycle to school (for the health benefits and so on) nevertheless drive them in on the grounds that high levels of car-use make it, conversely, seem too dangerous to not go by car (thereby making the trip even less attractive to those who still travel by other methods). Such problems have been exacerbated by planning policy decisions which have made the prior assumption of widespread public car-use. Urban zoning based on car-access (ibid) and out of town shopping and entertainment centres have become an accepted part of 'normal' living for many, and one which is highly problematic for those without access to a car. Shopping by non-car users, for example, often means either making more trips and carrying less (thereby loosing out on bulk-buying discounts) and crossing dangerous roads in the process, or visiting the remaining smaller shops (that have survived competition with the supermarkets) that are usually more expensive. Planners have also prioritised the time savings of motorists, thus causing negative impacts on the time-budget of non-motorists (ibid).
Certain groups of people crop up continually as those who are non-motorists. A study of travel decisions by Dix, Carpenter, Clarke, Pollard and Spencer (1986) for instance, found that one of the main groups of people unable to use a car for travel to work were working wives in one-car-families (ibid: 61), many of whom worked part-time and so were unable to organise lifts in cars due to the impossibility of co-ordinating their working times with other household members or friends (ibid). This provides, of course, one explanation for the growth of two (or more) car families, and again suggests a correlation between cars and perceptions of freedom. Indeed, in the latter case, the provision of a car for a working wife can be seen as nothing short of emancipatory, and thus indicative of the progress of a modern liberal democracy.
Many of the groups who are disadvantaged (in the sense that they have little or no access to a car whilst confronted with an infrastructure that has prioritised cars) are very likely to be members of of groups who are disadvantaged in other ways as well. People without regular access to a car disproportionately include those in low-paid jobs, the unemployed, women, children and non-whites (supporting the view that car-use is, even within developed countries, a relatively elite activity).
Such people, being most reliant on public transport, are also likely to suffer most from fare rises (whitelegg, 1997: 137). As Whitelegg (ibid) states, 'a public transport system which is efficient and attractive may as well not exist if the sectors of the population who are most reliant on it cannot afford to use it'. High prices mean, for example, that train travel, like travel by car, has arguably become an elite activity in the UK, with poorer groups left to travel on less attractive bus services, or perhaps not travel for long distances at all. Recent protestations by motorists lobby groups that fuel prises have become 'too high' have nevertheless faced a situation in which 'real term' costs of private car travel in Britain have remained basically stable in the last fifteen years, whereas ticket prices for buses and trains have increased by 30% in the same period (Chris Hewett, The Guardian, 'Drivers must Pay', 14/09/2000); 'Fuel tax and the worldwide increase in oil price are merely giving motorists and hauliers a flavour of what bus and train users have put up with for years' (ibid).
Disadvantaged groups are also far more likely to be victims of traffic-induced physical injury or death. Research suggests that 'foreigners', for example, are more likely to be killed on the roads than 'natives' (Whitelegg, 1997: 142-143). Similarly, killing by motorised traffic is the single most common cause of death amongst school-age children (ibid), and those from the lowest social class (in statistics compiled from England and Wales using five gradings of social class) are more than seven times as likely to die in this way than those from the highest (ibid).
It is highly likely that parents remove children from very risky environments resulting in busy roads (and even nationally compiled traffic statistics) having lower mortality rates than would be the case if they were used more by children and other 'vulnerable' groups (ibid). Indeed in the UK it is often boasted that we have 'the safest roads in Europe', but this claim is based partly on the lack of non-motorists on the streets. In terms of the deaths of children walking and cycling, we are actually in second place in the 'most dangerous roads in Europe' stakes (Wolf, 1996: 202-203). In spite of the blatantly inequitable effects of car-priority transport mentioned above, discourses of 'road safety' justify the provision of yet further resources for motoring:
'Most effort and expenditure goes into activities to protect the occupants of vehicles (who are largely protected already by mass and metal).... A child has no vote and a poor child has very little choice about daily activity patterns, types of journey and opportunities that can be exploited. This child will spend a lot of time on the street and the street is a very dangerous place.' (Whitelegg, 1997: 143).
The more that the double-edged trend of increased motorisation with the prioritisation of motorised traffic by planners and policy makers has continued, the more that those disenfranchised by the car-dominated society will want (if and when they can afford to), to leave this disadvantaged group and join the motorists, thus exacerbating the problems subjected to remaining non-motorists and the environment. Together, the trends discussed above, combined with a continuing political and economic will which favours a powerful car/oil industry and mass transit by individualised motorists (as 'rational', independent , economic actors) makes the continuation of car-domination in the infrastructures of the wealthier nations look like an unstoppable force.

Dependancy, Myths of Mobility and Poor-Health - The Motorist as a victim of the car.
As we have seen, non-motorists living in a society whose transport system is dominated by, and gives priority to cars, suffer the brunt of the unequal distribution of many of its negative impacts. One might be forgiven for thinking then, (putting environmental arguments to one side), that the most equitable answer is to try to make everyone into motorists. However, many theorists have pointed to the extent to which motorists themselves are also the 'victims' of car-dominated transport systems. Far from being 'free', painted in such a light, motorists may be increasingly being seen as being trapped into a world of auto-dependency which ultimately, does not meet their best interests. To start with, the ability 'to choose' to either be disenfranchised by the infrastructure around you or not can be seen as no choice at all. But at least, it could be said, such a person has been granted the economic power to be able to make that choice. Nevertheless, there are ways in which motorists are, in a sense, 'victims' of their own preferred mode of travel.

Health
Air pollution is not something easily contained by physical boundaries. Clearly, good arguments can be made for the likelihood of air pollution being suffered more greatly by poorer people in, lets say, traffic-congested city centres, than by those who can afford to live in leafy suburbs. Nevertheless, an infrastructure which facilitates significant pollution of the air ultimately (and to a greater or lesser extent) pollutes it for everyone. Indeed, some studies have suggested that car-born pollutants are less inequitable than might previously have been thought, due to pollution levels inside a car being found to be much greater than that immediately outside (The Times, 24/11/1997 cited in Baird, 1998: 118).
An important area in which cars are implicated in the health of their occupants, is that concerned with the relationship between health and levels of daily activity. The routine use of the car for all kinds of journeys, including trips of a few miles or less (and thus easily achievable for most people on a bike or on foot) is implicated in the remarkably sedentary lifestyles of modern Westerners. Sedentary lifestyles are thought likely to reduce life-length and exacerbate the chances of becoming seriously ill with heart and respiratory diseases (John Roberts, 'Trip Degeneration' in Whitelegg, 1992: 156). While many people think they are too busy to fit an exercise routine into their lives, to use a more 'active' form of travel for shorter trips may take up no more time than the driving alternative (as we shall see again later):
'Walking and cycling are the most appropriate (forms of exercise) from the point of view of their wide scope for take-up across all sections of the population, and for their ability to be maintained throughout life as they can be more readily tied in to the daily routine of travel to school, to work and so on' (John Roberts, 'Trip Degeneration' in Whitelegg, 1992: 156).
Motoring, especially driving in congested traffic, is also increasingly being linked with unhealthy levels of driver-stress, which, as Roberts points out, many motorists react to in a somewhat contradictory way: 'Some deal with this by driving to the health centre for a half hour stint on an exercise bike!' (John Roberts, ibid: 157). By leading sedentary lives which are then 'fixed' by arranging extra time to be fitted in at the gym, such arrangements seem more likely to scrapped when resources of time and/or money are scarce, thus forcing car-travellers back into an unhealthy lifestyle. The idea (probably widely held by non-cyclists) that cycling on the roads is prohibitively dangerous is dismissed by research which shows that the health-benefits of regular cycling more than off-set any increased danger of suffering an accident (Krag, 1989 cited in ibid). In similar vein, the British Medical Association has taken a stance against making the wearing of helmets compulsory for cyclists on the grounds that the overall health benefits are greater if more people cycle than if some are put off cycling by having to buy expensive head-wear (bid).
Of course, it seems likely that the more sedentary peoples lifestyles become, the more unlikely they may be to give up the relative cosyness of their car in favour of some mode of travel which may be in their own, longer-term, health interest. Thus more reliance on the car may lead to greater loss of health resulting conversely, in yet greater use of the car, a cycle which seems likely to be reproduced in the future by the dominance (and routine acceptance) of car travel in children's lives.

Myths of Auto-Mobility
The health problems associated with car-use touched upon above become particularly pertinent when it is considered that a considerable number of car journeys are short trips which could easily be accomplished by moderately healthy people on foot or bicycle. Government statistics (DETR, 1998: 29) point to some three quarters of all journeys being less than five miles and one in four car trips being under two miles. Such a multitude of short trips by car, apart from environmental implications, are also contradictory on the grounds that they aid the tendency towards sedentary lifestyles (and resultant consequential health-threats) and because many motorists believe that such journeys are achieved more quickly by car. But this may be seen as but one of the myths of automobility. Wolf (1996) talks, for example, of 'The Speed myth':
'The speed myth is part of car travel. The great majority of car drivers firmly believe that the car is the fastest way of getting anywhere. The car manufacturers promote this belief by making their cars faster and more powerful every year' (Wolf, 1996: 178).
In real-life travel experiences, the power output or top-speeds that a car is capable of make very little difference to journey times (ibid). The speed myth is also perpetuated by the practice (of both the public and motoring organisations) of calculating journey times purely in terms of place A to place B travel. Wolf draws attention to the fact that time spent on routine car maintenance (including refuelling, washing, lubrication and so on), normally omitted from car travel-times, could add a minimum of some 50 hours a year (ibid: 183). Similarly, the sheer expense of buying and up-keeping a car is such that when speed is calculated in terms of kilometres per hour of lifetime, and this is factored into average speeds of car journeys;.....
'The result is quite amazing: the real average speed achieved by the car society, around 20 km/h, is comparable to that achieved by a very fit cyclist (where the average speed of the cyclist is estimated in the same manner)' (Wolf, 1996: 187).
'A to B' travel times are often quicker by bicycle than car in urban trips of a few miles. Official average speed statistics normally fail to include time spent stopping and starting in traffic jams (ibid: 180-181) let alone time spent by motorists looking for cars in car-parks, strapping themselves in and so on. The tendency to 'up' car journey times can be seen as a kind of countering 'flip-side' to the tendency to completely overlook the often very significant levels non-motorised traffic, not least in the common assumption that the word 'traffic' itself refers only to vehicles with engines, something that shall be dealt with in more depth later.

Car-Dependency
The contradictory belief that the motorist is leading as 'free' as a life as s/he can, while maintaining a lifestyle which helps promote (their own) poor health, and which may not actually facilitate travel any better, also occurs within a situation in which the motorist is, in a sense, often 'trapped' into a car-dependant lifestyle. The freedoms of a motorist to choose other modes of travel, where more appropriate have often been cut off by their own 'choice' to own a car.So much of the expenditure of owning and running a car is tied up in its initial purchase and annual payments of insurance ad so on that much of any one journey has already been paid for before it starts. In this light, an extra say, bus journey in which a traveller's share of insurance and maintenance for instance is paid for wholly in one ticket purchase seems an irrational 'extra' burden for a motorist who has spend a fortune on their car already, before a journey even begins. So the 'rational' thing for a motorist to do might seem to be to limit themselves to the car alone and use it for every journey.
Furthermore, people who have been brought up being used to travel mainly by car are likely to have chosen where to live and work based on accessibility by car, rather than by any other means. This is particularly apposite in the case of newly 'rural' commuters, who, 'in choosing to move out.....have chosen to have no choice' (Adams, 1996: 223).
Similarly, the supposed freedom involved in the cars rapid A to B movement (see myths of auto-mobility above) is further diminished by any such advantaged being offset by the consequential increases in journey distances. The amount of time spent by Britons travelling each day has actually hardly changed since 1950 (ibid: 225).
Overall, motorists can still be said to occupy a relatively elite position, but the reality of mass motoring and the burdens it brings, along with an increasing awareness of 'down-sides' that motoring bears upon those whose travelling methods are car-orientated, casts doubt onto many of previously held assumptions surrounding the car and freedom.

4) Car Culture and Symbols of Freedom
The idea (or even 'ideal') of individual car ownership is so ingrained in the notions of both the public and industrial realms as to make the car a relevant topic in terms of 'ideology'. Freund and Martin (1993) claim that the routine acceptance of motor domination in the daily lives and thoughts of modern Americans and Europeans is indicative of the existence of an 'Auto-Hegemony' (Freund and Martin, 1993: 61-126). We arguably live in a car culture in which not only travel by car is naturalised, but in which the car has a symbolic significance which makes our (cultural and individual) attachment to it extraordinarily strong, and any attempts to diminish its widespread use seem 'unrealistic', if not perverse.
As suggested earlier, children (for example)- past and present, are/have been brought up with a 'normalised' sense of car travel being at the centre of their lives to the extent that this is not particularly thought about, but is rather experienced as a taken for granted 'fact-of-life':
'Ideologies....come to be taken for granted when they are embodied in various material and cultural forms. For instance, rush hour radio traffic reports reaffirm the centrality of the auto and its "natural" place in our daily lives as the predominant -even the only reasonable- means of mobility' (Freund and Martin, 1993: 81).
Similarly, many maps ('road maps') assume that the viewer will be a motorist and emphasise roads to way beyond scale-widths, while railway lines (let alone numbered bus-routes) may be almost invisible if they are shown at all. This and similar assumptions can become self-fulfilling prophecies in that they facilitate motoring over other travel modes. The assumption that everyone is a motorist has also been taken up (whether implicitly or explicitly) by overt pro-motoring campaigns such as 'The People's Fuel Lobby' (www.peoples-fuel-lobby.co.uk) which makes the words 'person' and 'motorist' effectively equal and interchangeable, thus if you are a 'person' in this society, then you must surely be a 'motorist'?
Bendixson states that 'cars are a marvellous way of getting about, providing that you have one and the rest of the world does not' (Bendixson, 1976: 214). The situation becomes problematic however, when we try to equate individual freedoms while living collectively (Freund and Martin, 1993: 88-89). But the cultural forces which maintain a significant symbolic relationship between 'The Car' and personal freedom are powerful. Cars have been identified as being especially significant in symbolising freedom, and especially that specie of freedom equated with 'Individuality'. They are seen as important tools in displays of status and self-representation (ibid: 86), with perhaps something of a particular symbolic leaning towards representations of masculine power and sexual potency (ibid: 87).
Freund and Martin suggest that the equation of (auto)mobility and freedom has extended, with the maturity of motorway/freeway/autobahn systems with their high-set speed limits, to the equation of speed, - 'the premier cultural icon of modern societies' with 'manliness, progress and dynamism' (ibid: 89).
The gaining of a driving licence is arguably modern societies' equivalent of a 'rite of passage' in which becoming an adult is, for many people (and especially males), exemplified by learning to drive, passing a driving test and gaining a licence to drive under one's own authority, alone. In this way the car stands for both relinquishing parental authority and rebellion against 'authority' in general (ibid: 93). Thus displays of car-control become displays of self-authority, autonomy and freedom in which 'the person's power is amplified by a light touch on the gas pedal' (ibid: 91).
The cultural values associated with the car do not occur in a vacuum but are promoted and (re)affirmed by car advertising, an ally and sub-section of the car industry itself. Car companies invest huge sums on advertising. In a study made in 1996, it was estimated that the average UK television viewer saw more that seven hundred car commercials that year, advertising thirty six different car models (Dwek, 1996. 'Are Car Advertisers Wasting Money?', Campaign, 10 May cited in O'Sullivan, 1998: 288). Though the power of advertising may well be significantly strong, in a sense car adverts can be understood as propping up the social understandings and meanings which the car already possesses, as a cultural icon of the age. The (non-advertising specific) media in general routinely refers to 'traditional' images of the car and driving which 'have become part and parcel of the popular culture of modern times' (O' Sullivan, 1998: 288).
More recently, advertising cars has arguably started to become problematic. There is some feeling that car-advertising is undergoing something of a minor crisis as adverts themselves become 'stale', as they rely on the same tired old messages of status, sex and safety (Baird, 1998: 148). This has resulted in some innovations such as adverts which depict the experience of sitting in a traffic jam, in an air-conditioned 'home-from-home', as being one of serenity and relaxation (ibid: 154). The difficulties involved in promoting cars today may, however, be more deep seated. Sachs argues that:
'The (car-related) dreams are ageing in our day: boredom with motorisation is widespread....Today it is the personal computer, more than the internal combustion engine, that causes excitement' (Sachs, 1992: 8).
It seems that it is not only 'boredom' with the car that has seen the demise of the hay-day of brash car-advertising along with any 'golden age' of motoring itself. Car advertisements now seem to feel the need to defend their environmental credentials and social responsibilities (O'Sullivan, 1998: 295-296). It is likely that we are increasingly facing a 'reality crisis' of modern motoring. Old images involving the successful , high-status motorist who commands the empty highways are moderated by the reality of traffic jams, asthma and obesity. The driver in today's advert is more likely to be the 'caring family man or woman' than the 'selfish go-getter' (ibid), such representations of 'the motorist' as (arguably) increasingly demure, less confident, more defensive and caring perhaps reflects the less confident position in which today's motorist finds him or herself in, as the social and environmental realities of car-domination become harder to ignore.

5) Resistance to Car Dominance: Counter-Symbols of Destruction and Dependance

The Threats of Car-Dominance and their Subsumsion into the Car- Dominant Dynamic

The history of resistance to cars can be seen to a great extent, as a history of a growing car-dominance in which criticisms of motoring have failed to halt the car-dominant dynamic, and may have even supported its authority. Since cars first began to appear on public roads, and a car had to be preceded by a walker carrying a red flag to warn of the oncoming danger (McShane, 1994: 94), there have been restraints to counter cars' perceived negative effects. However, many such restraints have, with the passage of time, been repealed, and those which have remained have arguably helped to legitimate the progression and maintenance of a car-dominant society.
Much of the concern surrounding car-use has revolved around the danger imposed on the public, in which public 'danger' has been successfully remoulded by discourses of road 'safety' (John Roberts, 'Trip Degeneration' in Whitelegg, 1997: 136). The accentuation of 'safety' as opposed to 'danger' is highlighted in the routine use of the word 'accident' in reference to road crashes, a word which tends to promote the idea that the occurrence of such events are unlikely, and unpreventable, in spite of the vast majority of road deaths being the result of driver negligence ( Department of Transport Road Accident Unit cited in Baird, 1998: 88) . 'Accidents' in other forms of transport commonly seem to receive disproportionate levels of media (and thus public) concern leading to a situation in which a one-off train crash which kills a few people can cause public outrage, whilst similar numbers die quietly and anonymously every day on British roads. Victims of roadkill, however, simply seem to have been the unfortunate casualties of normalised and seemingly 'unpreventable accidents'. The cloaking of the death of Princess Diana for example in stories of conspiracy, assassination and harassment by paparazzi conceal the more 'mundane' truth that she died in an all too typical Twentieth century way - death on the road.
While there have always been attempts to make cars less-dangerous (or 'safer' to use the more conventional term), this has partly resulted in the emergence and strengthening of a powerful road lobby. The road lobby consists of car manufacturers, the oil industry (and its many related industries), road-hauliers, motoring organisations and motorists. Arguably, one major success of the road lobby is the fixing in the general public's mind that 'we are all motorists now' (Plowden, 1973: 372), perhaps to the extent that even non-motorists believe it, and so feel a greater urge (still) to become a motorist like 'everyone else', when possible.
Car-restraining forces however, developed alongside the emerging car-culture. The feeling that 'the power of the motoring organisations was out of all proportion to that of their disorganised victims' (Plowden, 1973: 271) lead, for example, to the development of The Pedestrians Association in Britain in the 1930s (ibid). Early attempts to reduce motor-induced dangers through the likes of speed-limits and drink-driving laws were confronted by indignant accusations from pro-motoring organisations that 'intolerable restrictions' were being burdened onto the motorist (Plowden, 1973: 269) and even compared with Stalinist Russia (ibid). Limits on speed were argued by 'The Motor' magazine as burdening those (elites) who were creating wealth and (then, as now) already paying more than their dues in the form of 'exorbitant taxes', 'creating more offences and more penalties among a class who already paid millions of pounds in excessive taxation' ( ibid: 281).
While such restrictions have been successfully and continually applied, they nevertheless occurred within a background in which car-domaintion proliferated and the favouring of cars in transport systems continued. It was believed in some quarters that the numbers of cars on the road would reach a 'saturation point' (Plowden, 1973: 362) and that remedies to car-induced problems would naturally catch up with the car-owning population (ibid). Such attitudes may have partly bolstered the (now discredited) policies of 'predict and provide' which dominated road building programs in Britain right into the early 1990s (Whitlegg, 1997: 88). So while gains were made, in terms of increasing legal restrictions on motoring, such gains were made in the name of 'road safety' and thus have arguably and conversely, helped legitimate the emergence, proliferation and dominance of an inherently destructive car-first transport system.

