Jane Jenson | Université de Montréal (original) (raw)
Articles & Chapters by Jane Jenson
Histoire Sociale / Social History, 2024
Canadian Historical Review, 2023
Histoire sociale / Social History, 2022
The general fluidity and ambiguity of property relations during colonization meant settlers, who ... more The general fluidity and ambiguity of property relations during colonization meant settlers, who were often "squatters," relied on land agents to fix their relationship with property-owners. In turn, the latter needed the agent's on-the-ground expertise to manage their affairs and responsibilities for "improvements." Land agents thus became intermediaries between cash-poor settlers and absentee owners. George Bonnallie, active in the northern part of Stukely Township and western Orford Township had a repertoire of routine practices he pursued. Organized in a typology, they provide detail about late colonization and reveal the part played by entrepreneurial intermediaries in fixing property relations in areas still peripheral to the market economy. With in-coming settlement completed in these townships by the mid-1860s, after municipal reform, and with the arrival of speculation by local notables, neither property-owners nor settlers needed the suite of routines deployed to enable settlement. A standardized market for land transfers had developed.
La question identitaire au Canada francophone. Jocelyn Létourneau (ed) Presses de l'Université Laval, 1994
Handbook on Society and Social Policy, 2020
Several intellectual streams deploy the term ‘social investment’ but differences follow from the ... more Several intellectual streams deploy the term ‘social investment’ but differences follow from the challenge each highlights and the domain within which it arose. One emerged from decades of development literature. The challenge in the 1990s was to discredit neoliberal ideology and demonstrate the interdependence of economic and social development. The second stream appeared in the 1990s, being a political project for modernising social democracy and progressive politics. Its primary challenge was political, to institute a progressive social investment state as a modern platform for successful left-wing politics. The third stream also emerged in the 1990s in social policy communities. The primary challenges were social and economic trends generating demographic problems and new social risks. Each stream tells a different story about the need for social investments, what they should be, and what they can accomplish. This chapter tracks three trajectories for advocacy of a social investment perspective as well as the sceptics and critics of each. The chapter describes convergence around a thin definition of social investment as an encompassing concept with under-defined boundaries. Last, the chapter raises the possibility that social investment as a perspective has reached the end of its policy life cycle.
The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy, 2020
In recent decades, numerous international organisations have adopted positions that use component... more In recent decades, numerous international organisations have adopted positions that use components of a policy frame familiar from family policy at the national level. They seek to advance one or more of three classic goals of that domain: stabilising demography, ensuring income security, or supporting parents’ labour force participation (Saraceno, 2018: 443). The policy instruments promoted have included income transfers and services, justified variously in the name of social investment, social development, or equality. This chapter examines three such organisations. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank are standard international organisations (IO), being intergovernmental. They are composed of independent member countries and they have no institutions to impose policy choices, although each has a range of policy tools that can compel, induce or encourage their participants to act in particular ways. The European Union (EU) is not a standard IO. While it does have substantial intergovernmental dimensions, it is also in significant ways a supranational organisation. It is a grouping to 27 (28) Member States that have transferred a measure of sovereignty to European-level institutions, thereby providing them some legislative, executive and regulatory capacity. This transfer touches, moreover, on policy domains important to families and family policy.
