Can we shape the future? The

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Can we shape the future?The cultural turn and
the role of intellectuals in path-shaping
processes

• Borut Roncevic
• Faculty of Applied Social Studies
• Nova Gorica, Slovenia
• Lancaster University
• Lancaster, UK

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(No Transcript)
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Country DP CC SC CM QG ES COH OP
Sweden 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Finland 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Denmark 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Netherlands 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Belgium 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Norway 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Switzerland 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.5 1
Germany 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.5 1
Austria 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.5 1
UK 1 1 1 1 1 1 0.5 1
Ireland 1 0.5 1 1 1 1 0.5 1
France 1 1 0.5 1 1 1 0.5 0.5
Italy 1 1 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 0.5 0.5
Spain 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 0.5 0.5 0.5
Portugal 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 1 0.5 0.5 0.5
Czech R. 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Slovenia 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5
Hungary 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.5
Estonia 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.5
Greece 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5
Slovak 0.5 0.5 0.5 0 0.5 0.5 1 0.5
Poland 0 0 0 0.5 0.5 0 0 0
Latvia 0 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 0.5
Lithuania 0 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 0
Romania 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Bulgaria 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Russia 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
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• The impact of civilisational competence

dependent significance factor of
factors
SC 0.017 CM
0.033 QG 0.358 ES
0.012 COH
0.003 OP
0.025

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PERFORMANCE CC SC CM QG ES COH
OP Number of Cases Tested (Outcome gt 0) 21 (
77.8 of Total) Method Probabilistic Test
Proportion 0.65 p lt 0.10 Necessary Cause
Observed Binomial Variable
Outcome Proportion p

CC 19 0.90 0.009 SC
17 0.81 0.092 CM
19 0.90 0.009 QG
20 0.95 0.001 ES
20 0.95
0.001 COH 12 0.57
OP 19
0.90 0.009

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• Some tentative implications
• Only semi-peripheral societies have the realistic
  option to become part of the European core
• A combination of context-specific factors can
  contribute to developmental leap
• gt context-specific processes immense
  complexity!!!
• gt Not possible to predict the long-term outcome
  of specific policies
• Top-down approach cannot yield favourable results
  in the long-run
• gt contextual intervention as the only option
• Developing necessary and sufficient factors of
  development

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Vision

• Economy Slovenias level of economic development
  is well above the EU average. Achievement of this
  is connected with the growth in employment
• Quality of life is among highest in Europe,
  according to both quantitative and qualitative
  criteria. This includes both individuals and
  social groups
• Intergenerational end environmental
  sustainability is the elementary qualitative
  criterion in all fields of development. The
  population is stable.
• Slovenias model of development, cultural
  identity and participation in the international
  community are recognised and respected

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Scenario 1 Path dependency and semi-periphery

• Regulation and bureaucratisation of markets
• Limiting business and entrepreneurial environment
• Relatively closed financial markets
• Inflexible labour markets (flexibility of the
  workforce)
• Collective systems of social security
• Corporatism of big social partners
• Bureaucratic-hierarchical system of public
  administration
• Emphasis on macroeconomic and social
  sustainability

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Scenario 2 Path creation towards the core

• Deregulation and liberalisation of markets
• Support for creation and growth of businesses
• Open financial markets and competition
• Greater flexibility of labour markets
  (flexibility for the workforce)
• Emphasis on individual needs and responsibility
• Open and inclusive partnerships and developmental
  coalitions
• Decentralisation and public-private partnerships
• Emphasis on sustainable development

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Strategic priorities for the future

• Priority 1 Competitive economy and economic
  growth
• Priority 2 Efficient creation and two-way
  transfer of knowledge
• Priority 3 Cheaper and more effective state
• Priority 4 Modern welfare state and increased
  employment
• Priority 5 Connecting measures for sustainable
  development

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Two hypotheses about the possible role of
intellectuals in path-shaping processes

• Thesis 1 We can shape the future!
• Not a social engineering
• Shaping discoursive practices of imagined
  economies
• The real question is How do we create hegemonic
  semiotic systems?
• Thesis 2 And yet, we do not know how the future
  is going to look like.
• Is this a paradox?
• Distinguishing between actually existing
  economies and imagined economies

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Cultural political economy (1)

• This is distinctive post-disciplinary approach
  to the analysis of contemporary capitalisms
• Takes for granted path-shaping potentials of
  economic imaginaries
• Why only some economic imaginaries come to be
  selected and institutionalised?
• Two lines of research
• 1. How do extra-semiotic and semiotic factors
  affect the variation, selection and retention of
  particular instances of semiosis and associated
  practices in transforming various forms of
  capitalisms?
• 2. What role does semiosis play in constructing
  and stabilising forms of capitalisms?

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Cultural political economy (2)

• CPE opposes transhistorical analysis both
  history and institutions matter
• CPE takes cultural turn seriously, emphasising
  complex relationships between meanings and
  practices
• CPE focuses on the co-evolution of semiotic and
  extra-semiotic practices and their conjoint
  impact on the constitution and dynamic of
  capitalisms
• Therefore The key task in testing the first
  hypothesis is to explore semiotic and
  extra-semiotic mechanisms involved in selecting
  and consolidating the the dominance of systems
  of meaning!!!

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Cultural political economy (3)

• Overall complexity of the social world need for
  complexity reduction
• Complexity reduction involves
• Discursively selective imaginaries
• and
• Structurally selective institutions
• actually existing economy chaotic sum of all
  economic activities
• vs.
• economies imaginatively narrated subset of
  these activities
• NOTE Totality of economic activities is too
  complex for management
• gt Such practices are always oriented to subsets
  of economic relations

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Cultural political economy (4)

• Economic imageries play crucial role in this
  respect.
• A semiotic order, specific configuration of
  discourses and styles, constituting semiotic
  quality of a network of social practices in a
  given social setting, institutional order or
  wider social formation
• Successful economic imaginaries have their own,
  performative, constitutive force in the material
  world
• There is no economic imaginary without
  materiality
• gtwhere imaginary is successfully operationalised
  and institutionalised, it transforms to
  materiality, thereby gaining emergent properties

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Evolutionary mechanisms for economic imaginaries
(1)

• 1. Continuing variation in discourses and
  practices
• Incomplete mastery, skilful adaptation,
• New challenges of recurring crises
• 2. Selection of particular discourses
• Semiotic factors Influencing the resonance of
  discourses
• Extra-semiotic factors power relations,
  path-depndency, structurally-inscibed
  selectivities
• 3. Retention of some resonant discourses
• Inclusion in actors habitus, hexis and personal
  identity
• Enactment in organisational routines
• Objectification in built environment
• Material and intellectual technologies
• Articulation into widely accepted strategies,
  accepted projects, state visions

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Evolutionary mechanisms for economic imaginaries
(2)

• 4. Reinforcement
• Procedural devices, privileging these discourses
  and associated practices
• Filtering-out contrary discourses and practices
• Discursive selectivity and material selectivity
• 5. Selective recruitment, inculcation, and
  retention
• By relevant social groups, organisations,
  institutions...

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Path-shaping potential of current crisis

• Crisis is especially interesting opportunity to
  develop new economic imaginaries
• Crisis is never a purely objective process or
  moment that automatically produces a particular
  response o outcome. Instead , a crisis emerges
  when established patterns of dealing with
  structural contradictions, their
  crisis-tendencies , and dilemmas no longer work
  as expected and, indeed, when continued reliance
  thereon may even aggravate the situation (Jessop
  and Oosterlynck, 2001)