Car-Domination as an Environmental Threat
This is not the place for descriptions of the effects of cars on the physical environment, which are detailed greatly elsewhere anyway. What is of important in terms of this study, is the significance of the emergence of the idea that the car represents a threat to the environment (when we talk of 'the environment'' in perhaps, its broadest sense, including the social environment), and the impact of such an idea, and the symbols which surround it, on orientations towards transport and (thus) transport policies.
The era of the car as an unabashed object of desire, in which its proliferation into every corner of society is perceived as wholeheartedly welcome, must surely now be over. The dream of the car as an ultimate symbol of personal (as well as national/political) freedom is increasingly being undermined by the contradictions of such (perceived) freedoms (discussed at length earlier) and their increasing emergence in the public realm. The certainties that the car brought, in its representation as an icon of technological optimism is now shrouded in uncertainty and suspicion.
The knowledge that driving cars short journeys (the most common kind, as we have seen), say, to buy the morning papers, may be (taken together), a major contributor to global climatic change, is potentially a little disturbing to the daily rituals of affluent, Western living. The world might be becoming a little strange, a bit topsy-turvy, as even the most powerful of the pro-oil and pro-motor industry giants seem to feel the need to brandish their 'green' credentials. Ulrich Beck suggested that one major victory that the Green movement can claim, is the universal 'compulsion to perform ecological lip service' (Beck, 1992A: 340), and this universality now extends even to the most archetypal of world polluters.
A case in point is that of the oil giant, B.P. ("British Petroleum"), who have recently rebranded their motto as 'Beyond Petroleum'. Such tokenism predictably makes the company a target for environmentalists. Greenpeace duly responded by pointing out that the company spent more on their logo-rebrand than they are investing into renewable energy sources (Terry Macalister & Elanor Cross in The Guardian, 25/07/2000) while playfully declaring that the company name really stands for 'Burning the Planet' (ibid). While corporate moves such as this may no doubt, have more to with with cynical commercial image-marketing than with any genuine concern, they nevertheless draw attention to the extent to which societal values are changing:
'Underneath all the hype is thought to be an acceptance that the traditional image of the oil company has become a negative one in the hearts and minds of the consumer' (Terry Macalister, The Guardian, 29/07/2000).

While such corporations change image rather more than they change their destructive activities, this is nevertheless an interesting step. B.P. is, so far, the only oil company to acknowledge the likelihood of human-induced climate-change, a fact which may make us question whether this is because such a step, may be, for an oil company, a dangerous one. Once again the contradictory nature of present-day symbols are revealed, as the prime movers of recent historical 'progress' begin to subvert their own previous meanings, and the certainties of yesterday become the uncertainties, and potential threats, of today (see Beck, 1992B).

The More Things Change, the More they Stay the Same?
However, it is also not without significance that another reaction to B.P.'s expensive re-branding was that of the road lobby, said to be 'up in arms, complaining that the cash should have been used for lowering petrol station prices' (Terry Macalister, The Guardian, 29/07/2000). As awareness of the environmental impact of widespread car-use has grown, certain measures have been put into practise under the guise of 'increasing transport choice' or 'reducing car-dependency'. But as such schemes are initiated, cars continue to be used more and more, the car-dominance trend remains resolutely un-bucked.
It could be argued that Britain has started (to some extent), to use other European countries as a template (albeit in a toned-down way) in the instigation of some recent transport projects. A system of cycle routes is being built into a national network (see www.sustrans.org) amid worries that the availability of some optional cycle paths may lead some motorists to feel that cyclists do not belong on the road (which is often the more convenient option for a confident cyclist). Indeed, considering the growth of off-road cycling as a recreational activity (as opposed to a utilitarian one), it seems likely that some of off-road cycle routes may be likely to generate car-traffic as families access sites for leisure-riding (on hired bikes, or with bikes attached to a car). Similarly, 'park and ride' schemes (where motorists park and then take a bus into urban centres), while taking thousands of cars out of cities, probably also promote suburbanisation (and the consequential increases in car-use) through effectively 'advertising' such facilities to suburban populations, and encouraging them to drive to the edge of town (Baird, 1998: 171-172). 'Park and ride' represents an important aspect of the present governments transport policy (DETR. 2000: 57).
'New Labour' came to power, promising an improved transport network, saying that 'present levels of growth in car usage are unsustainable' (DETR. 2000: 59). The government's policies are focused on large scale projects (such as rail-infrastructure investment) and on reducing 'congestion', an orientation which is both bound to please motorists (who wish to fulfil the 'dreams' of free-travel on the open road, as promised in the advertisements), and may be fundamentally flawed in terms of most people's transport needs:
'Big projects and modernisation are all very well, but the vast bulk of journeys are not commuter journeys from city to city, but shorter, more complex, journeys by ordinary people....that is why (community-based charities and environmentalists) favoured investment in bus and cycle lanes, speed reduction, home zones, and safe routes to school .' (Ros Coward, The Guardian, 21/07/2000).
There is a feeling that Labour, ultimately, have given in to the political power of the motoring lobby. In concentrating on freeing-up traffic congestion, and a new commitment to building 'relief roads' (ibid), the message can be taken as one of re-affirmation to motoring freedom. Whatever the intention, after two years in office Labour had already presided over an almost 10% increase in motorised traffic on major roads (David Gow, The Guardian, 6/08/1999).
Perhaps the most damning evidence for the failure of modern transport systems to genuinely tackle car-prioritisation, is found in countries which are often elevated as models of 'ecological modernisation' (see Dryzek, 1997: 137-154). In Munich during the 1980s for example, policies focused on tacking congestion, traffic calming, computerised traffic management, greatly improved provision for cycling and other facilities for 'coherent alternatives to the car' ( Hajer & Kesselring, 1999: 1-23). However, the period continued to see increasing intensity of both localised car-usage and that travelling into, and out of the city. The attractiveness of such policies to the motoring lobby is suggested by the close involvement of the BMW car company in the formation of the strategies (ibid). The company was convinced that cities like Munich were close to their maximum car-traffic capacity, and that going beyond this capacity would not be in a car manufacturers' interest as the (business) costs of mobility might increase, the attractiveness of such cities might diminish in terms of overseas business investment and 'if car traffic is primarily associated with congestion, car traffic might lose its attractiveness as the optimal means of mobility altogether' (ibid). So even a country seen as taking seriously the task of creating an integrated transport system, remains fundamentally car dominated, and even becomes increasingly so.

6) Conclusions
Reclaiming The Streets
As has been suggested earlier, the word 'traffic' in its normalised use, tends to refer only to motorised traffic, and not, for instance, pedestrians or cyclists. It is occasionally pointed out that such groups are also frequently missed out of official statistics. There is evidence to suggest that urban cycling has increased in some cities through the 1980s and 1990s (Wolf, 1996: 163), (probably through its obvious convenience over stationary cars in peak travel periods) and surveys have shown that in Britain, three quarters of trips of less than a mile are made on foot or bicycle (John Roberts, 'Trip Degeneration' in Whitelegg, 1992: 159). Journeys under a mile are conventionally excluded from the National Travel Survey and other data sources used as a basis for policy formation (ibid), thus distorting the official view of travel patterns. The practice of ignoring non-motorised traffic even occurs on colossal scales, as shown in the case of the World Bank's study of transport in China '...for which the final report did not even mention the word "bicycle" despite the fact that there are over 400 million of them in the country' (ibid: 162). In Britain, journeys by foot or bike outnumber those on trains and buses by three to one (ibid: 166). These are the most 'benign' forms of travel and the most ignored.
The battlecry from some organisations of non-motorised groups to 'reclaim the streets' can be though of, in part, as an attempt to counter the organised ignorance of their existence (and importance) by official bodies. It is also partly an attempt to draw attention to the manifest contradictions and irrationalities (detailed in this study) of transport systems bias towards one particular form of elite and destructive mode of travel. Indeed for many at what might be called the 'deeper green' end of environmental political thinking and action, 'the car' may be seen as a kind of anti-icon, an ultimate symbol of capitalistic consumption which links corporate and individualised modes of destruction, the antithesis of previous 'Fordist' constructions of the social meaning of 'the car'.

What Chance Change?

'The Demise of the car', as Nicola Baird has pointed out, '...like reports of Mark Twain's death....has been exaggerated' (Baird, 1998: 226). The social, political and historical forces which (have, and continue to) promote and maintain car-domination in transport systems of developed countries are immensely powerful. The car has stood as a symbol of capitalist growth and success, and this has strengthened its promotion by states, already bolstered by the very real (shorter-term) advantages that mass auto-transportation brings to a capitalist system. In the social realm, cars are associated with images of success, power, wealth, independence, sexual potency and rebellion, in a word, 'freedom'. Furthermore, It has been argued here that accepted 'down-sides' of automobility have resulted in restraints (occurring within the contexts of 'road-safety' and 'technological progress') which in some ways actually legitimate the (mass) use of cars and thus further promote their domination.
However, 'the car' is presently undergoing something of an image crisis. Countering images of destruction to both social and ecological environments increasingly surround mass auto-transportation, and such images are occurring within a relatively new context of 'dependancy' as opposed to 'freedom'. Thus car-use as a taken-for-granted part of everyday life has become deeply problematised, and while the social/political framework which make car-use seem desirable remains, this is now undermined to an extent by these countering images, images which disturb the confident 'dream' of car-travel as an ultimate saviour of individual and national freedoms. There is tremendous inertia behind car-domination in the transportation systems of the wealthy nations, but the previously-held confidence in auto-domination is, perhaps, melting.

Bibliography

Adams, J. (1996). 'Carmageddon ' in Barnett, A. and Scruton, R. (Eds.), (1998). Town and Country, London: Jonathan Cape.
Baird, N. (1998). The Estate We're In: Who's Driving Car Culture?, London: Indigo.
Beck, U. (1992A). 'From Industrial Society to the Risk Society: Questions of Survival, Social Structure and Ecological Enlightenment' in Dryzek, J.S. & Schlosberg, D.(Eds.), (1999). Debating the Earth, The Environmental Politics Reader, 2nd ed', Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Beck, U. (1992B). Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage.
Bendixson, T. (1976). Instead of Cars, 2nd, ed', Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. (1998). A New Deal For Transport: Better For Everyone, London: HMSO.
Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. (2000). Environment, Transport and The Regions Final Policy Report, London: HMSO.
Dix, M.C., Carpenter, S.M., Clarke, M.I., Pollard, H.R.T. and Spencer, M.B. (1986). Car Use, A Social and Economic Study, Aldershot : Gower.Dryzek, J.S. (1997). The Politics of the Earth, Environmental Discourses, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flink, J. (1970). America Adopts the Automobile, 1895-1910, Cambridge/Massachusetts: The Mit Press.
Freund, P. & Martin, P. (1993). The Ecology Of The Automobile, Quebec: Black Rose Books.
McShane, C. (1994). Down The Asphalt Path, The Automobile and the American City, New York: Columbia University Press.
O' Sullivan, Tim. 'Transports of Difference and Delight: Advertising and the Motor Car in Twentieth-Century Britain', in Thoms, D., Holden, L. and Claydon, T. (Eds.), (1998). The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century, Aldershot/Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing.
Paterson, M. (2000). 'Car Culture and Global Environmental Politics', Review of International Studies (2000), Vol. 26, pp.253-70.
Plowden, W. (1973). The Motor Car And Politics In Britain, 2nd Edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Sachs, W. (1992). For Love of the Automobile, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Whitelegg, J. (Ed.), (1992). Traffic Congestion, Is there a way out?, Hawes: Leading Edge Press and Publishing.
Whitelegg, J. (1997). Critical Mass, Transport, Environment and Society in the Twenty-first Century, London: Pluto.
Wolf, W. (1996). Car Mania: A Critical History Of Transport, London: Pluto.

Newspaper Articles
David Gow, 'Prescott in new jam over traffic', The Guardian, 06/08/1999.Chris Hewett, 'Drivers Should Pay', The Guardian, 14/09/2000.Terry Macalister & Eleanor Cross, 'BP rebrands on a global scale', The Guardian, 25/07/2000.Terry Macalister, 'Oil company looks beyond petroleum', The Guardian, 29/07/2000.
Internet Sources
Democracy in the Risk Society?, Learning from the New Politics of Mobility in Munichin, Marten Hajer & Sven Kesselring; http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tps/eprint/envpol99.htm;19/11/00. 1999. (Also in Environmental Politics, no. 3, pp.1-23.)The Guardian Unlimited, http://www.guardian.co.uk; 25/07/2000.The National Cycle Network, http://www.sustrans.org; 22/04/2001.The People's Fuel Lobby, http://www.peoples-fuel-lobby.co.uk; 22/04/2001.

An interview-based study on vegetarianism

2007-09-07T05:57:00.000-07:00

Vegetarian views encapsulate a fundamental dichotomy between romantic images of nature and darker aspects of animality. In interviews, a sample of vegetarians revealed a tension between views of what our relationship with animals ought to be (a relationship of respect as fellow animals ourselves) while admitting the "naturalness" , to some extent, of cruelty.

Orientations.
While there has been much work by theorists on the subject of social constructions of nature, it proved difficult to find any research whatever in the specific area of vegetarian's decisions to refuse meat on moral grounds, or the grounds, shall we say, of animal rights.
The emergence of animal rights as a relatively modern phenomenon must be explained, at least in part, by a changing view of nature or more specifically, changing perceptions of what animals are, and thus, what it is to be human in our relationship(s) with animals, [or perhaps from a non-anthropocentric standpoint; with "other animals"].
Differing theories exist on the historical change in conceptions of nature and the rise of animal rights, and it was thought that by gaining an insight into the actual feelings of some of those involved at the forefront of this trend [vegetarians], it might be possible to get closer to revealing how these theories actually play out in the perception of vegetarians themselves.

Literature.
It has been noted before that in the case of the Green movement in general, the differences in perspectives and attitudes of its members can be seen, in some senses, as being too diverse to be thought of a coherent whole (see Dobson, 1995 & Young, 1993: 93-106). So an attempt has been made to throw out any pre-conceptions that all vegetarians have become so for the same reason. Even though only those who had refused meat on the grounds of animal suffering had been selected [for some people can be assumed to be vegetarians for purely health, taste or religious reasons for instance], it was not pre-supposed that moral vegetarians necessarily shared an identical view of their relationship with other species [or an identical view of "nature"].
For Adrian Franklin, the majority of modern Western people can be described as being increasingly sympathetic towards animals (Franklin, 1999). But amongst those categorised as going further than being merely sympathetic are those who regard themselves as being "closer to nature" in some sense, and in this category, under Franklin's heading of "nature-lovers", come two, perhaps surprising bedfellows; firstly the animal rights brigade, who;
... care a great deal about the plight of animals in the modern world and support some sort of action towards achieving animal liberation from humans.[and secondly];
the neo-Darwinians, many of whom would be active hunters. These people are not sentimental but are nature lovers and feel they have a natural, real relation with animals (Emphasis added, ibid: 32-33).
Franklin's analysis then, tends towards an acknowledgement of the post-modern phenomenon of the "blurring of boundaries", in this case the blurring of the species boundary that traditionally strongly separated humans from non-human animals. This is also a prime motivation for theorists like Singer who urges a recognition of animal rights on the grounds of their similitude with us (Singer, 1990). As Singer puts it, the need to recognise the rights of animals is about the recognition of "....the tyranny of human over non human animals" (ibid: i) and thus by implication, the fact as he sees it, of our own membership of the animal kingdom.
Keith Tester however, in his analysis of the origin of the rise of the modern animal rights phenomenon, emphasises the influences of discourses of rights that are a continuation of the extension of rights to groups of "others" in the past such as those across gender and race boundaries. Tester's work takes a long term historical perspective that in some ways follows on from Elias's ideas on "the civilising process" (Elias, 1978), and thus can be read as a description of continuous historical change without the application of any genuine increase in underlying levels of morality . There is an implication in Tester's work that the animal rights protagonists are also acting at least in part, to affirm their status a moral beings or to put it another way; to affirm their status as humans :
If, one day, a lion were to stroll up to one of the protagonists of its rights and say, in perfect grammar, 'Hello, thank you for helping me', the reaction would probably be one of utter horror. It is easier, more comforting, and far more superior, to talk about the rights or liberation of things that cannot answer back. (Tester, 1991: 208)
In this way, Tester seems to be taking a contrary position to Franklin and the like in asserting the extent to which the modern conception of nature or animals is to do with a strengthening of the species boundary and an increase of categorical distinction.
Another set of ideas, the influence of which might be thought interesting to explore in the interviewees, are those that emanate from what John Urry calls "the romantic gaze" (Urry, 199x). The romantic period has been greatly influential on the English and is caught up, along with the works of the great poets and landscape painters, with England's national identity. In tandem with these influences lies Rousseau's description of "the noble savage" who has rediscovered [or maintained] his [or her] animality and communes with the perfection and beauty of nature, something that as inhabitants of modernity, many of us seem to feel we have lost touch with and perhaps long for.

Methods.
The approach, as interviewer, was one as an insider. The fact that I am a vegetarian was highlighted in the introductory letter [appendix B]. I would expect that were a meat-eater to interview vegetarian subjects on their vegetarianism, interviewees would probably be more likely to be "on the defensive" and suspicious of the researcher's motives. However, the introductory letter was designed to give only a very broad overview, so as to avoid leading interviewees into pre-thought-out answers they feel that they ought to give.
The meetings took the form of semi-structured, verging on unstructured interviews. This was because the research is qualitative, based around the feelings and experiences of the people involved, not something that quantitative research can reveal effectively. An interview guide was designed, but some of the questions were only really there to keep the conversation going, and many of them were covered anyway during the course of the conversations, but the main area of interest that was continually prompted at was the process of making the decision to become vegetarian, and the experiences perceived as influencing that decision.
The subjects were found originally through an environmental pressure group with the intention of finding a likelihood of some who had given up meat products on moral, animal suffering grounds, and then through wider vegetarian friends and associates who were outside this initial group. In fact, one person who was suggested to me as a possible interviewee told me that she mainly became a vegetarian because she never liked the taste of meat, and so was inappropriate for this study.
Four subjects were interviewed at length [up to an hour], ranging in age from early twenties to mid fifties. Only one man was interviewed, the majority of vegetarians that I came across being women. Their "career" activities ranged through undergraduate studies, retail, managerial work and in writing/the arts. The interviews took place wherever they "felt most comfortable" [they were asked about this before arranging the meetings] so that they would be most at ease, which turned out to be, in two cases, within the interviewees own homes and in the remaining subjects, outside in university campus grounds and one in a town park.

Findings. [Note; pseudonyms are used. "R" = Researcher/ interviewer]
First perceived influences on their decisions however, were quite diverse. "John", the oldest interviewee, remembers a particularly harrowing event while on a work visit to Italian libraries back in 1971:
John- ...we had to visit a library of a medical institute of some kind where research was being done on animals and I saw a rat being experimented on, a white rat...
R- You actually saw it?
John- Yes, I saw the actual experiment take place and....you could say the rat was being crucified, if i could put it that way, it's rooted into our culture, and I fled, I couldn't stand to look at it. .....But it took a long time before I decided to become a vegetarian.
All of the interviewees described the process of becoming a vegetarian as a gradual, step by step process, mainly graduated through a kind of learning curve based on information about animal products:
Sue- It was sort of a gradual thing really, y'know.....you get more awareness about things as you start realising what happens, so you don't want to eat it. You learn more and more.
R- More and more....?
Sue- ...about all sorts of stuff, what's going down in....well the whole process and stuff....and then you start thinking "well if i'm not eating it, I shouldn't be wearing it" so I stopped wearing leather.____________________
Dawn- ..it was a gradual process. It took a couple of years, umm.......mainly because I didn't realise what things were meat and what things weren't.
"Fiona" sees a vegetarian friend of hers as being influential on her decision:

Fiona- Yeah it was a friend, yes it was X, 'cos she was always veggie', well she didn't go on and on about it like, she made me realise that by eating meat.....what I was actually eating, even though growing up my granddad was a farmer and everything but it varies, I sort of....I knew what I was eating but I didn't think what the conditions they'd been kept in, how they'd been killed and everything and once I realised that I thought no, I don't want to eat meat anymore.
The fundamental reasons all the interviewees gave for their decision not to eat animals can be seen as basically twofold; firstly through feelings of empathy and fellowship with them and secondly (remembering that the sample were members of environmental groups or their friends/associates), wider connections were made with what "John" called "the pattern of life", a powerful image and a part of the environmental discourse :

John- I feel great solidarity with them [animals], err....I regard them as being part of the whole pattern of life on Earth and I feel fellowship with them and I don't want any harm to come to them whatsoever.____________________
Sue- ...I think to a certain extend they've got, well.....just as much right to live as we have and probably more than we have 'cos we're busy destroying what we've got while they're just getting on with life.
Another underlying pattern of reasoning found in the answers given were emotional reasons, that is; emotional contact and closeness with animals. As Franklin's studies have indicated, the modern period has seen an increase both in amount and intensity of contact between humans and animals (Franklin, 1999: 175). For all of the subjects it was a case of "making the connection" between their own activities, and the effect on the animals they "loved" and had had close contact with:
Fiona- I'd always loved animals but, i'd always eaten meat and then it suddenly dawned on me that I was eating the animals that I loved.____________________
Dawn- If somebody thought the same way as me, then they wouldn't eat animals, I don't condemn people for eating animals, I think.....they just haven't made the connection that i've made.____________________
John- ...being in the countryside a great deal, cycling and coming across lambs, lambs sometimes chased after me or sometimes.....on one occasion I captured, so to speak, a lamb in order to give it back to it's mother, and this contact, with lambs initially.......made me decide not to eat lambs.
The interviewees shared in their normative accounts of their demands for "rights" for animals, an argument in line with Rousseau, many of the Romantics, and others who have argued a "demand for similitude" (see Tester, 1991 & Franklin, 1999: 177-178) with the animals. Rousseau painted an image of humanity blighted, and imbued with brutish behaviour as a result of society, whereas alone in the woods, the "noble savage" (Rousseau, 1931) had recovered his [or her] natural state of being, close to nature and a rediscovered sense of gentleness mirrored, in this view, in the animal world. "Dawn", perhaps reflecting some of these romantic ideals, talked about her feelings of "purity" as a non meat-eater:
Dawn- ..I remember the teacher saying it takes your bones seven years to completely........regenerate, yeah? and umm.....I was thinking, well, in that case, after seven years of not eating something, you'll no longer consist of that. Today I don't feel as if I consist of any part of any animal.
R- But you are an animal ?
Dawn- I know I am an animal but i'm made up of......I haven't been produced by causing the deaths of other creatures,.......and it makes you feel kind of pure, d'you know what I mean?
Thus something of a paradox is revealed in the desire to be on the one hand; at one , as it were, with animals and at the same time deny certain aspects of animality. "Dawn" squared this circle by asserting a closer alignment with some animals than with others;...
Dawn- Not every animal on the planet is an omnivore or a carnivore, there are lots of animals on the planet that are herbivores, and I am one of those. I am psychologically a herbivore.
Rousseau, and indeed many contemporary vegetarian organisations have pointed out aspects of human anatomy that suggest a naturallyvegetarian [to use a more political term] or herbivorous [to use a more scientific tern] lifestyle (Fraklin, 1999: 178). "John" similarly said he felt more sympathetic towards herbivores than carnivores , while "Sue" and "Fiona" both saw a cruel side to nature:
Sue- If you're living in some sort of like, society with just ten of you in the woods or whatever, maybe you would, and y'know, maybe you should (kill for food), because you know, that's what other animals do.____________________
Fiona- .....someone who's in the forest in 200 acres and got no opportunity of getting anything else really, they've got no resources of their own and the only way to get resources is to go out and kill something then yeah, because at least that animal has been living in the wild up to that point, I mean, nature's quite cruel on animals anyway."