Quebec Heritage News, 2020
What's Left of the Left, 2011
Global Centre for Pluralism , 2017
Les institutions structurent l'approche d'une société en matière de pluralisme; concept que le Ce... more Les institutions structurent l'approche d'une société en matière de pluralisme; concept que le Centre mondial du pluralisme définit comme une éthique de respect qui valorise la diversité humaine. Pour identifier les effets des institutions sur le pluralisme, nous devons procéder à une analyse qui capture autant les institutions de gouvernance que celles qui définissent la citoyenneté, accordent des droits individuels et collectifs et identifient les obligations des citoyens. Ces institutions peuvent être considérées comme le « matériel » de l'expérience du pluralisme, par opposition au « logiciel » que sont les idées, les normes, les valeurs et les pratiques culturelles. Le travail du Centre porte souvent sur les institutions, particulièrement à l'échelle nationale, mais il se penche également sur les institutions formelles à l'échelle régionale, provinciale et locale ainsi que sur les institutions de la société civile à toutes les échelles. Les institutions appartiennent à l'État et à la société civile. Ses terrains d'action sont locaux, nationaux et internationaux. Elles peuvent augmenter ou diminuer les perspectives du pluralisme en tant qu'éthique de respect qui valorise la diversité. Le message de ce résumé est qu'il ne faut, en aucun cas, les ignorer ou les laisser s'atrophier face à l'opposition aux valeurs du pluralisme. LES FONDEMENTS INSTITUTIONNELS DU PLURALISME Les études par pays réalisées dans le cadre du projet sur l'Optique du pluralisme soulignent à maintes reprises l'importance de la diversité des institutions et de leurs actions pour la santé du pluralisme ainsi que pour le régénérer lorsque l'engagement s'essouffle. • Les Canadiens citent souvent les politiques publiques-par exemple, celles du bilinguisme et du multiculturalisme-qui, dans les années Témoigner du changement dans les sociétés diversifiées est une nouvelle série de publications du Centre mondial du pluralisme. Couvrant six régions du monde, chaque « cas de changement » examine une période durant laquelle un pays a modifié son approche envers la diversité, soit développant, soit en sapant les fondements de la citoyenneté inclusive. L'objectif de la série-laquelle présente également des aperçus thématiques d'éminents universitaires-est de favoriser la compréhension globale des sources d'inclusion et d'exclusion dans les sociétés diversifiées ainsi que des chemins vers le pluralisme.
Global Centre for Pluralism, 2017
Global Centre for Pluralism Intersections, 2019
examines the intersections between concepts of pluralism, as used by the Global Centre for Plural... more examines the intersections between concepts of pluralism, as used by the Global Centre for Pluralism, and social cohesion
Reframing Global Social Policy, 2017
Cramme et al. Progressive Politics After the Crash. Governing from the Left, 2013
International Journal of Canadian Studies, 1996
Concerns about social cohesion currently top the policy agenda of a number of gove... more
Concerns about social cohesion currently top the policy agenda of a number of
governmental and non-governmental institutions. With so many conversations going
on simultaneously, it is not surprising that there is little consensus about definitions
and about links to a family of related concepts. A map is needed. Clarification of
where the discussion is and where it might go is the primary goal of this study.
This concept is often used by policy communities in both Canada and abroad
when they speak of their fears and lack of certainty about how to proceed in these
challenging times. The term “social cohesion” is used to describe a process more
than a condition or end state, while it is seen as involving a sense of commitment,
and desire or capacity to live together in some harmony.
The first part of this study argues that concerns about social cohesion are a
product of our times. The paradigm shift in economic and social policy towards
neo-liberalism has provoked serious social and political strains (e.g., rising poverty,
declining population health) and a loss of confidence in public institutions. Increasing
reliance on market forces and classical liberal ideology has provoked a
widespread conversation among those who fear the high political, social and
economic costs of ignoring social cohesion. They are engaged in reassessing the
responsibilities of the major institutional complexes – the public, private and third
sectors – of modern liberal democracies.
The last decade of the 20th century is not the first time that conversations about
social cohesion have been widely heard. Part I describes the concept of social
cohesion as being the focus of only one of three theoretical traditions that address
the question of social order. Social scientists such as Émile Durkheim in
19th century France, and then the American Talcott Parsons, in the 1940s and
1950s, worried about social cohesion. They had competition then, as they do today,
from classical liberals as well as from theorists of democracy coming from
democratic socialism, Christian democracy and positive liberalism. The goal of this
short discussion is simply to remind the reader that only some theoretical approaches
identify social cohesion – defined as shared values and commitment to a
community – as the foundation stone of social order. Other traditions privilege other
mechanisms and put the accent on institutional processes and conflicting interests
more than on values.
Part II of the paper goes on to map social cohesion in two ways. First it breaks the
concept into its constituent dimensions. These are:
Next it maps the Canadian literature that addresses at least one of these dimensions.
An initial sorting process finds marked differences in the focus of attention of the
authors. Those who focus on the local community are frequently concerned with
individuals – their health or their economic and social inclusion, while the literature
focussed on the whole of society often asks questions about structures and institutions.
For example, it asks how social cohesion affects economic performance. It
also assesses the contribution of institutions to recognising and accommodating
claims to difference and to promoting full citizenship, thereby fostering social
cohesion.
