Programme full

Thursday 16 April 2016 15:30 - 17:00
PAPER SESSION 6 / PECHA KUCHA SESSIONS
nineteenth century anxiety about 'needy town-dwellers,' to the contemporary politics of 'urban stress,’ I work through
the political and epistemological stakes of thinking social and biological life through one another – and I reflect on the
lessons of this spaces, for how we are to understand the ‘bio-social’ present more generally.
Social Divisions/Social Identities – Pecha Kucha
M228, GEORGE MOORE BUILDING
The Paradox of Success: Economic Restructuring, Downward Social Mobility and the Perception of Social
Equity in a Developmental State
Tam, C.H.
(SIM University)
Global economic restructuring has produced winners and losers transnationally and domestically. As a key player in
the global economy, the Singaporean developmental state reorganized its economy to stay globally competitive. The
tertiarization of its economy and the withdrawal of certain social buffers have led to greater emphasis on individual
responsibility and private solutions. An ethnographic study of 30 families who used to be middle class but now had to
sell off their housing assets and live in public rental housing in Singapore was conducted from 2011 to 2012. Subjects
were asked how they made sense of their downward social mobility and how they situated themselves in the social
hierarchy. They were also asked to assess what their chances at upward social mobility were, given their fall, and in
the light of global economic restructuring. The subjects then reflected on the salience of being middle class in
Singapore, a nation which prides itself on lifting its people up socially. Interestingly, despite having skidded socially,
these families continue to see themselves as middle class even as they become materially worse-off. Moreover,
these families strongly believe that they will rise to their former class positions even when their employment prospects
appear weak. The myth of being middle class is vital for these families not only in sustaining their social status and
identity but also for them to continue participating and have stakes in the global capitalistic system even as they
actually lose out from it.
Electoral (Dis)engagement and Feelings of Political Dissatisfaction over Time (1983-2010)
Manning, N.
(University of York)
Overall patterns of recent electoral disengagement/dissatisfaction in Britain have been mapped by survey research.
However, these studies tell us little about why citizens have chosen to disengage from electoral politics, the nature of
their dissatisfaction or, alternatively, what they get out of participation and how this may be changing. These questions
demand in-depth research on citizens' (dis)engagement with electoral politics, and how this changes over time.
Drawing upon the Mass Observation Archive, this research explores data which covers the six elections between
1983 and 2010 to provide a rare longitudinal, qualitative investigation of political (dis)engagement. The findings
provide an opportunity to apply survey-based explanations for electoral disengagement, e.g. convergence of the major
parties (Curtice et al 2007), whilst adding depth and nuance to a field dominated by quantitative approaches. This
paper will argue that political engagement needs to be understood not in terms of simple decline but in terms of
changing social factors which, rather than making people apathetic, engender various forms of critical disengagement
(Manning and Holmes 2013).
Identity and Capitalism
Moran, M.
(University College Dublin)
'Identity', particularly as it is elaborated in the associated categories of 'personal' and 'social' identity, is a relatively
new concept in western thought, politics and culture. The word itself emerged in popular, political and scientific
discourse only in the second half of the twentieth century, and was not discussed at all in these contexts prior to this.
Carrying out a Keywords analysis, I claim that the explosion of interest in the notion of identity across popular, political
and academic domains of practice since the 1960s does not represent the simple popularisation of an older term, as is
widely assumed, but rather, the invention of an idea.
Building on this initial argument, I explore the emergence and evolution of the idea of identity in the cultural, political
and social contexts of contemporary capitalist societies. Against the common supposition that identity always
mattered, I show that what we now think of routinely as 'personal identity' actually only emerged with the explosion of
consumption in the late-twentieth century. I also make the case that what we now think of as different social and
217 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University