Evaluations and Conclusions.
So vegetarians in this sample seem to reflect something of a romantic backlash against the industrial processes applied to animals rather than being against all animal cruelty per-se. "Sue", for instance, said she thought organically produced meat was "slightly better", but the important point is that she thought it is better and "Dawn" was most of all against intensive farming and when talking about "natural" hunting for food she replied; "i'm more against someone buying something from Safeways".
Qualitative research on such a complex issue is both fascinating and useful for general theorising, but such a sample is simply too small to extend-out and apply to the vegetarian population as a whole. It is also a particularly difficult area in which to work because the vegetarian cause is political as, well as being a social phenomenon surrounded by it's own set of powerful discourses in which many vegetarians are well versed. This means it might be difficult to separate feelings , and views from normative diatribe.
It is possible that another source of the dichotomy between what can be summarised as the romantic image of nature and some of the "crueler" aspects may in part, stem from a twofold desire, upheld by many vegetarians [and especially environmentalist vegetarians like the ones in this sample]; firstly, a desire to respect the rights of animals and secondly; to respect the rights of indigenous populations of people, in developing countries for example, some [perhaps most] of whom would be unlikely to take on the vegetarian view, as vegetarianism [at least in this form] is particularly modern and Western. To put it crudely, in terms of how far cultures should be allowed to carry out animal cruelty, it might be found that a little more leeway is given to "traditional" or "tribal" cultures than to white, western fox hunters for example in a form of inverted racism that idealises the former group as being closer to "the noble savage". This is presently speculative but could be an interesting avenue for research.
Copyright Jonathan Tarplee 1999.

Bibliography

Arksey, Hilary & Knight, Peter (1999). Interviewing for Social Scientists, London: Sage Publications.

Dobson, Andrew (1995). GreenPolitical Thought, 2nd Edition, London: Routledge

Elias, N (1994). The Civilizing process, Oxford: Blackwell.

Franklin, Adrian (1999). Animals & Modern Cultures -A sociology of Human-Animal Relations in Modernity, London: Sage.

Pepper, David (1991). Communes and the Green Vision - Counterculture, Lifestyle and te New Age, London, Green Print.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1931). The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau, Vol 2, London: J.M. Dent.

Singer, Peter (1990). Animal Liberation, 2nd Edition, London: Jonathan Cape

Tester, Keith (1991). Animals & Society The humanity of animal rights, London: Routledge.

Urry, John (1995). Consuming Places, London: Routledge.

Young, Stephen, C (1993).The Politics Of The Environment, Manchester: Baseline Books..
Copyright Jonathan Tarplee 1999

The Car and 'traffic problems' in the focus of two contrasting discourses; Ecological Modernisation and Bioregionalism.

2007-09-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

Introduction.
The environmental discourses of ecological modernisation and bioregionalism are quite different from each other in some important ways. An attempt will be made to cast more light onto some of the characteristics of each and therefore also the differences between them by looking at orientations from these discourses towards a particular problem , or more accurately a particular group of problems, that is; problems defined as surrounding and pertaining to motorised road traffic and especially the private car. The differing ways of talking and thinking about 'the environment' that occur within these discourses mean that car-related problems, which might look ostensibly the same from any particular standpoint, are defined quite differently by them. The two discourses effectively create two different worlds in which the environment, environmental problems (and perhaps everything else) are apprehended and interpreted quite differently.
However, one way of approaching environmental politics through discourse analysis is to consider ways in which discourses construct orientations which may (or may not) allow room for manoeuvre in terms of how environmental problems are spoken about, thought about and (thus) approached through discursive practise. In this case; while the two discourses in question come from different parts of what can be thought of as a kind of discursive spectrum ranging from reformist to radical critiques of contemporary western society, and while one has been (and continues to be) successfully (at least in its own terms) exercised in several countries and the other remains (so-far) largely unfulfilled in terms of influence on policy making, the potential for either (or both) discourse to radicalise its own terms of reference remains something worthy of consideration. 'Radicalise' in the latter case not being meant in terms of more radical environmental politics ('deeper green' and so on), but as in the potential for change within the discourse, for movement over time. In other words, in the exercise of talking (and thinking, and doing) green politics, there exists the possibility of discursive evolution within a discourse, rather than just the simple choice between either acceptance or rejection of its tenets.
So through the examination of these discourses and their orientations toward the specific subject (or set of subjects) in this case of private vehicular road traffic, we might begin to find any ground on which there may be scope for change in thinking about 'the environment' and environmental problems.

'The Car ' as a problem and the Wider Context of Travel and Transport.
Because a discourse creates its own world, 'the world' thus becomes the setting on which things are (and have been) happening. Thus specific problems identified in a world (within a discourse) are also encompassed in specific kinds of surroundings. So If cars are a subject of environmental concern through one discourse and interpreted and expressed in a particular way, then the wider context of transport and travel are also constructed, expressed and interpreted in ways that are likely to be particular to that discourse (occurring within the still wider context of 'the environment ').
Through the two discourses in question, it should perhaps come as no surprise then that cars and the wider contexts of traffic and travel as the locus of problems, are all constructed in different ways. Specifically, for example in the case of bioregionalism, it is more likely that travel itself is identified as a problem (in the sense that too much of it may be a bad thing), whereas for ecological modernisers travel may well be an unquestioned part of life, the source of problems for them are more likely to be identified as being in the way that traffic systems are set-up, rather than than travel itself being a problem. Similarly, both discourses have different orientations towards the car, so that for ecological modernisers the car is something to be tamed , redesigned and 'cleaned' while bioregionalists may see the car as something to be largely 'done away with', at least as a mode of mass transit. We shall now take a closer look at some of the features of the two discourses by examining them in more detail.

Ecological Modernisation.
Dryzek describes 'ecological modernisation' as referring to; '...a structuring of the capitalist political economy along more environmentally sound lines.' (Dryzek, 1997: 141). From this orientation, the existence or even omnipresence of the liberal capitalist state goes unquestioned and is taken as read. Ecological problems are seen as matters that are to be dealt with through adapting the industrial structure and the (re)organising and reform of technological systems in ways that favour a 'high-tech', efficient use of environmental resources and promotion of a 'cleaner, greener' economy using 'environmentally friendly' technology.
The discourse contains neither a total rejection nor a wholesale endorsement of enlightenment ways of thinking. Torgerson notes that ecological modernisation recognises that modernity has brought about ecological irrationalities that have failed to respect the inherent complexities of ecological systems (Torgerson, 1999: 143-4), but once this is recognised, the belief is that; '....a process emerging from modernisation itself could ensure ecological rationality.' (Ibid). This paradoxical position on modernity however, in practice tends to lean away from the critique, and towards the endorsement of modernity in an impulse to '...get progress back on track' (ibid). Thus capitalism, under this way of thinking, has then taken 'the wrong path' in not having taken account of ecological considerations, in not being as it were, as technologically sophisticated as it should be. Ecological modernisers want a super-efficient, super-clean form of liberal capitalism.
The discourse seems to have then, a selective orientation towards the enlightenment in the highlighting of 'the best bits' contained in the promise of 'high-tech' progress, the technological solutions to problems and a systematic approach through rational organisation , while refusing to lay any fundamental blame on the underlying processes of industrial capitalism itself, which many 'deep-greens' identify as the cause of the modern, wholesale destruction of the biosphere.
An important aspect of ecological modernisation is the potential for the development of a version of reflexive modernisation, in which continuously built-up knowledge and past experience are fed back into the descision-making process. This can occur through the at least partial engagement of the precautionary principle. John Barry describes this principle as holding that '....in the context of uncertainty it is rational to be prudent and not proceed with a particular action if there is a risk of it resulting in future significant danger or harm.' (Barry, 1999: 159). Thus in the case of transport, the possibility that a potential new road system for example, might increase traffic in the long run, and so risk increased congestion, pollution-induced illness and danger to pedestrians in an urban centre, as well as potentially adding to global problems through climate change, could result in its abandonment. A reflexive form of ecological modernisation may even have the potential to challenge the project of modernity itself, though the prospect of it going as far as undermining its capitalistic basis seems a long way off.Transport Systems defined as Problems and Solutions.
For ecological modernisers, there is unlikely to be anything thought of as inherently wrong with people owning cars, or even with there being road-transport networks on a grand scale. For them, modernisation must be confined within the ultimate overall aims in a capitalist state of continued economic growth. The private car is recognised as playing a central role in both the promotion and acceleration of capitalist expansion:
'The acceleration of the movement of goods, the transformation of production by car manufacturers in what became known as Fordism, and the direct stimulation of the economy by the car industry, all meant that the car has played a key role in promoting accumulation in the twentieth century, and thus in reproducing capitalist society on a global scale.' (Paterson, 2000: 269).
Capitalism though, is beyond reproach. For ecological modernisation's recognition (at least to some extent) of the complexity of natural systems and its leaning towards rational, organisational and systematic approach to problems, means that environmental degradation resulting from cars or traffic is likely to be viewed as an irrationality in the way the system is set up. For ecological modernisers then, the problem is likely to be seen as being that the transport system is not rational enough. Leaving transport largely to the free market, from this perspective, has failed to produce the most rational possible transport system; that is, one which maximises efficiency and cleanliness and minimises pollution, congestion and inefficiency.
In taking into account some of the complexity and inter-relatedness of environmental problems, an approach is made in tackling them that is much more holistic in attitude than in other reform discourses. In this case, an (ecologically) irrational transport system needs redesigning and re-organising in a way that is seen to be ecologically rational without threatening the 'health' of the economy. We can see how this relates to its implementation in practice because several western countries have re-ordered their economies in a way that is based on a perspective compatible with ecological modernisation.
Dryzek lists five countries that can lay claim to greatest success of the western democracies in actual environmental policy performance; namely Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden (Dryzek, 1997: 137).
'These five countries have been particularly successful in increasing the energy efficiency of national income, reducing emissions, and reducing garbage over the last twenty years or so. Moreover, they have committed themselves to support of global initiatives requiring reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for the sake of global climate stabilisation, and those requiring elimination of chlorofluorocarbon production for the sake of protection of the ozone layer. (Ibid, 137-138).
The attitude of these countries toward transport policy can be characterised as one of planning integrated transport systems. Integration is a recurring theme of ecological modernisation as epitomised by the Netherlands' National Environmental Policy Plan which was '....designed to integrate environmental criteria into the operations of all departments of government.' (Ibid).
When it comes to transport, concern for the adverse health effects of both pollution and the high levels of casualties and mortalities associated with car-dominated transport systems, along with the global implications of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from burning fossil fuels, has lead these countries to develop transport systems that reduce peoples reliance on the private car. This has primarily been done through investment in effective, large-scale, integrated public transport networks.

The Example of Munich.
In Germany, as in much of the rest of western Europe, the post-war era saw big developments of infrastructure based around the car. The example of Munich initially shows a promotion of private cars through advertising itself as a 'car-friendly city ' (Hajer and Kesselring: 1999). But the emphasis on mobility through car-use was set to change:
'During the 1980s the effort to maximise mobility slowly transformed into the issue of coping with 'congestion' and restoring urban amenity. In the course of the decade the debate became much more politicised.'(Ibid).
Two distinct discourses are identified by Hajer and Kesselring as representing issues surrounding transport in the 1980s; 'traffic calming' and 'the management of flows'(Ibid). 'Traffic calming', an idea aided by the strengthened Green Party, concentrated on reducing traffic speeds in the urban centre and provided alternatives to cars through the development of a network of cycle lanes and investment in public transport.
'The argument for traffic calming was combined with the call for a radical change in the 'modal split' i.e. a shift away from the car and towards the so called 'Green Alliance' (the 'Umweltverbund'). The introduction of the notion 'Green Alliance' was an act of active reframing of traffic discourse. 'Green Alliance' referred not to a coalition of actors but discursively related several modes of mobility and the respective infrastructures. It thus conceived of the combined existing infrastructure for cycles, walking and public transport in terms of a coherent alternative to the car.'(Ibid).
The 'management of flows' was a decidedly technological response to the problem defined primarily as one of traffic 'congestion', which was seen to be holding back economic efficiency,'.... it is a two-tier strategy: public transport should not replace car traffic but should be regarded as a part of a complementary strategy.' The idea became especially influential when the city joined the EU 'Prometheus' project:
'PROMETHEUS was a research initiative investigating the possible application of "telematic" technology (the combination of telecommunication and computer technology) to traffic management. Originally, an initiative of a coalition of the eight biggest European car producers, BMW played an active part. The idea was picked up by the European Commission and became an official EU initiative in 1986.'(Ibid).
So 'Prometheus' was very much a part of the ideology of economic growth as defined through 'clean' technological solutions. The participation by big car manufacturers as well as interest groups and political parties in defining policy is indicative of another aspect of ecological modernisation. The countries that have adopted the 'modernisation' approach are seen to be countries that tended to have, to a greater or lesser extent, developed corporatist democratic systems (Dryzek, 1997: 141).
Corporatist systems take a particularly consensual approach to political decision-making. Consensual, as opposed to adversarial (UK style) politics has been described, for example, as one of the main features of the Nordic model of government (Arter, 1999: 148). Moreover a culture of consensus is said to form a part of, and even be deeply rooted in Scandinavian life. This does not have to mean a perfect world in which political conflict does not exist but rather that the way in which decisions are reached, are achieved through through a system in which the overriding desire is that for collective deliberations and compromise (ibid), especially that between government, business and labour interests. Since the rise of ecological concerns, this collective bargaining has increasingly included environmental interests, while maintaining the primary goal of continued economic growth, through the discourse of ecological modernisation.
In terms of private car use, as has been said; the emphasis has been on attempts to reduce it by offering advanced public transport networks that compliment a lessened, and uncongested use of space by motorists. This has been combined with technological advances to 'green ' new cars, such as making cars that run on 'cleaner' fuels, have catalytic converters fitted and especially to increase fuel efficiency.

The Successes and Limitations of Ecological Modernisation in Traffic Issues.
The results of Munich experiments in traffic calming and flow management were '...a 30 per cent decrease in the accident rate and a reduction of congestion on the northern motor ways in the region' (Hajer and Kesselring, Op. Cit). Comparative examination of transport related data frequently show clear environmental gains in Dryzek's 'clean and green' five (Dryzek 1997: 137) compared with other Western democracies (also see Weale, 'The Politics of Ecological Modernisation', 1992 in Dryzek & Schlosberg (eds.), 1999: 303-4 for a comparison between the UK and Germany). Use of public transport, cycling and walking is far higher (especially in urban centres) in countries whose transport policies are approached from the discourse of ecological modernisation , and especially when compared with Britain and the United States (Whitelegg, 1997: 194). The approaches taken to traffic as seen in Munich can indeed lead to a less polluted, safer and more efficient society (the metaphor of a 'tidy household' in Dryzeks analysis (Op. Cit.: 146). Pollutants of global significance like carbon dioxide emissions are also likely to be curtailed by comparative reductions in car use.
Hajer and Kesselring describe the Munich experience as an example of the 'win -win format typical of ecological modernisation'(Op. Cit) in that it can claim, in its own terms, a double victory for the environment while safeguarding, indeed enhancing, economic growth. In other words, ecological modernisation serves the need for securing gains in both ecological and economic efficiency. The authors point out that the enthusiastic involvement of car companies like BMW in policy formation that reduces car traffic is less a sign of ecological altruism than economic expediency:
'Behind this is the conviction on the part of BMW that cities like Munich are close to their maximum capacity in terms of car traffic. In their thinking, trespassing beyond this limit might have at least three negative effects for them as car producers:
* if car traffic is primarily associated with congestion, car traffic might lose its attractiveness as the optimal means of mobility altogether;
* the attractiveness of European cities might diminish as locations for economic activity in the global market and
* the business costs of mobility might increase if congestion is not overcome.' (Hajer and Kesselring, 1999).
Joseph Coughlin has described transport policy in the United States as being a product of two competing cultural views; '...one pastoral or "green," and the other industrial, or growth-based '(Coughlin, 1994: 139). Ecological modernisation can be said to be a discourse through which attempts are made to do the utmost in delivering on both of these prerequisites. A more critical analysis might see this as a failure to grasp the importance of capitalism itself as an underlying cause of ecological destruction, and describe ecological modernisers desire to square this circle as attempting to both 'have your cake and eat it'.
Deep green critiques of ecological modernisation point to this failure to grasp or identify capitalism as a chief culprit in environmental atrophy; the incessant drive for maximising economic growth at the expense of the biosphere, the globalised nature of economic trade which exports the worst environmental and social effects of the West to 'developing' nations and distorts the view from our locally sanitised form of capitalism (especially where ecological modernisation has been a strong influence), dominated by the dubious pleasures of consumption.

Bioregionalism.
Bioregionalism as a Dimension of Radical Ecologism.
Bioregionalism goes much further than ecological modernisation in its critique of modernity. For radical greens, liberal capitalism is itself identified as an (if not the ) underlying cause and promoter of environmental degradation. From this perspective, any merely reformist environmental critique of capitalism is either missing the point entirely, or perhaps even deliberately trying to fudge the issue in order to help maintain the status quo in terms of power relations. Green radicals are therefore likely to be highly suspicious of the participation of powerful, polluting, multinational corporations in consensual politics such as that of BMW in the Munich's traffic modernisation program described earlier.
Bioregionalism has been identified as the (radical) green economy's ' geographical principle ' (Young, 1993: 99). The discourse has a strong romantic aspect in its cultivation of a 'sense of place', as described by Dryzek:
'People who live in a bioregion need to adopt it as their true home, to be respected and sustained so that the region in turn can sustain human life. Many bioregional writers and activists concern themselves almost exclusively with this dimension, ignoring more rationalistic concerns. People need to become aware of the kind of ecosystem they inhabit, and regard themselves as a part of it, rather than identify with ethnic groups or nations or other human groupings that transcend ecological boundaries.' (Dryzek, 1997: 160, emphasis added).
Here, an identification is made as one of being with nature; of ourselves as a part of it, rather than nature viewed as a resource, and ourselves as masters of this resource and resource-technologies to be ('rationally ' in the case of ecological modernisation) used ' for our own ends'. From this view, communities are decentralised (anarchist). People must evoke a form of ecological citizenship (ibid) from which 'our own ends ' are synonymous with those of nature and often in the context of (romantic) harmonious relationships rather than those of an exploitative kind, in which landscape is respected and worked with, rather than transformed (ibid).

Bioregions and Transport.
This appreciation of a landscape (or bioregion) as our natural home necessitates an awareness its natural features and their uses (in symbiotic relationships between humans and other species). Arguments about what may practically constitute a bioregion in terms of size, natural features or habitat-type cannot be permitted in any kind of depth here, save to say that it must in some tangible way constitute a natural habitat in the landscape, limited and expressed by its natural features. What is important to recognise in terms of thinking about transport, is the very fact of the idea of living within a bioregion (whatever it may be) as a community (gemeinschaft), equated with desires for local self-sufficiency and for less trade and less movement of goods and people (Young, Op. Cit.). In a community in which bioegionalism was a dominant discourse, people would simply travel less; there would probably be both less need for travel, and less fetishisation of travel that has arguably resulted in modernity.
The perspective offered by bioregionalism can be used in critiques of commonly used arguments for (individuals and /or society) the upholding of the present car-dominated culture. For example, John Adams (who writes from the perspective of a geographer who wants to change spacial priorities away from cars rather than from a bioregional standpoint) claims that people moving out of towns and cities to rural areas often remain 'functionally (sub)urban ' in commuting long distances back into urban centres every day, they then complain that they have no choice but to own a car, but have, in his words, '...chosen to have no choice ' (Adams, 1996 in Barnett and Scruton, 1998: 223).
Adams also pours some doubt on technological developments as an ecological saviour in suggesting that electronic mobility (working and communicating from home and so on), far from decreasing travel (physical mobility) as its enthusiasts often claim, is probably freeing people up from previous constraints and thus working as a stimulus to facilitate physical travel, given that we live in a culture obsessed by it (ibid: 220):
'...people aquire a larger number of friends, customers and business associates at ever greater distances from home or office. These relationships are supported and strengthened by the ability to keep in touch inexpensively by phone, fax and e-mail. But most of them, ultimately, will foster a desire to get in touch physically.' (Ibid).
Adams goes on to describe a conversation he had with someone he met in Canada after attending a conference on sustainable transport:
'...He was going to play bridge with someone from Toronto, someone from California and someone from Scotland. They had met, and played bridge, on the internet; and now they wanted a real game. An energy expert at the conference told me that my contribution to sustainable transport, involving a round trip from London, would consume a tonne of aviation fuel.'(Ibid: 221).
Bioregeionalism imagines a world in which, as with many other forms of radical ecologism, some degree or other of spirituality is important. From this perspective, it is not good enough to rationalise about how natural systems can be harnessed or to discover ways of maximising the efficiency of natural resource use. There must be a whole (spiritual) re-awakened awareness of our place in, and as a part of, nature that re-contextualises our relationship with nature such that its diminishment is a diminishment of our own psyche and identity:
'What I think most bioregionalists hold in spiritual common is a profound regard for life -all life, not just white Americans, or humankind entire, but frogs, roses, mayflies, coyotes, lichens: all of it: the gopher snake and the gopher. For instance, we don't want to save the whales for the sweetsie-poo, lily-romantic reasons attributed to us by those who profit from their slaughter; we don't want to them saved merely because they are magnificent creatures, so awesome that when you see one close from an open boat your heart roars; we want to save them for the most selfish of reasons; without them we are diminished '. ( Dodge, J. 1981. 'Living By Life: Some Bioregional Theory and Practise ' in Dryzek & Schlosberg, Op. Cit: 369 , emphasis added).
A culture in which 'all' life is considered on a profound level is not one that seems compatible with capitalism's desire for maximising growth in the economic sphere. A bioregionalst local economy would tread decidedly lightly on its patch of Earth, fostering a no-growth (in conventional terms) economy. 'The target is stability, not growth, a steady-state economy which is in equilibrium with ecological rhythms and capacities.' (Young, Op. Cit.).
The car is an unlikely candidate for sympathy in a culture that holds such values. The private automobile is for many greens, one of the ultimate symbols of life-destruction, even in terms of the monumental death and injury toll on humans alone; poet Heathcote Williams memorably described this carnage as 'a hum-drum holocaust, the third world war nobody bothered to declare ' (in 'Autogeddon', 1991). When the equivalent carnage to other species is added to this, along with deterioration in quality of life (both health-wise and aesthetically), then the car's massive contribution in greenhouse-gas emissions that threaten the stability of the global climate and hence eco-systems around the world, and on top of this is the car's place in the promotion of fossil-fuel based economics and capitalism itself (see Paterson Op. Cit. and Freund & Martin, 1993), a car-dominated culture can come to represent the opposite of the good life for boiregionalists and other green radicals.
Jim Dodge believes that people must realise that it is in their utmost interest to respect and maintain healthy biological systems (Dodge, Op. Cit: 372) and that '...the best way to meet this challenge is where you live - that is, personally and within the community.' (Ibid). The community in the bioregional sense, is both spiritually and practically living 'as one' with nature, thus what is healthy for nature is also 'healthy' for other natural systems.
For a transport system to be 'healthy', it must therefore be in-tune with nature, not making harsh demands on natural systems, and in-tune also with the needs of the community. Safety of people, and lack of demands on the atmosphere and other natural systems in terms of pollution would be a priority, as it is (though to a lesser degree) in the discourse of ecological modernisation. But in a community in which bioregionalism was a dominant discourse, the noise, bustle and general chaos of large scale 'traffic' systems are likely to be seen as grating against the need for empathy with nature. Most significantly of all, is that in a self-contained community; living from and within a bioregion, would be largely (or ideally wholly) self-sufficient, making the need to travel much less. Transport in this sense, is likely to be neither thought of or designed as a large-scale 'system', but more likely as few and individual short trips made when necessary to transport crops to market or take people to a (nearby) place of work, and probably often done in ways that 'tread lightly on the earth' such as on foot or bicycle.

Conclusions - Lessons from both discourses.
The two discourses in question occupy different positions on any 'reformist-radical' or 'shallow-deep' ideological scale in terms of environmentalism. By examining orientations to a particular set of issues; in this case cars/transport/travel, we have seen that a society or community strongly influenced by either one discourse or the other alone is likely to result in quite different kinds of outcomes in terms of what kinds of places they would be.
But both discourses have things in common as well. They both contain a critique of modernity.
Ecological modernisation's critique may be of the reformist variety, but the fact that it begins to engage with the idea of ecology at all is significant. If 'ecology' represents an understanding of the interconnectedness and holisticness of biological systems (which can and should include 'dead' things like rocks, human-made machines and wasp-made paper nests as inhabited parts of biological processes), then the discourse (and especially reflexive ecological modernisation) may conceal within it the possibility for a stronger critique that could (in the face of overwhelming supporting evidence), potentially lead to a more thorough criticism of capitalism itself.
Bioregionalism attracts criticism for 'small' not always being 'beautiful', in that small communities can be ecologically wasteful, can socially stagnate and harbour pockets of bigotry (see Lewis ,M. W. 'Introduction to Green Delusions' in Dryzek & Schlosberg, Op. Cit: 404 and Wall, D. 1990: 53), and the globalised nature of economics and political relations may make bioregionalism seem like a wild utopia. But the discourse reminds us of two important things:
Firstly; that there may after all be limits of some kind to what 'nature' (in as much as 'nature' exists, where nature is 'all life', not just non-human life) can cope with in terms of human action upon it , especially when it comes to the scale and intensity of unrestrained capitalist forces, and secondly; that we may not be able to move towards any kind of truly green society without a fundamental shift in values that reconsiders all of life as having some intrinsic worth. Any movement towards a widespread increase in eco-centric values is likely to increase the attractiveness of smaller-scale, more localised ways of life; including production, entertainment, consumption and therefore travel, along with increasing resistance to globalised trade.
Both discourses' critique of modernity (though differing in intensity and kind) and their engagement with nature as a holistic and/or complex entity, provide scope for an increasing critical awareness (within the public realm) of the project of modernity in general, though bioregionalism (as a dimension of radical ecologism), includes a more radical critique of capitalism in particular.
4893 Words.

Bibliography.

Adams, J. (1996). 'Carmageddon ' in Barnett, A and Scruton, R. (Eds.), (1998). Town and Country, London: Jonathan Cape.
Arter, D. (1999). Scandinavian Politics today, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Barry, J. (1999). Environment and Social Theory, London: Routledge.
Coughlin, Joseph F. (1994),'The Tragedy of the Concrete Commons: Defining Traffic Congestion as a Public Problem ' in Rochefort, D.A. & Cobb, R.W. (Eds.), (1994).The Politics of Problem Definition, Shaping the Policy Agenda, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.
Dobson, A. (1995). Green Political Thought , 2nd ed', London: Routledge.
Dryzek, J.S. (1997). The Politics of the Earth, Environmental Discourses, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dryzek, J.S. & Schlosberg, D.(Eds.), (1999). Debating the Earth, The Environmental Politics Reader, 2nd ed', Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Freund, P. & Martin, P. (1993). The Ecology Of The Automobile, Quebec: Black Rose Books.
Paterson, M. (2000). 'Car Culture and Global Environmental Politics', Review of International Studies (2000), Vol. 26, pp.253-70.
Torgerson, D. (1999). The Promise of Green Politics, Environmentalism and the Public Sphere, London: Duke University press.
Whitelegg, j. (1997). Critical Mass, Transport, Environment and Society in the Twenty-first Century, London: Pluto Press.
Smith, M. , Whitelegg, J & Williams, N. (1998). Greening The Built Environment, London: Earthscan Publications.
Wall, D. (1990). Getting There, Steps to a Green Society, London: Green print.
Williams, H. (1991). Autogeddon , London: Cape.
Young, S.C. (1993). The Politics of the Environment , Manchester: Baseline Books.
Internet Sources.Democracy in the Risk Society?, Learning from the New Politics of Mobility in Munichin, Marten Hajer & Sven Kesselring; http://www.cddc.vt.edu/tps/eprint/envpol99.htm;19/11/00. 1999.(Also in Environmental Politics, no. 3, pp.1-23.)

IS THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF THE ROBUST DISTINCTION BETWEEN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE JUSTIFIED?

2007-09-07T05:55:00.000-07:00

While feminists have shared the widely accepted view that women have been [and indeed remain] oppressed, many of them have differed in their accounts of the actual origin of that oppression. For liberal feminists, the gendered separation of public and private spaces; with women being largely associated with the private, domestic sphere and men with the public one, is a major target for reform; that is reforms that would intend to equalise the situation between men and women. However, this attitude fails to recognise certain aspects of society highlighted by some radical feminists, who believe that the source of women's oppression lies at a much deeper level. Patriarchy, they say, infects the public as well as the private spheres, along with all other "man-made" institutions and their consciences, including liberalism [and thus liberal feminism itself]. The public/private distinction then, is, according to this argument, at best a distraction from the real underlying cause of women's continuing subordination. An attempt will be made below to claim that the continuing monopolisation of the public sphere by men is no more than one [albeit very important] feature of patriarchal society.
In spite of years of talk of women's "liberation", "rights" and "equality", men are found to be at an advantage in modern, western countries. Numerous studies have found that women still earn substantially less than their male counterparts. Women's jobs are also more likely to be insecure, low-paid and part-time and many feel that women who spend much of their time in "traditional" domestic and caring roles are not valued as much as "traditional" male "breadwinners". Thus women's position in society is still found to be subordinate to men and many feel to a greater or lesser extent, oppressed by what remains a male-dominated society.
Many commentators have asserted that the disproportionate positioning of women in domestic roles in private, as opposed to men's roles in the public realm has been a main source of women's subordinate place in society. As Carole Pateman has said:
Today, women still have, at best, merely token representation in authoritative public bodies; public life, while not entirely empty of women, is still the world of men and dominated by them. (Pateman, in Benn & Gaus, 1983: 296)
Perhaps even more important is the expectation that women have a natural leaning towards roles associated with "femininity", making socially-prescribed femininity appear natural and inevitable, as Oakley noted of the "housewife" role:
The equation of femaleness with housewifery is basic to the structure of modern society, and to the ideology of gender roles which pervades it. (Oakley, 1974: 29)The argument goes that this social prescription of values extends to supposedly "feminine" characteristics attributed to women that includes passivity [as opposed to male aggression] and emotionality [as opposed to male rationality] as well as a domestic orientation. Thus women are seen primarily as carers and "home-makers" within the domestic sphere while men are seen as active "doers" who go out into the world to make decisions and earn money. Women restricted in, or even prevented from participation in the public/ political sphere leads to a situation in which "the rules" are made primarily by men, in men's interest, and thus at the expense of women. It is then often argued that girls and women are socialised into feminine behaviour [and associated roles] thus reproducing these gender stereotypes and role separations, and therefore women's subordination into future generations [socialisation within the family is an issue that will be returned to later when discussing Okin and Mill].
Some writers [socialist feminists among others] see this kind of gender role separation as fulfilling a function necessary for the maintenance of capitalism. For Talcott Parsons, the separation of instrumental "bread-winning" by the husband and domestic and emotional work by his wife ensures the avoidance of ". . . contaminating the intimacy of the family home by over-exposure to the competitive rational world of work" (Jamieson, 1998: 31) .
For some feminists, usually falling into the category of liberal feminism, this separation of gender roles within the context of a distinction between public and private spheres is seen then as the primary source of women's subordination. So while social "progress" was fought for, [both historically and it terms of contemporary debates] in the public realm [by men], women were not considered a part of the process, as Seyla Benhabib notes:As the male bourgeois citizen was battling for his rights to autonomy in the religious and economic spheres against the absolutist state, his relation in the household were defined by non-consensual, non-egalitarian assumptions. Questions of justice were from the beginning restricted to the 'public sphere', whereas the private sphere was considered outside the real of justice. (Benhabib, 1992: 109)
By this account, for many liberal feminists the clear prescription for women's emancipation would appear to be the extension of rights and opportunities to women by reforming the public sphere [and its male domination]. This stance amounts to a call for "equal rights" and is mainly concerned with the raising of the economic, legal and political status of women, particularly with reference to women in the workplace and education and the raising of women's profiles in positions of authority.
However, some feminists think that this is just not nearly going far enough. To talk of boosting the status of women may ignore underlying structures that may be infused with features that subordinate them. Liberal feminism tends to ignore, for instance, the pivotal role of the "traditional" family as a source of oppression, rather than as being politically neutral as is the view of many liberals.
Susan Moller Okin, although broadly a liberal herself, takes the argument ". . .an important step away from the classic liberal insistence on the non-political nature of the family" (Bryson, 1992: 179). She has considered John Rawls's famous "Theory of Justice" (1971) and rather than rejecting it outright because it ignores unjustifiable divisions of labour by the assumption families are headed by men, She chooses to argue that Rawls's theory can be extended to include the family.
Rawls discusses the sort of society that could be designed, assuming that its members did not know beforehand what positions they would occupy in it [thus these people would plan the society from behind a "veil of ignorance"]. Rawls argues that given this scenario, people would only accept inequalities that benefited the least well off [his "difference principle"]. But the decision makers operating behind his veil were taken to be male heads of households because he assumed that the family was politically harmonious in the sense that justice already existed within it. So Okin argues for the extension of Rawls's principles to include the individuals within the family. This would have consequences that would broaden egalitarian principles and mean, for example that in households choosing to maintain a traditional family structure, all income would be distributed on an equal basis between husband and wife (Okin, 1990: 25). Okin also believes that justice in the home is linked with that in the wider society at large in two main ways, as summarised by Valerie Bryson; firstly through socialisation within the family:-it is within the home that children learn the values on which they will base their adult life, and that the virtues of democratic citizenship cannot be learned in a family based on domination and inequality. Secondly, her proposed redistribution of all forms of work will not simply free women from domestic responsibilities, but means that men as well as women will develop qualities of neutering and caring (Bryson, 1992: 178).
Bryson mentions that the first aspect was shared in the writing of John. Stuart Mill a century earlier (ibid). Mill, in line with much contemporary liberal feminism believed that the traditional family set up with male breadwinner and female domestic manager was generally the most appropriate one (Mill, 1970: 178-179) assuming the re-ordering of the family in a just manner; " -if marriage were an equal contract, not implying the obligation of obedience" (ibid: 179), and if the wife was able to follow her individual interests and be free to consider employment opportunities, she would most likely find that in such a marriage, according to Mill, it would not be necessary to take these opportunities up (ibid).
However, some radical feminists would argue that all sections of society, including all institutions and both the public and private spheres are underscored by patriarchy, the all-pervading system of male domination and female oppression. From this standpoint, the institution of marriage is itself a tool of, and a product of this oppressive regime. Indeed liberal thinking in general is attacked by some radical feminists as one of the primary [male] discourses of power, with the liberal public/private distinction forming a principal target.
While liberals have attempted to highlight the separation of public and private spheres, many radical feminists reject this as amounting to something of a false premise and claim instead that public and private are interrelated aspects of society connected by their infusion with patriarchy. Pateman highlights the ambiguity of the liberal conception of private and public and says that this very ambiguity; "obscures and mystifies the social reality it helps to constitute" (Pateman in op cit.: 282) meaning that the supposed distinction hides the subordination of women by men under an apparently egalitarian order (ibid: 283). Underlying the complex social reality Pateman talks of is:...the belief that women's natures are such that they are properly subject to men and their proper place is in the private, domestic sphere. Men properly inhabit, and rule within, both spheres. (Ibid) [My emphasis].
The traditional family emerged, in Pateman's terms, as "paradigmatically private" in which the separation of private and public resulted in public life being conceptualised as the sphere of men (ibid: 283). Women's nature has been categorised as being orientated towards the home but perhaps more importantly, the characteristics and "natures" attributed to women are given a subordinate role in the liberal-patriarchal hierarchy. Thus ["men's"] work [in its traditional conception of paid employment] is afforded not just high renumeration [relative to women], but also high levels of societal worth.
There seems to be no logical reason to think that domestic management, including home economy, care work and the rearing and educating of children can possibly be thought of as being of less value than almost any other kind of work, unless it is within the context of a patriarchal hierarchy.
Women are thus identified with so-called "private" work within a system in which an ideology of public/private distinction has been adopted, and while this remains the case, in Pateman's words; " ...their public status is always undermined" (Ibid: 299) . What is required then, as many modern feminists point out, is both a reconstruction of social perceptions of family life that challenge the "naturalness" of the traditional nuclear family, and a wholesale reordering of what is frequently perceived as the "private"; such that child-rearing, care of elderly relatives and all the other tasks associated with the "private" or "personal" life is seen to be laid equally as the responsibility of men and women. As the feminist movement is famously apt to point out; the personal is the political, as activities which take place in domestic settings may be both crucial in their interconnectedness with society at large and the subject of a spurious ideology that implies otherwise. The categorisation of genders and gender issues around a public/private framework is misleading to the extent that it obscures the origin of female oppression which seems more likely to lie at the fundamentally patriarchal nature of society.
Copyright Jonathan Tarplee 1999.

Bibliography

Benhabib, Seyla (1992). Situating The Self, gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Benn, S.I. & Gaus, G.F. [Ed's], (1983). Public and Private in Social Life, London: Croom Helm.

Bryson, Valerie (1992). Feminist Political Theory, London: Macmillan Press.

Charvet, John (1982). Feminism, London: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd.

Jamieson, Lynn (1998). Intimacy, Personal Relationships in Modern Societies, Cambridge: Polity Press.

McMillan, Carol (1982). Women, Reason and Nature, Oxford: Blackwell.

Mill, John Stuart & Mill, Harriet Taylor (1970- Edited by Alice S. Rossi). Essays on Sex Equality , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Oakley, Ann (1974). The Sociology Of Housework, Bath: The Pitman Press.

Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Copyright Jonathan tarplee 1999.

The Representation of Women in the Countryside,a magazine's portrayal of 'The Countrywoman'.

2007-09-07T05:53:00.000-07:00

Keele University.School of Social Relations.Final Year Dissertation.

The Representation of Women in the Countryside,a magazine's portrayal of 'The Countrywoman'.
Jonathan Tarplee.

CONTENTS

Abstract 1
Introduction 1 - 2
Literature 3 - 10
Methods 11 - 18
The Sample 11 - 14
Sample Analysis 14 - 18
Notation 14 - 16
Categorisation 16 - 17
Quantitative and Qualitative Data 17 - 18
Findings 18 - 23
Rurality and Class (The Context) 18 - 20
Representations of Women (in Context) 21 - 23
Women as Property 21 - 23
Representations of Countrywomen 24 - 35
Women's Activities - 'Recreation ' 24 - 26
Women, Community and Charity 26 - 31
A Closer Look at Charity Events 31 - 35
Summary and Conclusions 35 - 40
Considerations for Further Research 38 - 40
Bibliography 41 - 43

Appendices (including illustrations) 44 - 49
Appendix A
Table 1. Representations of Women in the Sample 44

Explanation of Categories in Table 1. 44 - 46

Fig 1. Passive Women Represented 46

Fig 2. Active Women Represented 47

Appendix B
Fig 3. Women's 'Recreation' Represented 48 - 49

Acknowledgements
I would especially like to thank Gordon Fyfe for his inspiring lectures and helpful manner, and Sharon for her patience and spelling ability.

Abstract Studies relating to women and rurality have tended to concentrate on the influence of 'the rural idyll' on expectations of women's roles in the 'domestic ' sphere. This study explores wider images surrounding rurality which impact upon the conception of 'The Countrywoman ' as an identity and investigates how this is played out in the public, as well as private spheres. Drawing on evidence from a documentary analysis covering five decades of a county-themed magazine, this enquiry illustrates a remarkably stable portrayal of countrywomen as exceptionally community-orientated organisers who promote the well-being of the local, and wider communities. When not involved in charity-based work, 'the countrywoman 'is typically depicted in activities which uphold romantic notions of rural life and allude to memories of an 'older' social order. The magazine asserts a particularly class-based bias in its presentation of rural living dominated by the activities of affluent women, in which other kinds of women are invisiblelised. Within the sample, an underlying dichotomy was found in the tendency towards, on one hand, a desire for traditional definitions of rurality, and on the other, a sensitivity towards crude stereotyping of rural people by non-rurals.
Introduction
Images of rurality may be seen to contain innumerable facets, dimensions and human characters. In seeking to examine a specific character or set of characters (in this case women) set within the wider scene or context of the countryside, it is hoped that further light may be shed on a specific detail of the social construction of 'the rural life'.
The representation of women in society has been a source of much interest for some years, particularly in the context of their subjugation within patriarchal understandings of women's place. This study is not primarily concerned with women's subjugation, but rather with more particular portrayals of women within the context of a specific time and place, in this case; the post-war English countryside as portrayed in the pages of a county magazine. Sociological work on women and rurality has tended to focus on women's domestic arrangements and activities. This study aims to broaden the focus to include wider issues of rural women's activities, as portrayed through the pages of a magazine. Such portrayals are important because of their bearing on rural women's (perceived) role(s) and overall identity. The representation of women's identity as a specific sub-section within the construction of the rural life may cast further light on the relationship between images of rurality and representations of 'the countrywoman '. Furthermore, by tracking these portrayals over a period of several decades, it may be possible to discern a notion of the degree of change or stability pertaining to such an identity or identities.
Also (and importantly), the notion that the rural-life is 'under threat' from a variety of sources (sources which are not, in themselves, a subject of interest here) demands a clarification of the nature of rural social relations in order to discern what, more precisely, is 'under threat' in terms of the 'the rural' as a community in general, and specifically in this case, 'the countrywoman', as an identity, in particular.Literature
One of the first hurdles to be encountered when researching aspects connected with socially constructed representations in the countryside, is the problem of defining that which is deemed to be rural, and that which is not. Jones (1973) began her study of rural life by emphasising the difficulty in actually defining 'Rural' and 'Rurality' in England, a nation which while idealising country living remains largely 'urban' in many respects (ibid: 3). The Countryside Agency, in its 'State of the Countryside 2000' report also admits that though 'most people have an image of what is meant by "rural" ', the task of defining it consistently is 'challenging' (2000: 4).
Mingay (1989), Williams (1973) and others have long recognised the idealisation of certain aspects of the English countryside that helps to construct a social account rurality and its 'Rural Idyll':
'The term has been used to describe the positive images surrounding many aspects of the rural lifestyle, community and landscape, reinforcing, at its simplest, healthy, peaceful secure and prosperous representations of rurality'. (Emphasis added, Little and Austin, 1996: 101).
Little and Austin (1996) claim that many sociologists, while widely acknowledging the existence of an idealised Rural Idyll (Mingay, 1989, Williams, 1973 and others), have tended to neglect its impacts on different groups amongst the rural population, specifically in this case; the role of the rural idyll in maintaining (traditional) gender relations.
The authors argue that these positive images surrounding 'rurality', including those of community, solidarity (Gemeinshaft- see Tonnies (1957) ), health and simplicity in which rural culture is perceived as being 'caring and paternalistic' (Little & Austin, 1996 : 102) are related to both nostalgia for the past and a romantic escape from modernity, helping create a perceived harmony of rural social relations '...where relationships are unfailingly "tight knit" '(ibid).
Little and Austin assert that the rural idyll, ultimately, operates through a system of power relations which it both reflects and reproduces (Little & Austin, Op Cit: 103). This idyll was found to contain many traditional images and expectations of women's place in society. In their research on village women, the authors' found that 'the family' was often cited as a main reason for having moved to, or remaining in, the village through positive associations between rural living and 'the countryside' being seen as a good place in which to bring up children (see also Valentine, 1997). Much of the work surrounding children; ferrying them to school, clubs and so on is done by women:'There can be no doubt that the woman of the rural idyll is the wife and mother, not the high-flying professional, the single childless business entrepreneur.' (Austin & Little, Op Cit: 106).
The research suggested that rural life was constructed as being community-orientated (and thus the women's expectations of their life in the countryside as revolving around 'community-life') resulting in greater pressure being exerted on women in carrying out what are traditionally perceived as their motherhood and indeed womanhood-related duties ; 'One mother described being "sucked in" to a life that was dominated by organising and facilitating her children's involvement in local activities ' (ibid).
The wide involvement of women in local society was found to underpin many village social events and organisations and this impacted upon women's employment opportunities; 'one woman replied that she was "too busy to have a job" ' (ibid: 108). The authors found a relationship between the rural idyll and the women's deep involvement in these kind of community activities 'through the belief that not only was it expected of them as members of the community, but it was also part and parcel of what "rural life" was all about' (ibid). Crichton (1964) and Frankenburg (1990) both found women to be more integrated into village 'community' than men, re-enforcing the idea that women's role may be constructed as being oriented towards 'the locale'. This suggests, perhaps, that the construction of the public roles of rural women, in their community, is a subject worthy of further study.
It would seem that any relationship or interplay between positive/romantic rural images and negative stereotypes of rural identity would also be worthy of note, because some authors account for the existence of a countering rural anti-idyll which plays on negative images and fears connected with rural isolation, depictions of in-bred 'village-idiots' and a close proximity to unrestrained 'nature'' (as constructed in a fearful context). Such images provide constructions of negative rural stereotypes which are reproduced in various places, including the horror industry (David Bell 'Anti-Idyll,Rural Horror' in Cloke and Little, 1997: 94-108).
One community institution with a particularly rural association is the Women's Institute (hearafter W.I.), which is still the largest women's organisation in the U.K. (The Guardian, 08/06/2000), nearly 60% of rural parishes still having a local group today (Countryside Agency, 2000: 27). Bracey (1959) claims that the W.I., though essentially a village organisation, it is more than merely a federation of village clubs ;
'...for it possesses a mystique which creates in its members a sense of belonging, and a sense of responsibility for the village, as does no other secular organisation.' (Emphasis added, Ibid: 144).
This sense of being rooted into local rural life is fostered by the organisation, the Institute's primary overt aim being the promotion of the well-being, and the improvement of conditions under which countrywomen work and live (culminating in an Annual General Meeting known as 'The Countrywomen's Parliament' (ibid: 145) ). The Women's Institute has claimed that in spite of its conservative, respectable image, 'radicalism....has always nestled beneath its middle Britain respectability ' (The Guardian, 08/06/2000). This came to the fore recently when they heckled, slow handclapped and staged a walk-out of a talk by the Prime Minister prompting The Guardian to surmise;
'...perhaps this episode...will rid the WI forever of its jam-and-Jerusalem image.' (The Guardian, 08/06/2000).
Davidoff, L'Esperance and Newby (1976) have identified the twin ideals of Home and Village Community which are themselves related to the overarching rural and domestic idylls in their construction as a haven, sheltered from the public life of power (the authors called the combination of the two ideals as the 'Beau Ideal'). The authors argue that this dual ideology has increased the traditional (male) authority of the household head and thus maintained female subjugation. Both home and village in their idealisation as 'organic' communities (see also Durkheim's (1964) distinction between 'organic' and 'mechanical' solidarity) require the full set of stereotyped characters who are both romanticised and subjugated (see Newby's 'Green and Pleasant Land' (1979) for patronising attitudes toward rural locals by incommers).
The twin ideals are also self-promoting in the sense that the 'traditional' rural environment is seen as the 'natural' setting for the ideal domestic life in which women are still expected to create and protect a 'miniature version of the domestic idyll' (ibid: 175). The modern housewife's role in 'creative homemaking'(ibid: 173) is thus idealised, as seen in the fetishisation of traditional farmhouse-cooking, home-baking and so on. This idealisation seems enhanced as globalisation makes society seem more centralised and corporate (Ibid: 172-173).
The relationship between countryside and class has often been highlighted as a highly significant one. John Urry (1995) however, reminds us that the middle classes are a group of many divisions which therefore cannot be assumed to have a particular, unitary relationship with the countryside. He further stresses the importance of changing leisure practices which have consequential effects on rural social relations.
Urry points to some particular groups (cross-cut by gender, educational experience, age and region) identified as having their own specific relationship with the rural through these new practices. Urry implies that the 'ascetics' may be a particularly important group in relation to recent constructions of the countryside because of their maintenance of holistic notions of physical well-being that connect 'the body' to 'nature' in activities such as 'climbing, camping, rambling and simply being in the countryside.' (Urry, 1995: 213).
The author points to a particularly striking contrast between the 'ascetics' and the 'indistincts' (or managers) (ibid) whose activities involve 'interventions' in nature (such activities might include shooting and golf for example) and a desire for heritage preservation (ibid).
The countryside is also affected by what Urry calls 'new sociations' acting as sites for identity-formation, emotional satisfaction and reciprocracy (ibid: 215). Examples might include countryside 'hobbyists' such as bird-spotters, off-road cyclists and war-gamers as well as organisations with some kind of political agenda (to a greater or lesser extent) like road protesters, civic amenities groups, railway preservation societies and environmental communes (ibid). Urry suggests that the proliferation of new ways of interacting with, and consuming the countryside is changing the way it is perceived:
'...the historic compromise between landed interests and the professional service class, which had been organised around the concept of "quiet recreation", is dissolving' (ibid: 219).
Finally, before we turn to female representations in the countryside, the nature of representation must itself be considered. Catherine King (1992) points out that 'representation' can have many connertations including 'the creation of a convincing illusion of reality' (King, 1992: 131). The term can also imply the possibility of showing a genuine slice of life or be overtly highly reductionist and symbolic (King gives the example here of the symbols for women and men on public toilet doors (ibid) ). But, all images are constructions which King reminds us can never be totally value-free, but are constructed by both creator and apprehendor.
The construction of images (and other kinds of representations such as depictions within a text) is, of course especially pertinent to this study, as this requires careful consideration during the processing of information by documentary analysts.

Methods
The Sample
Cheshire Life is a magazine in which, as well as having a particularly localised (that is; county) interest, seems also to form a predominantly rural view or construction of the county, many of its front-covers depicting rural hunting scenes and 'pretty' villages. But such a rural construction of Cheshire, though seemingly obvious on encountering copies of the magazine, would have to be substantiated (or refuted) during the course of its analysis (especially in terms of its qualitative analysis -see below). The issues of Cheshire Life magazine available for this research stretched from January 1950 to the present. The magazine is issued monthly, thus being represented by twelve copies each year (normally - see below).
The technique used for (an otherwise unrelated) magazine-based study by Sandford, Dornbusch and Hickman (1959) was employed as an approximate template in drawing a sample from the total number of available copies. This was done so that a reasonable spread of issues could be selected for comparison of data over time. The said process for sample-selection is set out precisely below.
Each decade of issues was assigned a number '1' to '120', every individual number representing one issue of the magazine; as an example, for the decade 'The 1960s ', number '99' would correspond with the ninety-ninth issue that decade, which would be the third issue of its eighth year, or March 1968. Then, an internet-based random-number generator (www.randomizer.org) was used to select five numbers (thus five issues) from each decade. The issues chosen, were also examined in the order randomly produced, which was as follows :
1980s; November 1983, November 1986, July 1983, March 1985, and March 1987.
1950s; May 1952, June 1952, September 1956, March 1950 and November 1954.
1960s; July 1967, June 1961, December 1966, November 1967 and March 1964.
1990s; March 1993, June 1996, March 1995, March 1999 and February 1994.
1970s; June 1976, March 1973, August 1976, July 1978 and February 1978.
As can be seen above, the order of reading each decade and the order of individual issues read within each decade was randomly selected, but the magazines had to be analysed one decade at a time. This was due to constraints set by the comparative difficulty of retrieval of the magazines for library staff (due to the place of storage and need for strict chronological ordering). In the Sandford, Dornbusch and Hickman study (ibid), the order of magazine analysis was entirely random (at individual journal level) so as to prevent 'changes in the perspective of the content analysists from producing shifts' in apparent results (emphasis added, ibid: 164).
The significance of this potential problem was not, however, considered to be particularly important in this case, A) because any trends between individual issues within a decade sample would be far less significant (if not entirely insignificant) when compared with trends between whole decades, a far more substantial unit of time, and B) because of the fact that detailed analysis of material was to take place before categorisation (discussed below) so that any trends would be less likely to be apparent at the initial analysis stage (the 'notation' stage).
The sample was to be drawn only from complete decades in order that it would be theoretically possible to tabulate, into clear time-categories, any trends over time that might be observable in the results. It is for this reason then, that no issues could be sampled after the 1990s, the last complete decade.
As the total population of magazines available for sampling was taken to number 600, this sample represents a little over 4% of the total population. However, it was to transpire during the course of the research that for at least two of the years within the sample period; a thirteenth, extra issue was published (as end-of-year 'reviews '). The existence of these additional issues was discovered through their reference in issues analysed, and it could not be assumed that other years within the sample period would not also contain additional issues. The presence of these extra issues, occurring outside what was perceived to be the total population meant that the sample might represent a slightly lower percentage of the total population than initially anticipated.
This was not, however, considered significant enough to re-select the sample and start again because a review issue is considered unlikely to be particularly representative, (set apart as it is, as a 'special', extra issue, outside of the usual, monthly character of the magazine). Any such re-sampling (followed by re-analysis) could also prove highly disruptive to the overall research process, given the constraints of available time.
Sample Analysis
Notation Stage
The first stage of the content analysis of the sample would be a protracted one. The entire texts (and visual depictions) of each issue were to be read and examined excluding advertisements. It was decided that adverts would not be included in the content analysis so that the focus of the research would be centred on the representation(s) of country-women as constructed by the magazine. It was thought likely that although advertising may well play a major role in social constructions and reproductions, the relationship that a magazine pursues and fosters with its readership seems likely to occur in its most overt form in the main texts of that journal's articles and their associated visual representations (mainly photographs but also including drawings and other visual information). Thus the articles of the magazine rather than advertisments, may be more likely to be the prime locus of symbolic constructs, where representations are made in a way that is deemed appropriate to the ethos of the magazine in the targeting of, and fostering relationships with, its readership. It was therefore decided that advertising was not likely to the best focus for the research given the inevitably limited resources for study.
Notes would be taken on every representation of a woman (or women, womanhood in general or femininity and so on) in the articles. This is a more problematic process than it at first seems, for a single photograph or sentence (as just two examples) can display or create a myriad of different (and possibly differing) themes and symbols, so it is important that it is explained here what is meant by 'a representation' for the purposes of this stage of the research:
A representation noted would certainly include any (and indeed every) adjective or other kind of description pertaining to a woman or women. It would also include any activity that a woman or women is/are described or pictured as doing. This is also a potentially problematic area because, again, a host of things could be regarded as 'activities' and represented in just one incidence (such as eating, looking, talking, thinking and so on). For the purposes of this research (and to make categorical distinctions possible), activities would be taken to be any overt or obviously displayed (though problems of interpretation are still at the fore), activities such as riding a horse for example, plus any roles, hobbies and jobs described as being associated with a woman (or women in general).

Categorisation
Once the collection of data in the manner described above had been completed, it was to be organised into categories. These would depend upon the content of the material studied but would certainly include categories connected with various types of descriptions of women, and various activities and roles that women are depicted as doing. As discussed earlier, categorical distinction is, in itself a potentially highly problematic area, where the perceptions of the person organising categorisations (in this case the content-analyst) can affect the outcome (of both categories chosen, and the content of the categories). This was to be something to be considered throughout this stage of the research.In practise, decisions had to be made about the representations noted and the category into which they would be included (another form of representation or re-representation). For example, it was decided that the activity of dried flower-arranging was to be categorised under 'Arts and Crafts' rather than, say, 'Gardening'. Similarly, decisions were made to separate the representations of women in 'Competitive Sport' (such as women described as a competitor in a 'Ladies' steeplechase) and women shown taking part in an 'Outdoor Leisure' activity (simply riding a horse, for instance). The grey areas that can problematise categorical distinctions were perhaps most clearly expressed in the course of this research in the difficulty in deciding to file the activity of (fox) hunting under 'Outdoor Leisure' rather than 'Competitive Sport'.

Quantitative and Qualitative Data
Finally, although this study may appear on the face of it to be a primarily quantitative one (in terms of its concern with counting-up the numbers of representations in each category), the importance of the qualitative aspects of the data analysis should not be underestimated. It is often the qualitative material that sets the tone, style and context in which, and through which, representations can be portrayed to, or interpreted by the reader (or the content analyst). The qualitative context(s) which the magazine produces, provides a symbolic backdrop or landscape onto which the portraits and characterisations (representations) are painted and through which roles and values can be interpreted. It is imperative that the character of the magazine (and any changes to it over time) is considered in the its' overall analysis.

Findings
Representations of Rurality and Class (The Context)
Throughout the sample, a decidedly rural account of the county of Cheshire was presented by Cheshire Life Magazine (hereafter 'C.L.'). In one instance a (then) new magazine 'Farm and Country' was described as its contemporary (C.L., June 1961), and Cheshire is frequently and consistently described as 'Farming country '. This rural account of the county often blends romantic countryside imagery (in-line with romantic notions of the rural idyll) with that of hunting and the hunter. In this extract for instance, the relationship of country-people (in this case 'the countryman' ) with the country landscape is represented as one of unity:
'Nature, like the countryman, grows old gracefully. Venerable trees, an imperial stag; the forest patched brown with long straths of larch, sheltered oaks wrapped in rustling dead leaves; sycamores cloaked in yellow. These are the glory of Cheshire.' (Emphasis added, C.L., November 1986).
The centrality of hunting (specifically fox-hunting) to the magazines' representation of rurality is clear throughout the sample; with frequent coverage of hunts through photographic centre-features with full reports, on front-covers and through regular coverage of related events like hunt-balls. The magazine claims (at various points through the sample) that Cheshire indeed is home to the oldest hunt of all, that of the Tarporley Hunt which had its first 'meet' in 1762 (C.L., August 1976).
The depiction of the county as fundamentally rural, or of having the country at its heart is a consistent theme, in spite of perceived threats to its rural identity from development and change. The perceived threat to rurality from modern development may work to actually strengthen the rural identity of the county portrayed in the magazine, in terms of the rural idyll as constructed through nostalgia for the past, and a reaction against modernity (Davidoff et al, 1979). The county's rural nature is portrayed as something that is deeply-rooted and as (so-far) defying all attempts to change it through encrouching developmental modernisation. Mobberley village cricket is, for example, described as 'something the Arabs can't buy ' (C.L., August 1976). Similarly, the following description of Lymm is typical in its insistence of the maintenance of a rural identity in spite of physical change:
'...it has become residential and urbanised. But it has never ceased to be a "country" place, with an abundance of natural qualities which countrymen and women regard as their birthright.' (C.L., August 1976).
This localised rural identity promoted by the magazine occurs within particular class-contexts. The landed classes and (probably upper) middle classes are cited by the journal as bastions of stability, as in this description of a Cheshire village;
'... the most Conservative spot on earth - God's little acre for the Tory party.....one of the last remaining citadels of the middle classes, a place where the champions of the status quo finally turn at bay and defend themselves against the encroachments of what is some-times known elsewhere as "progress" (C.L., June 1961).
The magazine has an implicit leaning towards the promotion of the idea and values of old and rural Cheshire; a timeless representation of the county as being fundamentally and at heart, unchanged in its basic character in spite of the development, for example, of successful car, chemical and aerospace industries.Representations of Women (Countrywomen in Context)
The notes made about all the representations of women in the sample were collated and organised into categories (as described in 'methods' -see Table 1 and the accompanying explanation of categories in Appendix A).

Women as Property.
Changes in the position of women in society are suggested by some of the findings displayed in Table 1 (Appendix A). Early in the issues of the magazine through the 1950s, 1960s and the early 1970s, pages of individual photographs of women who had been announced as recently engaged to be married are displayed. These photographs were then often the only place where women are depicted on their own, rather than as an appendage to a man, though clearly their status is one as someone soon to gain status through their attachment to a man, the details of whom were listed below the photograph. The percentage of women shown as newly engaged drops from some 20% in the 1950s to less than 3% in the 1970s before this section of the journal disappears altogether. Similarly, the percentage of women who are portrayed in terms of their connection with an important, 'high status' man (often important people in a local hunt, high-ranking military and business men) is initially high and drops gently overall, though this aspect never entirely disappears.
Overall, women in the sample are portrayed in (generally) increasingly 'active ' roles, and decreasingly 'passive ' (see fig 1 and fig 2 in Appendix A), reflecting wider changes to expectations of women's place in society. One of the most dramatically rising categories through the sample is that of concern with attractiveness and/or fashionability. This rise is probably mainly due to the far greater amount of magazine space and interest given over to fashion articles. The tone of these articles, however, changes greatly over the years.
Early issues often imply women's possession of a yearning for fashionable and appropriate clothes. The rewarding of oneself with 'quality' clothes often being portrayed as not only normal and natural for women, but as being good for the soul. For example in the wearing of new fashions being described as 'a booster of morale' (C.L., November 1967) or the account of 'the tonic properties of a new hat....no woman is unaware of them' (C.L., March 1950).
Though the overall incidences of concern with fashionability and looks increases, the extent to which this is seen as a deeply-felt and natural urge seems to subside. Throughout the sample women are portrayed as being increasingly independent, both socially and financially; business-women emerging as a notable force in the 1980s and reaching some 13% in the 1990s. The number of women shown as being successful educationally rises after the 1950s, though never reaches particularly notable levels.
The incidences of overtly expressed needs for female emancipation are perhaps surprisingly at their highest through the 1950s, mostly in reports on meetings of the Women's Institute. Some early features on the W.I. include those that focus on talks in which both the past and continuing emancipation of women is clearly portrayed as desirable. One such feature, for example, reported on a talk which '...put the emancipation of women as perhaps the most important thing that has ever happened ' (C.L., May 1952).
The magazines representation of the W.I. shall be examined in more detail below, due to the significant role played here in representations and constructions of countrywomen.

Representations of Countrywomen.
Women's Activities - 'Recreation '
Table 1 (Appendix A) shows the significance played by some of the creative and sporting activities portrayed in the sample. Reference however, to fig 3 (in Appendix B) illustrates more clearly the relative importance of differing activities as a fraction of all 'recreational' activities (though 'recreational' is not a perfect definition as some of these activities may involve 'earnings' such as prize-winnings and the word may tend to under-play their cultural significance).
We can see in Fig 3 (Appendix B) that 'artistic' activities play a highly significant role in the lives of Cheshire women as portrayed in the magazine. The high incidences of 'arts and crafts' may, to some extent, point to the need to protect a domestic idyll as a miniature, recreated equivalence to the rural idyll as expounded by Davidoff, L'Esperance & Newby (1976). There is relatively little sign however, of farmhouse cooking, gardening or other especially domestic forms of creativity. Nevertheless, 'the arts' in general, and craftwork in particular (including basket-weaving, flower arranging, textile work and so on) feature very strongly and can surely be seen as upholding some traditional aspects of a rural idyll.
Theatre, and especially musical theatre, along with choirs and other musical events, often organised in aid of charity, also feature very strongly. Such events can perhaps be seen as both consolidating community-spirit while fostering a sense of worthiness, directed to a good cause (see a detailed account of the significance of charity later).
The (high) incidences of women's competitive sports were dominated again by traditional country events like show-jumping, (horse) racing, hunting, shooting and to a lesser extent other sports associated with the comfortably affluent classes like 'Ladies' golf and tennis. Overall, sport and other outdoor activities can be said to be dominated by those involving what Urry (1995) calls 'interventions in nature', namely more traditional and old-fashioned, often middle-management based 'organization-persons' or 'indistincts'.
Casual (uncompetitive) horse-riding completely dominates the category labelled 'outdoor leisure '. Activities involving a 'holistic' approach of bodily-wellbeing to nature that seem commonplace elsewhere; climbing, cycling, canoeing and rambling, Urry's (1995) 'ascetics' hardly feature at all, even in the most recent issues, and neither do his 'new-sociations', suggesting that interactions with the countryside by the women portrayed in Cheshire Life alludes to a more traditional, high-culture form of involvement of the old-fashioned, moneyed-classes rather than a (post-modernist) mix of high-brow 'culture' with 'recreational' fun.

Women, the (Rural) Community and Charity
The W.I. is afforded significant prominence by the magazine firstly by the positioning of the 'W.I. Notes of the Month ' articles near the beginning of each journal, and secondly (and probably more importantly) through the appearance of these articles every month on a long-term basis (that is, at least for every issue in this sample). So for long-term readers, those who are most likely to identify themselves what we might call the 'character' of the magazine (or to put it another way; those who are most likely to internalise the constructions and representations portrayed by the journal); the Women's Institute may appear of significant importance.
The magazine's portrayal of the W.I. is one that seems to emphasise its role as a focal point for country-matters, that is; country-matters expressed in terms of the concerns of county-women (or 'countrywomen' as one word, differentiated as a distinct specie from other kinds of women or people), made explicit, for instance, in a reported W.I. meeting, the subject of which was said to be 'What is of most concern to countrywomen?' (C.L., March 1964).
It seems that women are prescribed a particular kind of role in expressing and acting upon the perceived concerns of the countryside, a role that is particularly oriented towards the 'values' of community (epitomised by the W.I.). Organised groups of countrywomen are seen as being politically active in an especially social, communitarian and neighbourly way, supporting Little and Austin's (1996) account of high levels of social-orientation amongst rural women. This particular brand of small 'p' politics often expresses itself in local charity events, in which home-made food products and art-and-craft items are sold to raise funds. Such events form the mainstay of reported W.I. activities throughout the sample.
There appears, in places, a degree of sensitivity towards 'outsider' perceptions of countrywomen's groups (extendable to rurality generally?) as being rather too cosy or lacking in gravity. An article entitled 'The Same Difference' (C.L. , July 1983) compared two locally based women's groups, one held to be widely perceived as a 'radical' organisation, the other - a local W.I. group. The groups are compared and initially contrasted. Interestingly the magazine claimed that a third, 'feminist' group had declined involvement with the article; 'they said they didn't wish to be editorially linked with jam makers.' (Ibid).
The peace group was portrayed as an organisation notable firstly by its radical stance in opposition to military bases. They were compared with the suffragettes (through facing potential imprisonment) and the group's own sense of connection with the past struggles of the Women's movement itself was evoked in the choice of interview quotes. A second distinctive feature of this group noted in the article was the informality of its organisation, indicated by its lack of a committee structure and the presence of a 'facilitator' encouraging everyone to speak, rather than a formal chair at meetings (in contrast to the formality of W.I. meetings). The peace group was thus afforded a form of credibility in its appeal to more modern, egalitarian and radical (or at least unconventional) methods of political participation.
The same article then went on to debunk the idea that the W.I. is a 'fuddy-duddy' organisation, portraying it as essentially and in its own way radical , as is demonstrated by the use of quotes from Cheshire W.I.'s press officer:
"Look at the subjects we're debating and voting on at conference hardly scones and sewing is it? ....We were discussing breast cancer screening long before it hit the headlines. In 1922 we voted on VD health education, and in 1943 equal pay for equal work....people think we all wear wooly stockings and make corn dollies. But it's not all jam and jerusalem you know." (Emphasis added, C.L., March 1964).
However, while at pains to emphasise the radical stance and achievements of the group, the article seemed simultaneously keen to promote some of the more traditional aspects and images of the organisation, especially the construction of its character as being essentially British, locally orientated (rural) and conscious of middle-class values and identity :

'Doreen lives luxuriously in rural Cheshire in a large house with a Union Jack flapping jauntily from a tall pole in the garden. She rarely, if ever, wears wooly stockings, and is more interested in Aztec art than corn dollies. "Because we are quiet and unassuming, there is no reason to think we are fuddy-duddies....W.I. officers tend to be better off because they often need transport to get to county meetings" (Ibid).
The article again emphasises the sense of neighbourliness instilled in, or by the groups members, through the evocation of a sense of belonging (Bracey, 1959):
'When a friend of Doreen's broke her wrist, a fellow W.I.-er baked enough food to fill a freezer for weeks. When Doreen came out of hospital last year, a neighbour from the local W.I. came round with a huge casserole. "You won't feel like cooking a meal tonight" she said." '(C.L., March 1964).
The more traditional characterisation of countrywomen is evoked again in an article about a rural nanny living with, and working for a family in a large country house. The portrayal of this nanny is also extended to include 'the British Nanny' in general. The article, like portrayals of the W.I. in the sample, conveys the sense in which the work and principles of this nanny and others like her extend to benefit the health and well-being of the community, or rather the wider communities of family, rural community and indeed nation :
'The British nanny built the British Empire. Her crisp uniform, her starched principles and rigid discipline moulded generations of stiff upper lips. Her regime of brisk walks and wholesome food turned her charges - and the globe they would eventually govern - a gratifying well-scrubbed shade of pink.' (C.L., November 1983).
There is evidence here of Davidoff et al's (1979) notion of a 'Beau ideal ', combining the rural and domestic idylls. The specific nanny featured is described as possessing;
'...homely features and a sturdy figure ..the nanny of them all - "I'm a disciplinarian. There's so little discipline in schools." ' (Emphasis added,C.L., November 1983).
What the depiction of the rural nanny and those of the W.I. share is that sense in which the values and attitudes (portrayed more perhaps as deeply-rooted, naturally occurring instincts) of both kinds of countrywomen aid the welfare of their own community and those of the wider community, extending ultimately to the entire nation. Countrywomen portrayed here are locally-orientated pillars of the (both local and national) community. They are represented as nurturers (of community rather than motherhood specifically in this case), who cultivate an environment favourable to the well-being of society at large.

A Closer Look at Charity Events
'Doing-good ' for both local and wider community is then a major pre-occupation of countrywomen portrayed in 'Cheshire Life'. A major site for such activity is the charity function or Society ball. Coverage of such occasions dominate the magazine, every issue in the sample featured several such events, often devoting full or double-page spreads (sometimes more) to each one. Women often dominate the coverage of such events.
These kind of occasions were so widespread and featured so prominently as to render their inclusion in table 1 (Appendix A) virtually meaningless, as many of the other activities noted and counted-up for inclusion in the table came from coverage of such functions (in other words, many of the 'Representations ' featured in Table 1 are a sub-group to charity events). However, one extra 'Representation' category is that of 'Important Public works' (in Table 1) which relates to portrayals of people specifically described in terms of their 'good works ' for charity or 'the public good ' in general. This is a category that generally seems to rise from the 1970s onwards to hover vaguely around 10% of all representations. However, it is important to re-emphasise the extent to which the context of charity functions dominate the magazine compared with these more specific examples of those who 'do good '.
The charity aspect of the functions and balls so frequently featured in 'Cheshire Life' is but one facet of the representation of such occasions. These functions are portrayed as a glittering showpiece where the most important, wealthy and glamourous people of the county meet and socialise. Though a large proportion of women portrayed here have what might easily be deemed authentic rural connections; with farming, hunting, the homely village-orientated aspects of the W.I. or as wealthy owners of large county manors, often it is the sheer glamour of such occasions that is stressed. However, the authenticity of the local roots of the participants of these events, is consistently implied:
'The Cheshire Set...They are as elusive to define as mist over Rostherne Mere. They are as sleek and jaunty as the grin on the face of a Cheshire cat. They have class, flair, style, poise and panache - and like stars over Jodrell Bank they came out mainly at night, when they can glitter more brilliantly...Shimmering they might be, superficial they are not.' (C.L., March 1995)
The same article gives a tongue-in-cheek account of how someone might become a member of this county set, one which emphasises both their (class) status and exclusivity:
'Give generously to charity, join your Best Kept Village team, develop an accent as sharp and brilliant as a Boodle's diamond and most of all deny the very existence of the Cheshire Set to anyone who lives south of the Dee or North of the Mersey.' (Ibid).
Some years later, an article appeared in reaction to what was described as a 'pertinent, patronising and pretentious portrait of the Cheshire Set' (C.L., March 1999) by a BBC television documentary:
'...It had more to do with Hollywood Wives than anyone we at Cheshire Life would recognise from the hard working, quick thinking, real women who are reflected in the pages of this magazine.....If they were looking for a tall blond to typify Cheshire perhaps they could have turned to the formidable Ann Winterton MP. The reality behind the polo set at Henbury Hall might have been balanced by the hard work Naomi de Ferranti has put into the drugs charity turning point.' (C.L., March 1999).
The portrayal of the Cheshire Set as 'hard-working, quick thinking' and 'real' extends to cheshire countrywomen generally, for example in a feature called 'Lymm, home for fighters and doers':
'They (Lymm women) are tireless do-it-yourselfers, and whether their "thing" is painting, flower arranging, archaeology, singing...or raising money for charity they do it with a wholehearted zest that is both heart-warming and admirable.' (C.L., August 1976).
The continual representation of countywomen as feisty 'doers', who get things done, whether for themselves or more probably for a wider good, permeates the sample.
Summary and Conclusions
The sample represented just over 4% of Cheshire Life magazines published over a fifty year period. While this is not a large figure, the format and style of the magazine changed comparatively little over the years and a larger sample may not have changed the results significantly.
However, this small study represents a portrayals of countrywomen from just one source. Many other such potential representations may be portrayed elsewhere, with their own construct(s) of 'the countrywoman'. Furthermore, the choice of categories, dictated as far as possible through a qualitative assessment of the content (see 'methods'), is related to the perspective taken by the researcher and therefore bound to affect outcomes. Thus research taking another perspective of the same content but using different categories may find differing interpretations and outcomes to some degree.
It would be most surprising if no significant changes in the representation of women could be detected in the sample, covering, as it does, some fifty years. A considerable growth was found in expressed concerns about looking fashionably attractive , something that may be of more concern to studies in the relationship of women (and men) to consumer culture than here. Overall however, contextual change discerned included the significant increase in occurrences of women presented in 'active' roles and the corresponding decrease in 'passive' ones. The presentation of women as property has dropped very markedly along with a rise of socially and financially independent women successful in education and business.
However, what is perhaps most marked about the findings, is the extent to which a very clear and stable portrayal of countrywomen is made throughout the sample. The stability of the portrayed identity of rural women may be related to the desire to maintain a continuous and continuing sense of rural identity, a theme which is applied to the whole county (as well as individual places) by the magazine. The rural women in the sample tend to be prescribed particular kinds of roles; they are overwhelmingly presented as being community-orientated, a factor that is extendable from concern for neighbours, to that for the local community (often village-orientated), to finally that of the whole country. The role of 'motherhood ' hardly features in the sample, the countrywomen represented though are nurturers in another sense; as people who foster a sense of well-being, through a sense of belonging (Bracey 1959) and as pillars of the local community and promoters for good in society as a whole.
Many women's 'recreational' activities portrayed involve what Urry calls 'interventions in nature' (Urry, 1995: 213) that may seem equivalent to his managerial-class category of 'organisation persons' but seem more likely, in this case, to be the wives of bureaucrats or at least as representing a similar level in the class hierarchy, but alluding to a more 'authentic' perception of rurality and community-based rural values, seen in opposition to their perceived threats (from Urry's (1995) 'new sociations' amongst others).
Thus when women in the sample are not overtly 'doing good', they are frequently portrayed in activities associated with horses, hunting and especially in the arts and crafts , activities which may support a traditional view of the countryside -The Rural Idyll- through their participation in 'traditional' rural crafts and activities in a way which promotes an harmonious sense of rural living (Little and Austin, 1996). Thus in spite of an overall increase, for instance, in the number of business-women represented, the position of many of the women portrayed is not 'lived-out' so much through jobs (as in paid employment), as though unpaid roles, which help to bind the social fabric of community. This supports Little and Austin's (ibid) assertion that such a rural construct may inhibit women's employment chances.
In reflecting upon the relevance of the findings, it is important to consider that the magazine asserts a particularly class-based portrayal or construction of rurality and countrywomen. Titled women, (wives of) large land-owners and others high in the class hierarchy form a significant part of the content, otherwise, many of the women portrayed are the monied middle-classes, the zestful 'doers'of the community. The dominance of the affluent classes in the sample may also help to explain the defence of a traditional view of rurality in which country-people are seen as bastions of stability, stood in defence against threats (including Urry's (1995) 'new sociations') to idealised and romantic conceptions of the countryside (the rural idyll ) which happen also to threaten memories of an older order of landed gentry.

Considerations for Further Research
The dominance of affluent classes may be largely missing out entire sections of the rural life. Indeed, it may be as appropriate to reflect upon those women who rarely, if ever, feature in the content, women invisibleized in such constructions of the rural life. There is little place here, for example, of the rural poor, or for women who feel trapped by preconceived notions of their engendered role(s) through a patriarchal system of rural social relations, as suggested elsewhere (see Little and Austin, 1996). Many of the women portrayed had access to resources (of time as well as money) enabling the active pursuance of charitable and other community-based deeds. The absence of such resources, combined with a construction of countrywomen that emphasises community work, may accentuate feelings of disenfranchisement amongst less-resourced rural women.
Another potential area in which women may be invisibleized is in the wider, ongoing debate on the countryside and (perceptions of) threats to it. Any differential in conception of threats to rurality by women and men is surely a worthy avenue of research, as would any differences in the political representation of and by women, in such debates.
Furthermore, given the notion that the countryside is 'under threat', the findings reveal a more clearly discernible view, reproduction or portrayal of what precisely it may be that is perceived as being under threat when we hear of 'the rural life'. Rural living is clearly revealed in the sample as being portrayed as its own, distinctive culture possessing strikingly community- oriented values. 'The Countrywoman' is portrayed as a distinctive specie, differentiated from other kinds of women or people.
Finally, the somewhat radical stance held by the W.I. in certain areas, combined with their simultaneous sensitivity to their portrayal as a conservative organisation, while maintaining many conservative traits, is illustrative of something of a dichotomy that can be found within this construction of rurality and rural women. The tendency towards sharp definitions of rural characters (that may closely relate to stereotyping) may provide both a source of patronising subjugation by non-rurals (Newby 1979) while simultaneously promoting the romanticised idealisation of a differentiated rural life (Davidoff et al, 1976) from which it may gain much of its identity and sway.
This dichotomy may be found at the center of the portrayals and perceptions of 'the rural life ', as a site of struggle for its very definition and meaning. Thus further investigation is warranted in order to explore how this dichotomy is apprehended and played out in performances of rural identity among the real people of 'rural' worlds.

Bibliography

Bracey, H.E. (1959). English Rural Life, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Cloke, P. and Little, J. (eds.), (1997). Contested Countryside Cultures, Otherness, Marginalisation and Rurality, London: Routledge.

Countryside Agency (2000). The State of the Countryside 2000, Cheltenham: Countryside Agency Publications.

Crichton, R. (1964). Commuters' Village, A Study of Community and Commuters in the Berkshire Village of Statfield Mortimer, London: Macdonald.

Durkheim, E. (1964). The Division of Labour in Society, New York: New York Free Press.

Davidoff, L., L'Esperance, J. & Newby, H. 'Landscape with figures: Home and community in English Society 'in Mitchel, J & Oakley, A (eds.) (1976). The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Hammondsworth: Penguin.

Frankenburg, R. (1990). Village On The Border, a social study of religion, politics and football in a North Wales community, Illinois: Waveland Press.

Jones, G. (1973). Rural Life, Patterns and Processes, London: Longman.

King, C. (1992). 'The Politics of Representation ' in Bonner, F., Goodman, L., Allen, R., Janes, L. and King, C. (eds.) Imagining Women, Cultural Representations And Gender, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Little, J. and Austin, P. (1996). Women and the Rural Idyll in Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 101-111.

Mingay, G. (ed.) (1989). The Rural Idyll, London: Routeledge.Newby, H. (1979). Green and Pleasant Land: Social Change in Rural England, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Sanford, M. Dornbusch and Hickman, Loren, C. (1959). 'Other-directedness in Consumer-goods Advertising: A test of Riesman's Historical Theory ' in Rose, G. (1982). Deciphering Sociological Research, London: Macmillan Press.

Tonnies, F. (1957). Community and Society, New York: Harper and Row.

Urry, J. (1995). 'A Middle-Class Countryside? ' in Butler, T. and Savage, M. (eds.) Social Change and the Middle Classes, London: UCL Press Limited.

Williams, R. (1973). The Country and the City, London: Chatto and Windus.

Valentine, G. (1997). "A Safe Place to Grow Up? Parenting, Perceptions of Children's Safety and the Rural Idyll" in Journal of Rural Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 137 - 148.

Newspaper Sources:
Vikram Dodd, "Fearless WI Reveals its Radical Side", The Guardian, 08/06/2000.

Author not cited, "Mr Blair Gets The Bird, The magic has gone. Now he has to fight.", The Guardian, 08/06/2000.

Internet Sources:
The Countryside Agency, 'The State of The Countryside 2000', http://www.countrydide.org, 19/06/ 2000.
Research Randomizer, http://www.randomizer.org, 12/11/2000.
Appendix B.
Fig 3 . *Fig 3 is a pie-chart to illustrate various categories of women's recreation portrayed in the total sample of 'Cheshire Life ' magazines.
Song & Dance - Women represented as taking part in musical, theatrical and/or dance events.
Art & Crafts - Women represented as taking part in the visual arts and/or doing craft-work.
Writing - Women represented as authors.
Competitive Sport - Women represented as competitors in a sporting event.
Outdoor Leisure - Women represented as taking part in 'non-competitive' outdoor pursuits such as horse-riding, cycling, wildlife spotting.48Cookery - Women shown or described as cooking.
Gardening - Women shown or described as gardening or garden-designing.
[Categories are defined as for Table 1 (in Appendix A)]

Consensual Democracy in Scandinavia

2007-09-07T05:52:00.000-07:00

"Consensual democracy": what do is meant by the term, and is its application to Denmark, Norway and Sweden still appropriate (if it ever was)?

One of the identifying features often attributed to Scandinavia is the distinctively consensual nature of the political decision making process. This characterisation of Scandinavian politics as being especially consensual and co-operative is frequently seen through british eyes in sharp contrast to the combative, confrontational nature of "winner takes all" competitive politics characterised in the entertaining confrontations that occur across the floor of the British House of Commons. This consensual description of Scandinavian politics will be examined below [using the said three metropolitan countries], the validity, in terms of "how democratic?" this co-opting environment really is will be questioned and consideration will be given to perceived threats to consensual democracy observed in more recent times of changing political culture.
Consensual, as opposed to adversarial [UK style] politics has been described as one of the main features of the Nordic model of government (Arter, 1999: 148). Moreover a culture of consensus is said to form a part of, and evan be deeply rooted in Scandinavian life. This does not have to mean a perfect world in which political conflict does not exist but rather that the way in which decisions are reached is achieved through through a system in which the overriding desire is that for collective deliberations and compromise:
The notion of a culture of consensus does not imply the total absence of conflict and dissension but has to do with the existence through a special procedure for arriving at collective decisions. A crucial element of this method is that all the parties concerned are given a chance to have their say and be heard. Another aspect of the procedure is that decisions grow out of deliberations and consultations between the parties. (Peterson, 1994: 37)
This orientation towards collective action through wide and thorough consultation with all interested parties seems to for a mainstay of Scandinavian [political] culture and may be divisible to individual psychology; In his study of political elites in Sweden for instance, Thomas Anton found that the willingness to compromise was deeply embedded in their attitudes resulting in long, drawn-out procedures involving preparatory research and pre-planning before the long process of deliberation itself got underway (Anton, 1980: 159). The resulting policy decisions " -are themselves structured to avoid lasting opposition" and " -distributes a little bit of some benefit to all involved participants, excluding none from some share of the 'action'. " (Ibid)
Evidence for the "collective" orientation in Scandinavia can be seen in the ubiquity of groups not only in the sense of those we usually tend in Britain to think of as organised, political "interest groups" but also in a myriad of social (such as sports associations), as well as economic group interests included in the policy-making arena. Indeed, sports associations form some of the largest organisations, and it has been noted that these, along with cultural and humanitarian groups have tended to form national bodies (Kvavik, 1976: 4). The exceptionally high membership levels of to one kind of association or another is a notable feature of Scandinavian life, as Peterson notes of Sweden:
Only a small minority, less than ten percent, of the adult population, remain outside associational life. An even smaller minority of eight percent are members of seven or more different kinds of organisation. There is therefore a cosiderable degree of variation around the average of three memberships per adult Swede but the great majority of Swedes are members of between one and four associations. (Peterson, 1994: 157)
The consensual and collective orientation towards decision making is commonly attributed to a high of homogeneity in the Scandinavian countries, which in turn is oft put down to the relatively late arrival of capitalism to Norden. This meant a relative absence of an early capitalist middle class [unlike in the UK] and a comparatively free ["un-oppressed"] peasantry. Plus, the large new populations of workers were brought into a system that was ready- "socialistic" to use Korpi's term (Korpi, 1978: 72) and suffrage was extended during a period when the working class was still forming (ibid) contributing to the early strength of the Left [which we will come back to later].
This can be said to be most true of Sweden, then Norway and less true of Denmark whose capitalism developed in a way more akin to the UK-a situation which is repeated in other cultural/political area where Sweden can be seen as the most ideally or classically Scandinavian of the three countries, Denmark the least [or more "Western" or British-like], with Norway somewhere in-between.
The co-operative aspect to Scandinavian politics must owe itself not least to the fact that the countries are governed through proportional systems of representation and not a first-past-the-post "winner takes all" like the one we are used to here in Britain [at least still in general elections]. Proportional representation means that parties are much more likely to co-operate and form coalitions with one-another, and perhaps even more importantly; parties will often try to make a wider appeal in the sense that they may "tread on other parties' territory" as it were to steal some support across usual party loyalties.
In Sweden, which has an exceptionally proportional system, minority rule [across the Left-Right spectrum] has been the norm, thus cross-party negotiation has been traditional and indeed, unavoidable. Denmark has seen a mixture of minority and majority rule while in this case, it is Norway that stands out as having had an extended period of [labour party] majority rule through the 1940s and 1950s. In all three countries, "Earthquake elections" have land marked times of increasing voter-volatility of late -and is an issue tat will be returned to later.
How policy is actually decided and formulated is a drawn-out and very deliberative affair in the three countries. This can be shown by the frequency, for example, of royal commissions when compared to those of the UK. A royal commission in Britain is a relatively rare and grandiose affair whereas in Sweden, hundreds of royal commissions take place every year and these, along with other commissions and committees of all sorts make up a normal part of Scandinavian political life.
Politicians from different parties, officials from public authorities, local government and interest organisations plus academics from research institutes are likely to sit on commissions of enquiry (Peterson, 1994: 90). This type of commission is especially common in Sweden where there are a large number of relatively small government departments. Commissions of enquiry investigate policy areas and develop proposals (ibid). Olof Peterson notes that the commission system has been of central importance in Sweden:Commissions of enquiry have paved the way for many of the major reforms and have often served as a forum for achieving compromises and arriving at a broad consensus. (Ibid)
The parliaments of all three countries also have systems of standing committees which reflect the balance of power in parliament, where in Norway for example, every MP belongs to one of twelve standing committees on major areas of policy (Arter, 1999: 218).Denmark's standing committees used to be temporary, ad hoc affairs set up to attend to particular bills [like in the UK] until this system was abolished in 1971 (ibid). Politicians in Scandinavia seem to attach great importance to this stage of policy formation:The vast majority of Nordic parliamentarians are orientated towards the detailed work of legislation rather than attracting the attention of the media or advertising themselves generally. They excel in considering the 'small print' of government proposals and feel most at home in the usually informal environment of the standing committees. Indeed, the Nordic parliaments may be considered 'working parliaments' in that there isa strong legislative culture and members are both recruited with, and subsequently consolidate, an area of policy expertise. (Ibid: 215)
This emphasis on policy expertise, through both the specialisation of political representatives in certain policy areas, and the recruitment of academics and policy experts also makes the committee stage a particularly attractive access point for interest groups (Kvavik, 1976: 93-94).
Major policy proposals, once finally made then go to yet another level of deliberative consultation. At the "Remiss" stage, all interested parties, including representations of any section of people likely to be affected by the proposals are invited to make critical comments on them. The thoroughness of this stage, in terms of regulation by formalised powers is again stronger in Sweden and Norway than in Denmark. But whatever, all interested parties are usually seen to have their say before cabinet can finally draft legislation.
One of the paradoxes of Scandinavia has been the relatively peaceful coexistence and co-operation between a very strong left-wing political force within a capitalist economic order (Castles, 1978: 119). Negotiations between LO [the main, enveloping union wing of the left], the foremost political parties of the left [the Social Democrats in Denmark and Sweden and the Labour party in Norway] and the bourgeois block, have formed a primary focus of political life in Scandinavia. Corporatist [that is, the incorporation of organised group interests into government processes] negotiations have, in Scandinavia lead to a situation that has historically, explicitly expressed, and even tended to favour left-wing thinking [at least, that is, within a scenario in which economic growth can still be maintained]. As Francis Castles has stressed:"Only in Scandinavia have the Social Democrats been fighting battles on a ground of their own choosing"
and
"-only in Scandinavia do the capitalists oppose social democracy on grounds of interest rather than principle" (ibid: 142).
This is not least because the high level of corporate pluralism in Scandinavia has historically been used by the working-class organisations to enable social democratic thinking to be integrated into the very fabric of capitalist society:Four decades of progressively increasing representation at every level and in every institutional sphere have made the trade unions not only the most powerful single veto group in society, but also amongst the most influential forces in defining the prevailing image of society. (Ibid: 131)
So all in all, it does indeed seem that Scandinavian politics is markedly deliberative in nature. However, this is not necessarily at all the same as to say it is truly consensual -in an "across the board", all inclusive kind of way. The explicit inclusion of powerful interests such as the LO is all very well, but what about smaller, less powerful or less well organised interests? How democratic is the process really?
Smaller political parties for instance, have sometimes found they do not get a seat at standing committees [which reflect the balance of power in assemblies]. The Left-Communists in Sweden were too small for entitlement to an automatic place on standing committees through much of the 1970s and 1980s and only gained places through agreements with the ruling Social Democrats (Arter, 1999: 214).
Other interests may be quite large but have little voice in Scandinavian deliberative procedures through being simply too disorganised. Young people are underrepresented in Scandinavian power bases and many may now be turning to new forms of political expression outside the established channels (Peterson, 1994: 221). These new outlets might include participation in "direct actions" and demonstrations that by-pass traditional political activity. Also, Sweden set up a Sami Parliament to offer official recognition and representation of the Sami population, but this has mainly a consultative role and the Sami still feel they are politically suppressed, a feeling not helped by Sweden's refusal to ratify the International Labour Organisation's convention on indigenous peoples (ibid: 218).
As well as the problem of representation, an additional question-mark has been identified by Rune Premfors (1989, Policyanalys, studentlitteratur: Lund in Arter, 1999: 153) as hanging over the possibility of disproportionate significance attached to detail-deliberation and policy preparation " -at the expense of their execution, evaluation and feedback" (Arter, 1999: 153). There is the further danger that the co-opting of organised interests in a lengthy and highly systematic fashion may be seen as a method of diffusing [or even to some extent dis-arming] opposition rather than seeing it as a way of truly taking differing interests on board. Indeed protracted procedures of policy deliberation that can take years to work through can be a useful way of deferring policy; knocking difficult political questions "out of bounds" as it were, in terms of the immediate future through entering into a process which can be relied upon to " -postpone issues of a highly divisive and partisan character" (ibid: 158).
In recent decades, changes to Scandinavian political culture have been noted that could be seen as threatening or even undermining the consensual aspect to policy formation. The "Earthquake elections" that have, to a greater or lesser extent, affected the three countries [in 1973 in Denmark and Norway and to a lesser extent - Sweden's mini-earthquake of 1991] may have marked the end of the classic five-part model of Scandinavian government. With the classic party model broken new parties have risen, gaining support from across traditional party loyalties. New radical parties appeared on the far left and right, while other populist movement were affirmed in elections by the rise for instance, of the Swedish Green party [that gained support from both the socialist and bourgeois blocks]. Class-dealignment and thus increased voter-volaility [a Europe wide phenomenon] are trends that have scoured deep into the traditional patterns of government formation, and legislative culture:
The advent of populist protest parties since the early 1970s has made the legislative culture of the Nordic parliaments less consensual and pragmatic. The small parties, especially on the radical right, have been able to exert blackmail influence in relation to the formation of coalitions, as well as in sustaining or dismissing cabinets in office. (Arter, 1999: 218)
During this period, the growth in party conflict seems also to have lead to declining consensus at the standing committee stage of policy scrutiny (ibid: 217). Commissions of enquiry in Sweden are now expected to work more quickly and cannot advance new reforms that increase expenditure (Peterson, 1994: 90-91), a sign also of the pressure of Norden's new economic pressures. Commissions have also seen levels of agreement drop:
The major interest organisations have lost an important channel of influence with direct access to the political decision-making process. The reduced significance of the commission system also reflects the shift of Swedish politics away from a consensus-oriented political culture towards a more conflictual one. (Ibid)
Peterson also implies that in an age of increasing globalisation, and especially considering Scandinavia's' location at the forefront of the information [technological] revolution; new and larger numbers of organisational groupings have appeared and "the number of actors involved in conflicts has also risen as have the points of interaction." (ibid: 204)
The consensual nature of Scandinavian democracy is however, overall, still appropriate in the application of the term to the modern condition of these three countries. Seen for example, in comparative perspective with the UK; while Sweden, Denmark and Norway may may be moving towards increasingly adversarial [ or more UK-like] styles of political conflict, by more polarised and less homogeneous political actors, they are still three countries that as we have seen, still openly invite all organised group interests into the policy-making arena, and exist within the context of a more democratic, proportional system of representation.

2463 Words.

Bibliography

Anton, Thomas J. (1980). Administered Politics, Elite Political Culture in Sweden, Hingham: Martinus Nijhoff Publishing.

Arter, David (1999). Scandinavian Politics Today, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Board, Joseph B. (1970). The Government and Politics of Sweden, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Castles, Francis G. (1978). The Social Democratic Image of Society, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.

Elder, Neil, Thomas, Alastair H. & Arter, David (1982). The Consensual Democracies? The Government and Politics of the Scandinavian States, Oxford: Martin Robertson.

Peterson, Olof (1994). SwedishGovernment and Politics, Stockholm: Publica.

Rustow, Dankwart A. (1955). The Politics of Compromise, Oxford University Press.

Plato's Republic and the rule of the wise

2007-09-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

Plato's argument is that rule by philosophers is preferable to political equality. In view of the structure of the Republic , should we suppose that Plato offered his account of an ideal polis as a practical proposal, as a utopia, or simply as an example to illustrate a philosophical argument?

Plato's 'Republic' in many ways set the tone for numerous other works that followed it through the ages as the first political utopia. In it, he sets out and describes his ideal state in which an authoritarian form of rule dominates; the rule of the wise. For Plato, only the philosophers have the privileged insight into true knowledge so that a just state must be organised on the basis of those having this knowledge and thus knowing what the good is, ruling. Indeed, he is quite explicit in stating that philosophers are the only people who are fit to rule. Plato sees however, that the setting-up of such a state is far from problematic, with the majority of people seen as being more or less blind to reality and thus unable to appreciate the rule of the few over the many or to know what is really good for them. He does describe ways in which some of the problems associated with this might be at least partly overcome, but some doubts seem to remain as to whether he thinks that the ideal polis is entirely achievable. Running throughout the 'Republic' though, is an undoubtedly strong desire for change and an anxiety to revolutionise the way that human life is organised.
One of the most striking aspects of Plato (in Republic and elsewhere) is the way he deviates from the stances taken by his beloved teacher Socrates, whose dialectic was always one of questioning everything and raising doubt. Plato conversely, developed his doctrine, claiming to have a privileged view of true reality itself, unhidden from the cloaking effects of the superficial world of images which most people accept as the real. For Plato this hidden (to most people) reality, available only to the wise, could be accessed by philosophers by getting beyond the imperfect world of appearance and could be demonstrated through mathematics. The Republic is, though, presented in the form of a dialogue and confusingly gives voice to the character 'Socrates' who we can more accurately take to represent the view of Plato himself and not Socrates. The text could be taken, at least initially as Socretean in nature through the way in which much of the time the dialogue takes the form of questions followed by doubts raised, before answers are found, but the character 'Socrates' spends much of his time answering questions and demonstrating the truth rather than raising doubt at every turn through the lines of thinking. Though Plato honours the memory of Socrates in the dialogue, in many ways he is also abandoning him. Reeve thinks that Plato believed Socrates to have had; '...his philosophical nature "perverted and altered [strephesthai kai alloiousthai]" ' (Reeve, 1988:23-4) by society and suggests that the 'Socrates' in the Republic is true to the essential nature of the real Socrates had he not been 'perverted and altered' by living in the wrong kind of Polis (ibid).
A major assumption that Plato makes is that justice at the level of the individual can be seen as basically equal to that at societal level. Plato begins with the idea of justice in the whole community before scaling it down to individual level. He compares the examination of justice in the state and the individual with trying to read small letters at a distance (analogous to individuals) with reading the same letters, when we find them; written large (analogous to the state) (in Lee, 1987: 57-8):
'....We may therefore find justice on a larger scale in the larger entity, and so easier to recognise. I accordingly propose that we start our enquiry with the community, and then proceed to the individual and see if we can find in the conformation of the smaller entity anything similar to what we have found in the larger.' (ibid: 58).
Plato sees no real problem in equating justice at either level with each-other, though It might well be asked if justice on the individual level really is the same kind of justice as is to be aimed for in a community, though no doubt it might seem easy to criticise him on this point with the benefit of hindsight, and years of sociological enquiry as to those facets of social life that cannot be reduced to individual psychology.
Nevertheless, Plato proceeds to examine justice at societal and individual levels and identifies three main elements of the soul ,which he extrapolates to the three main classes of the ideal state.
One element is characterised as that of 'appetite', that which drives people in their most basic and fundamental desires, such as those of hunger, thirst and '....the agitation's of sex and other desires, the element of irrational appetite - an element closely connected with satisfaction and pleasure' (emphasis added, ibid:156). This element is represented in Plato's ideal state in the order of people who are ruled by appetite above all else and who he calls 'producers'. The producers include the great majority of the population who do most of the ordinary work, with a main incentive being that of satisfying their appetites. For this reason, the producers are allowed private property, an incentive for work.
A second and in a sense higher element of the soul is described as the 'spirit', characterised by the drives of ambition and courage. The class of people who represent the embodiment of spirit for Plato are the auxiliaries or warriors. The auxiliaries undergo extensive programs of education, socialisation and training, for it is they who must carry out the orders of the ruling class in society. In a sense, their description as 'warriors' conceals that part of their function which is more akin, looking at it from our modern perspective, to that of civil servants, in their role of the efficient execution of leader's orders.
The final element of the soul is 'reason'. This is the ultimate element that is used to moderate the other elements. In a wise person, Plato says that the other elements would be balanced by reason, making up a harmoniously well attuned and just individual:
'... by keeping all three in tune, like the notes of a scale (high, middle and low, and any others there be), will in the truest sense set his house to rights, attain self-mastery and order, and live on good terms with himself.' (ibid: 161).
Similarly, for the proper running of a just and ordered state, it would be necessary for the members of that state to take their rightful positions in it, which for Plato corresponds with their class (defined in the terms laid out above, that is; according to the mix of elements that make-up their character). This is necessary because if as Plato insists through 'Republic', the person's soul is a microcosm of the state, then a well balanced state as with a well attuned individual, requires the rule of wisdom and reason over all other attributes. This is the basis of Plato's assertion for rule by philosophers.
For this to work requires people's acceptance of their position in society. Plato deems this to be based on characteristics that are largely pre-ordained and inherited in nature, though there is facility for movement across the classes through the noting (normally by auxiliaries) and selection of people who display appropriate attributes, and their allocation (be it promotion or demotion) to the appropriate class (this would normally be done during member's formative years whilst in their initial education). The producers would be expected to accept their place in the social order on the grounds that the defining and dominant element of their character is 'appetite'. As they are the only class allowed private property and monetary gain, this provides the main motivating factor in satisfying their material desires.
The successful positioning into society of the auxiliaries would be achieved through a long process of education and socialisation, extended to about the age of twenty (Nettleship, 1898: 131). They would undergo various tests and live in spartan conditions so as to have nothing around them that would prevent their becoming successful guardians whilst not being tempted to prey upon other parts of the community, through living a highly disciplined life:
'...it shall be suitable for brave men living under military training and discipline ....They shall eat together in messes and live together like soldiers in camp. They must be told that they have no need of mortal and material gold and silver, because they have in their hearts the heavenly gold and silver given them by the gods as a permanent possession' (in Lee, 1987:125).
Indeed people would be told that their class in society is dependant upon the precise blending of the metals in their souls; that the philosophers would be constituted primarily of gold, the auxiliaries of mainly silver and so on. Even the philosopher-rulers would eventually (after some years) come to believe this 'noble lie' (ibid: 122-4). As well as promoting cohesiveness and allowing people to accept their natural place in social life, the noble lie would encourage fierce defence of the land whenever it were to come under threat if the people believed that;
'...they were fashioned and reared, and their arms and equipment manufactured, in the depths of the earth, and Earth herself, ...they must think of the land in which they live as their mother and protect her if she is attacked, while their fellow citizens they must regard as brothers born of the same mother earth.' (ibid: 122).
The auxiliaries would be trained to treat the other citizens as if partners and friends rather than behave like 'savage tyrants' (ibid: 124), their training compared with the breeding and training of sheep dogs. If a badly reared sheep dog can 'behave more like wolves' (ibid) and worry the sheep, then mis-trained auxiliaries, occupying as they would a pivotal position in society, could cause dissension and society's cohesiveness would be threatened.
Enhanced cohesiveness would also be the effect of the abolition of the private family. It is clear that society in Plato's time was highly patriarchal (see Bosanquet, 1906: 17-21.), and while calls are made in the Republic for equality of women, it is not equality in the form modern feminists would recognise, Plato being only interested in the good of society as a whole, not any particular factions within it. Unanimity is a chief goal and the state is compared with the body in which the part should experience the pleasure and the pain of the whole, the part meaning the individual and the whole body, society; the entire society behaving as one (body) rather than being filtered through smaller and potentially fractious (family) units (Lee, 1987: 190). Dissension, that can so easily start over disputes of private property, Plato claims will also be averted through the inability of men to claim women and/or children as their own (ibid).
Selective breeding would be used to enhance the characteristics of 'stock' (again comparison is used with animal-breeding, this time hunting-dogs and game birds (ibid: 180) ) in each of the classes. This would be done secretly by the manipulation of lottery-based unions between the sexes at organised festivals.
Another important point pertaining to the promotion of stability in 'Republic' is the expressed need for censorship of the arts. Plato thought stories to be very important and that appropriate ones should be used to train the mind at an early age '...before the body is trained ' when '....any impression we choose to make leaves a permanent mark.' (ibid: 72). Inappropriate stories encompassed any that, from Plato's point of view, misrepresented the true (glorious and perfect) nature of the gods and included most of the prominent stories of the time (even the classics of Homer and Hesiod).
All of this paints a picture of Plato's ideal state as a place in which stability, cohesiveness and unanimity are a chief aim. Everyone must accept their largely pre-determined position in life. Society is decidedly totalitarian with all the general and fundamental discussions originating from the top, from the wisest people in it. Little time in the 'Republic' is spent on pondering any possible rebellion from large sections of this perfect state because Plato assumes (at least at the time of writing 'Republic'), that the institutions described above that educate, socialise and order people's lives would maintain stability and allow philosophers' rule to be upheld. Plato believed that it is in everyone's best interest (even the 'lower orders' of society for want of a better definition) to accept the rule of the wisest, though putting such a blatantly undemocratic system into practise (and one greatly at odds with prevailing attitudes in Athens at the time) would have been far more problematic than Plato seemed to anticipate.
What is wrong with democracy, according to Plato, is that a democratic state is not run by philosophers. Only philosophers see the truth and possess knowledge, whereas non-philosphers can only hold opinions based on superficiality. Non-philosophers '.....set their hearts on the field of opinions, not on knowledge '(ibid: 214), they may have an interest in ideas but are '....lost in multiplicity and change ' (ibid: 216). Everywhere around him, Plato saw conformation of what he must have thought of as the inadequacies of democracy, believing politicians' desire for power to be in compensation for their own inadequacies; '....they start fighting for power, and the consequential internal and domestic conflicts ruin both them and society ' (ibid: 264).The expressed need for the rule of the wise is founded on beliefs about access to the truth and beliefs about truth itself. Plato's belief in truth as being a sole understanding of the philosophers is based first of all on the maintenance of the idea of the existence of an ultimate truth in the first place, as opposed to relativism or other opposing stances. His idea that philosophers alone have access to the truth are best and most famously expressed in his parable of the cave, in which only the philosophers, outside in the open, can see reality in full daylight while the ordinary people remain chained deep inside the cave living in continual gloom and seeing only shadowy images. There may be;
'....a certain amount of honour and glory to be won among the prisoners, and prises for keensightedness for those best able to remember the order of sequence among the passing shadows and so best able to divine their future appearances. '(ibid: 258).
For Plato, these passing shadows represent a false sense of reality as experienced by most people, and false ideas about wisdom and the wise are represented by those who revel in finding sequence, order and definition among those shadows, not realising that this is all based on entirely superficial images.
But Plato's cave simile also reveals what may have been his greatest doubt about any possible attempt to put his version of an ideal state into practise. If one of these prisoners were to be forcibly dragged from the cave into the glaring brightness of daylight;
'....the process would be a painful one, to which he would much object, and when he emerged into the light his eyes would be so dazzled by the glare of it that he wouldn't be able to see a single one of the things he was now told were real. ' (ibid).
It seems then that Plato may have had some doubt about the setting-up of his kind of Republic in actuality. If the chances of the blind majority grasping anything of the underlying principles of philosophers' claim-to-rule are remote, then gaining support for such a proposal would seem unlikely, even given institutionalised systems of socialisation discussed above that might enhance the prospect.
Plato's doubts seem further revealed in his change of mood in later writings. In the Laws he again proposes a very authoritarian style of state (in what can again be seen as a rejection of the subversive style of Socrates), but this time he is '....much more ready to compromise with principle in order to find something that will work in practice ' (Honderich, 1995: 686).
Republic is utopian in that it does provide a clearly laid-out blueprint for an ideal society, but it seems that some of its aims might have been in any influence it might have had on more practical points about institutional reform. Given the criticism levelled at the existing institutions and opinions of a very democratically orientated Athens of the day, Republic may be taken to be, at least in part, a hefty critique of established practise. As Richard Nettleship observes; 'The book may be regarded not only as a philosophical work, but as a treatise on social and political reform.' (Nettleship, 1898: 6). Much of Athenian life at the time revolved around both formal, and (private) informal debate. Plato provided an argument (presented very much in the form of an informal, conversational debate of a kind that must have been common at the time) that in some ways went beyond the purely philosophical, to provide food for thought in the contemporary debating arena, in favour of authoritarian control and rule by the wisest in society, rather than democracy.
2729 Words.
Bibliography

Bosanquet, B. (1906), A Companion to Plato's Republic, 2nd ed', London: Rivingtons.

Honderich, T. (ed.) (1995), The Oxford Companion To Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lee, D. (1987), Plato -The Republic, 2nd Ed' (Revised), London: Penguin Classics.

Nettleship, R.L. (1898), Lectures on the Republic Of Plato, London: Macmillan.

Reeve, C.D.C. (1988), Philosopher-Kings, Guildford: Princeton University Press.

Shand, J. (1993), Philosophy and Philosophers, an introduction to western philosophy, London: Penguin Books.

The Relationship Of Consumption To Social Change In Relation To Discipline And Surveillance.

2007-09-07T05:41:00.000-07:00

Introduction.
Surveillance technologies and techniques for discipline of both workforce and the general public alike have developed along with capitalist industrial society. But more recently; with shifts from paper -based to electronic information systems, the advancement of such technologies has accelerated rapidly. The speed and breadth of information-collection is now such that much of our lives, and particularly our economic behaviour as consumers, is under surveillance. Many sociologists and others have described this as part of a process of increasing privatisation of public space, a process which is not only occurring in cyberspace but also in physical spaces like exclusive shopping and residential developments which define acceptable behaviour and bar those deemed inappropriate. The creation of increasingly individualised databases similarly allows ever greater scope for black-listing and exclusion on the one hand, and targeted marketing tailored to meet the 'desires ' of highly-specific consumer groups and individuals on the other.
The development of organised, privatised and disciplined public spaces and categorical (or even individualised) data-analysis systems have prompted many to ponder their affects on social relations, and particularly the extent to which both behaviour is moderated, and people are (re)categorised in ways that affects their lives. The ramifications of these changes also adds a new dimension to the Structure/Agency debate, in this case specifically surrounding ideas of the 'free consumer ' and consumer authority versus state obedience and capitalist manipulation and control.

A brief look into The Scope of Contemporary Information Systems.
Much of our lives, especially the routine financial transactions that we make on a day to day basis, are tracked and recorded by a vast array of digital technological devices and techniques.
One of the most striking changes in very recent modern life is the introduction of Closed Circuit Television Vision (CCTV) systems to virtually every town and city in Britain. Once CCTV cameras became regular features in various urban centres, discourses surrounding fear of crime and safety (promoted by television crime-programs based on video footage of real crimes) seem to have caused great calls for their expansion, resulting in an almost ubiquitous CCTV presence in such places. Such camera networks were, of course, previously the domain of private companies and shops, where they had been introduced for crime prevention, detection and more recently also for the observation of shoppers' habits, in attempts to understand the psychology of shopping so as to plan store layouts to manipulate behaviour and maximise sales.
As well as the physical observation of customers, details of their spending habits are left behind them through the digitalised transactions made with credit cards, debit cards, 'loyalty' store cards, and increasingly; the more thoroughly and personally detailed 'smart-cards'. The rise in the use of the internet, and particularly internet shopping has provided another useful source of information for businesses. On-line shoppers normally have to give companies various details before they can buy including their e-mail addresses, home addresses, details of some kind of bank card, a customer reference number and often a brief outline of their personal profile. Many of these details relate to each individual customer, and can be used (not only for customer security, but also) to direct marketing strategies at consumer groups and individuals.
'Caller I.D.' has now become another feature of many people's everyday life. Often seen largely as being for the convenience of the customers of modern telephone companies, it is used by many businesses, small and large, to build up lists of people who have shown interest enough to ring them and who may therefore be potential customers; either their own, or those of associated companies. Indeed, 'caller I.D.' lists form just one small part of a whole body of lists (and potential lists) that can be compiled from a host of sources including all those so-far mentioned. When the details of many such lists have been aggregated, they can be combined to form highly detailed profiles of people, their personal spending habits, details of where they travel to, what they do for leisure and often more personal details about not only their age, sex and so on but also their expectations, intentions and fears compiled from customer surveys.
The amalgamation of these sorts of lists are used in the creation of major computerised data-bases, some of which are of colossal scale. David Lyon gives the example of an English direct-mail company whose database is large enough for comparison with the Police National Computer, holding details, including personal profiles and financial information, of over 43 million people (Lyon, 1994: 141). Such lists have become hot property , being sold and rented by companies including specific list-brokers for their potential in precise customer targeting(Gandy, 1995: 38), for example in the 'personalised' marketing campaigns of direct ('junk') mail (Lyon, Op. Cit.).

Information; Life-Chances, Social Status and the Notion of the 'Free Consumer'.
So far, many people may see the collating of masses of consumer information as something to be welcomed. It is often indeed taken to be a forward step in the discourse of consumer choice. After all, giving some details to a company often means you will be informed about, and offered more of the kinds of things you have expressed an interest in. But some have identified a darker side to the information age.
For one thing, the notion of 'free' consumer choice hides the extent for example, to which prices of basic services may be driven up under the guise of increased choice (ibid: 154). Perhaps more importantly, the information that offers some people credit, leaves others 'blacklisted' and labelled 'undesirable' (ibid) through data held on them (which may just be the financial history based on their address). This has knock-on consequences which might include an increased desirability of certain kinds of homes and residential areas over others, thereby exacerbating problems of poverty associated with them. Thus we find that the expanded information era and knowledge itself, is found to be linked to indices of social standing when we compare those who possess the appropriate consumer records with those whose records are either deemed inappropriate, or those without records at all. This is but one example in which the population can be seen as being divided into 'haves ' and 'have-nots '.
Zygmunt Bauman distinguishes between two categories of people that have resulted from the processes of modernity (and post-modernity); the seduced and the repressed (Bauman, 1987). The 'seduced ' seem at first to be superficially analogous to 'the winners' of capitalist industrialisation, or Marx's Bourgeoisie in his class analysis of societal power. But Bauman's seduced, as well as being a product of consumer society, are also its victims to the extent that they have become dependent on consumption and consumer culture. For Bauman, Identity-creation and people's need to find themselves through consumption have inextricably tied 'the seduced' into endless cycles of consumption of 'non-essential' (in purely utilitarian terms, though now essential for many in terms of self-expression and identity in contemporary society) goods, because for him:
'Individual needs of personal autonomy, self-definition, authentic life or personal perfection are all translated into the needs to possess, and consume, market-offered goods.' (Ibid: 189).
'The repressed' are subject to disciplinary state control, they are those who are denied access to the full spectrum of perceived 'choice' offered in consumer culture and all that it offers in terms of self-identity. There are though, those who think that Bauman's concept here is, to some extent, misdirected. Alan Warde for instance, before going on to criticise him, initially summarises Bauman's conception of the problem of self-identity thus:
'...modernity, or post-modernity, is seen (by Bauman) to demand that individuals construct their own selves. No longer are people placed in society by way of their lineage, caste or class, but each must invent and consciously create a personal identity. This construction of self involves, in great part, appropriate consumer behaviour.' (Warde, 1994: 62).
Warde then claims that many theorists of consumption, as with Bauman himself, have consistently overplayed the part played by the establishment and pursuit of self-identity (ibid: 65). Warde draws on Bourdieu's theory of 'Distinction', where consumption is seen as being used in the acquisition and display of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1989) explaining that this competitive form of consumption can thus be said to be implicated as '...a source of divisiveness, a basis for conflict and exclusion ' (Ward, Op. Cit.). Ward states that Bauman understates the degree to which consumption practices are hierarchical and socialised while overplaying the extent to which society (as a consumer society) is uniform and individualistic (ibid: 71). Ward asserts that those in Bauman's 'repressed' category '...might be better understood simply as the poor ' (1994: 61 Emphasis added) , claiming that Bauman's labelling of the poor as 'repressed' '...shifts the blame from market to state '(ibid: 71) for present inequalities, and that '...what the poor need most is more money, and no institution except the state is remotely likely to organise systematically the meeting of such a need. '(ibid).
But for the purposes of this discussion, whether it is Bauman or Warde who have made the more accurate assessment; when it comes to the nature of the relationship between the processes of modernity (and post-modernity) and consumption, the main point to bear in mind is that both conceptions of this relationship point to a situation in which consumer-society exacerbates divisions in society (be they between rich and poor, or 'seduced' and 'repressed') and the acceleration of the scope of information technology is only likely to increase the effectiveness of the processes of consumerism and thus further enhance such divisions, and affect people's life-chances.

Changes in Information Technology in Industrial Society.
Of course, the collection and processing of data for the advancement of state, businesses and the capitalist system generally, is no new thing. Lyon reminds us that:
'...while the scale and pervasiveness of contemporary surveillance would be impossible without computer-power, computers have not created the situation that the citizens of the advanced societies find themselves in today. We were "data-subjects" long before any supposed technical revolution occurred. ' (Lyon, 1994: 41).
The primary storage medium for data in the pre-digital era was paper, processed, as well as stored, through systems based on file-keeping. In his account of modernity, Weber identifies increasing rationalisation and bureaucracy as playing a central role through the period of industrial expansion and in the development of the modern economy. This rationalisation includes the burgeoning of systematic hierarchies in the workplace (and elsewhere) where the growing numbers of officials working in offices (that is; working with data) are the subject of rationalised and disciplined procedures (Weber, 1978: 217-26). The emphasis, as far as the official (or bureaucrat) is concerned, is on adherence to the (rational) rules in an ordered and disciplined acceptance of hierarchy administered through a chain of command (ibid). Christopher Dandeker emphasises the importance of Weber's ideas in the bureaucratic use of information, filing and surveillance:
'The most important consequence of rational officialdom is that a director of a bureaucracy can predict, with great certainty, that his or her commands will be implemented through the chain of command, and this to a historically unprecedented extent. Moreover these activities will be based on rational calculations stemming from the institutionalisation of the knowledge stored in official files. For Weber, then, rational administration is a fusion of knowledge and discipline.' (Dandaker, 1990: 10, Original Emphasis).
Weber compares rationalised business organisations to the ordered and systematic character of the modern nation state (ibid):
'...The bureaucracy is charged with implementing ...legal norms (of the state) over the state's territory and population. This activity involves a permanent and continuous exercise of surveillance.' (ibid).
The state's operation of order and discipline (including military defence) is thus exorcised through the ordered processing and rationalisation of knowledge, by data-collection (surveillance procedures), in much the same way as private companies and the capitalist system in general operates upon workers and consumers, in order to maximise economic growth. Such bureaucratic systems of command in the economic sphere are likely to favour the power of the employer over employee (ibid: 158) through the hierarchical nature of the system, and the fact that all data (what might be thought of as information-capital ) is stored and controlled by the company.
Technological advances in the office (and by which we can think of the rationalised bureaucratic system generally) changed and helped to facilitate capitalist expansion. The introduction of the telephone for example, has been sited as a critical development in the advancement of managerial control through its use in fast inter-departmental and cross-geographical communication (see Hannah, 1976 cited in ibid: 173). Between the two world wars, a rapid increase in the use of office machines like typewriters, copiers and later computerised technologies accelerated information gathering and, according to Dandeker, 'cheapened ' its processing (Dandeker, Op. Cit.: 173-4), tacitly easing any problems relating to the command and control ethos and increasing the knowledge-capacity of organisations (ibid: 197).
The 1980's and the influence of 'New Right' thinking in the Reaganite/Thatcherite era saw a double-edged promotion of new surveillance technologies (Lyon, 1994: 54); conversely promoting both a strong, secure (centralised ) state and technological use in 'free enterprise' encouraging decentralised control of surveillance. Decentralisation of information control has since become a major topic surrounding the dramatic rise to prominence of the internet and associated digital-communication technologies in the 1990's and 2000's.

Consumer Authority; Reality or Illusion?
The internet , with its associated discourses of decentralisation and 'freedom of speech ' and action, once again brings up the debate about consumer authority. For some, the internet represents a new hope in facilitating freedom of expression for example, in the opportunity to publish whatever one chooses for its unleashing to (potential) view by the rest of the world, or at least for those in it who can afford, or have access to, the appropriate technology. This new technology is even seen as a force for subversive political expression and action characterised, for instance, by large-scale and cross national anti-capitalist demonstrations that have even been organised and co-ordinated largely over the World-Wide-Web.
While the unregulated aspect of the internet gives rise to the opportunity for free expression, it can just as easily be seen as a force for maintaining the status quo. After all, the greatest opportunity for attracting (virtual) visitors to web-sites lies with large companies who can afford the most advertising space with the 'traditional' media. The experience of internet shopping, as mentioned earlier, requires the imparting of personal information, often quite detailed, which can then be used for the finessing of companies' targeted marketing strategies. Through the internet, large companies are able to both broaden the reach, and deepen the penetration of markets through increased and cross-referenced (with other commercial sources of data) knowledge about customers, and thus increase businesses' opportunities to anticipate, or even moderate customers' (spending) habits.
The idea that public behaviour might be moderated or even controlled by the all-pervading presence of data-collecting technology, is perhaps best expressed by Foucault (1979) in his use of Bentham's prison design as a metaphor for society (ibid). Bentham's design was based on the principal of the Panopticon , meaning an 'all seeing' system through which the behaviour of prisoners is moderated by the fact that the prison is designed in such a way as to allow for a guard's-eye-view into every cell. The main principal for said design is not that the guard is watching the prisoners at all times, so much as the prisoner's behaviour is self adjusted to the possibility that at any one time, they could be being watched, 'the asymmetrical gaze ' as Lyon put it (1994: 65) '...created uncertainty which in turn produced surrender ' (ibid, emphasis added). Foucault makes us think about comparisons between the prisoner's moderated behaviour in the context of this panoptic power, with moderation of the public given a panoptic society (Foucault, 1979).
Lyon asks whether modern surveillance can be said to add up to panoptic power (ibid: 72) before going on to propose that in order for this to be the case, the panoptic presence must for one thing, be spread over different social spheres (ibid). Oscar H. Gandy seems to provide something of an answer in his framing of the problems of privacy in terms of discrimination, and the 'panoptic sort ' as a mechanism for the 'social construction of difference ' (Gandy, 1995: 37-8):
'The panoptic sort, as a "difference engine" in support of rationalisation and efficiency, is not limited to any single sphere of our existence. Personal information is used to determine our life chances in our roles as citizens as well as in our lives as employees and consumers. Techniques developed in one sphere migrate rapidly into use in other spheres.' (ibid, emphasis added).
Gandy points to the way that surveillance of employees by companies has not only become more sophisticated, but that this is increasingly being extended to cover activities of employees outside working hours, in concerns over health-affecting interests and so on (ibid: 37). The panoptic sort categorises people into new groups, the membership of which affects their life-chances, for instance when groups are mapped geographically, and then an entire community is labelled in a way which excludes them from various services and opportunities (including consumption-based opportunities and financial services) such as the example given by Gandy where residential communities can be labelled as 'deadbeats' (ibid: 42). Newly defined problems, as well as new technologies, may increase the perceived needs for and scope of, surveillance, for instance in the case of medical status (Ibid: 43).
Perhaps Gandy's most important point is his assertion that one consequence of surveillance society, and one which differentiates itself from better-known forms of discrimination; is that the panoptic sort creates situations in which groups may be entirely unaware of their membership of a (repressed) group, and furthermore, may be unaware of even the variables that determine their inclusion in the group:
'...when the groups to which people are assigned are the products of multivariate clustering techniques, where the relevant variables number in the hundreds, and the contribution of each variable is indicated by a single coefficient reflecting all the other variables held constant statistically, it is impossible for the individual to understand how to act to modify his or her status.' (ibid).
Unlike many other types of discrimination, such groups may then be unable to develop a political awareness of their plight , and so fail to transform consciousness of this into political action, thus working as a mechanism in which prevailing capitalist hierarchies are maintained.

Changes in Consumer Culture and Privatisation of Physical Space.
High-street shopping has recently undergone significant change. Indeed, part of that change is involved in its relative removal from the high street to enclosed, indoor centres where entire shopping environments are privately owned and controlled. This relatively new kind of 'shopping experience ' often centers around the better known, wealthy, high-fashion, branded, elite stores. Elitism in fact forms an important element in this kind of consumption. Many of these centers are 'out of town ' and thus inaccessible, or at least difficult to get to, for those without cars. Private ownership means that not only the stores, but the spaces in-between them are under strict order and control by the owning body, through teams of security guards and CCTV. Anyone deemed inappropriate for whatever reason (and especially if they also look as if they are unable to afford the commodities on offer) may be expelled from such complexes.
Some see benefits to to the consumer from such highly policed and controlled environments. Indoor shopping centres allow people to feel protected ; both from the weather, and from fear of physical attack. Such places are, for example, often particularly cited as being safe places for women to shop. But here there is an extent to which surveillance society is using people, and particularly women and other groups constructed as 'vulnerable', in making them more dependent , through fear, on such highly ordered environments. In this way, economic power is therefore further shifted in favour of the most powerful multinational corporations ; the businesses that can afford to buy their position in such centres.
The protection and exclusivity of such shopping centres once again promotes the division of people into groups as either those included or excluded. Poorer sections of the population increasingly become geographically defined by different geographic zones in a de facto (if not overt) segregation. Mike Davis's account of 'Fortress L.A.' (Davis, 1998: 223-263) may provide a particularly explicit account of this, but the gradual extinction of public places (ibid: 260) continues discernibly in the towns and cities of Western nations.
An anti-surveillance organisation which describes itself as extolling the 'politics against the abolition of public freedom ' ('Save The Resistance!', 2000) highlights the extent to which society has become obsessed with security, claiming that 'police logic' is becoming a dominant ideology (ibid):
'...society is getting into a state of continued obsession with security, as only the massive presence of repression creates a feeling of being threatened in the public opinion by those others (including asylum seekers and anarchists) in society.'(Ibid, emphasis added).
The enclosed shopping arena provides a further blow to opportunities for free political expression. Protests that might be allowed in the public high street, will not be tolerated in the private shopping mall:
'...if resistance can't be organised, repression and the persecution of every political and cultural opposition will soon dominate life. The world of the future will then be an image of a political and cultural wasteland.' (Ibid).
Thus there may be reason to fear that a surveillance and security-obsessed culture could ultimately lead to kind of politically-flattened world in which all potential for political opposition is absorbed by the prevailing culture, while maintaining an outward ethos of political freedom and openness, as expressed in discourses of the 'free consumer' (See Marcuse's 'One-Dimensional Man ', 1964 for a similar hypothesis):
'...in the conscience of the majority of people there is no resistance against the limitations. On the contrary, people demand more "peace", order and security which serves the reason for every tightening of the measures.'
'....it is impossible to deny the tendency of a wide-spread approval of more repression.' ('Save The Resistance', Op. Cit.).

Conclusion.

Surveillance as a rationalising mechanism for the ordered pursuit of economic interests has been with us throughout industrial history. The rise of computerised technology however, and with it the ability to process vast amounts of information quickly and easily, has enabled public (consumer) surveillance to be enacted on unprecedented levels. The speed and scope of this technology has also allowed data to be used in innovative, cross-cutting ways that allow the building of extensive and penetrating databases through which people are categorised and defined. Consumers are now precisely targeted, and their spending behaviour (including their general, consumer 'lifestyle' behaviour) is recorded and analysed. The use of this data and these new definitions allows the further enhancement of the economic power of the largest corporations, and the capitalist system generally.
Worryingly, this takes place within the context of widely-held confidence in the position of the 'autonomous consumer ' through discourses of consumer-sovereignty or consumer-rights. Thus developments that increase efficiency in surveillance are frequently applauded and welcomed as offering 'more choice ' or 'greater safety ' to the shopper.
Private space, especially that largely owned and controlled by economic interests, and in both the physical and virtual senses of the term, have increasingly and systematically replaced public space. In the context of this new era of a particularly heightened surveillance, and discipline culture, this has exacerbated the rift between relatively elite groups and those largely excluded from the norms of elite public existence. Worse still, the excluded and repressed seem to be in an even worse position than before in being able to identify the precise nature of their own exclusion.

3958 Words.

Bibliography

Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and Interpreters, on Modernity, Postmodernity and intellectuals, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1989). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, 2nd ed., London, Kegan Paul.
Dandeker, C. (1990). Surveillance, Power and Modernity, Bureaucracy and discipline from 1700 to the Present Day, Oxford: Polity Press.
Davis, M. (1998). City of Quartz, Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, 2nd ed., London: Pimlico.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish, The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin.
Gandy, Oscar H. 'Its Discrimination Stupid! ' in Brook, J. and Boal, I. (Eds.), (1995). Resisting the Virtual Life, The Culture and Politics of Information, San Francisco: City Lights Books.
Hannah, L. (1976). The Rise of the Corporate economy, Methuen.
Lee, M.J., (Ed.), (2000). The Consumer Society Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Lyon, D. (1994). The Electronic Eye, the Rise of Surveillance Society, Oxford: Polity Press.
Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man, London: Beacon.
Mattelart, A. (1991). Advertising International, The Privatisation of Public Space, 2nd ed', London: Routledge.
Warde, Alan. 'Consumers, Identity and Belonging, Reflections on some theses of Zygmunt Bauman ' in Keat, R. Whiteleg, N. Abercrombie, N. (Eds.), (1994). The Authority of the Consumer, London: Routledge.
weber, (1978). Economy and Society, 2 Vols, California: University of California Press.

Internet Sources:

Save The Resistance!, It is never wrong to do the right thing - Against a Surveillance Society and Obsession With Security;http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/bgr/kampagne/save/engl.htm; 05/12/00.