A second sorting of the literature reveals different uses of related concepts that
are often deployed in conversations about social cohesion. These are “social
economy” (and the related concept of the “third sector”) and “social capital.” The
paper describes the varying ways these concepts are defined and used in the
Canadian literature, as a preparation for further discussion in the third part.
Part III of the paper maps gaps and spaces for a research agenda. It asks three
fundamental questions, which are derived from the previous mapping exercise:
1. What fosters social cohesion?
2. Can a country accumulate social capital?
3. Cohesion of what and for whom?
The first question directs attention to forms of participation. The literature on the
social economy is based on the theory that improving one dimension of social
cohesion (inclusion) depends on coupling it with another dimension (participation in
paid work). The two together will then generate stronger feelings of belonging and
full citizenship. An alternative hypothesis, often suggested by those who focus on
the third or voluntary sector, is that any form of participation is sufficient to generate
feelings of belonging; levels of income or even inclusion are not determinants.
This first question, about fostering social cohesion, also reveals research gaps
that need to be filled about the role of institutions, particularly state institutions, in
managing value differences among Canadians. Value differences are inevitable in a
modern pluralist society; they are not a problem in and of themselves. The literature
vi
belonging
inclusion
participation
recognition
legitimacy
/
/
/
/
/
isolation
exclusion
non-involvement
rejection
illegitimacy.
on social cohesion clearly indicates that problems arise when institutions, particularly
public institutions, fail to manage conflicts over recognition, legitimacy of
claims and do not provide sufficient space for democratic dialogue. Therefore,
research is needed to measure our institutions’ contribution to each dimension.
Research is also needed to uncover the linkages between economic well-being and
social cohesion.
The second question asks about social capital. The paper identifies a serious gap
in the discussions. Most considerations of social capital, because of the definition of
the concept itself (as the result of face-to-face contact), focus on the local community.
The paper therefore asks two sub-questions requiring research: Does social
capital aggregate? Is social capital useful in discussions of identities, particularly
national identities?
The third question identifies a major research gap by asking whether too much
attention to social cohesion may not blind us to other equally important matters such
as social justice and equitable outcomes. Much more research is needed on whether
processes considered to foster social cohesion also promote – or hinder – equity.
The paper ends by stressing that social cohesion has always been and remains a
contested concept. Those who use it tend to see social order as the consequence of
values more than interests, of consensus more than conflict, and of social practices
more than political action. Other interpretations may have been displaced by
enthusiasm for social cohesion but they remain as alternative voices in ongoing
conversations. It is for this reason that Part III ends the paper on a note of concern
about too enthusiastic an embrace of an agenda that fails to acknowledge continuing
and legitimate claims for social justice and recognition, particularly in a multinational
and modern country such as Canada.
vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Social innovation research in Europe. Approaches, findings and future directio... more EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Social innovation research in Europe.
Approaches, findings and future directions
Denis Harrisson
Jane Jenson
This report is a stocktaking exercise, undertaken from the perspective of fostering engagement of the European research community in a continuous exchange of ideas and best practices for analysing social innovation and in promoting networking among these researchers. It reviews research projects in Social Sciences and Humanities funded by the European Union's Framework Programmes 5, 6 and 7. These projects analyse challenges facing European policy communities and inquire about the contributions social innovations might make to address these policy challenges. Part 1 identifies the notion of social innovation as one of five key themes identified in the European Union’s strategy Europe 2020. This position makes social innovation a crucial field of research for social scientists and humanists, important for policy analyses within both the Union and member states. Horizon 2020 will provide an opportunity for this potential contribution to be realised. Part 2 charts the uses of the concept of social innovation in the research projects. After an initial examination of the varied definitions of social innovation used in the projects, the report charts why the projects identify social innovations as necessary, how they approach them, and what the projects consider social innovations may accomplish. Part 3 of the report documents how the projects work with theory, noting the interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of the research as well as the explicit focus more on problems than on theory development. It also identifies the institutional and individual levels of analysis as the predominant ones used in these projects and charts the wide reach and multi-scalar approach to analysing social innovations. Part 4 describes the dissemination practices of the projects. The report, including Part 5 which provides Conclusions, makes eight recommendations for future research practices on social innovation. These are:
1. Work on social innovation should be concentrated at the institutional (meso) or the individual (micro) levels of analysis, not the societal level.
2. Encourage useful cross-level discussion among projects, in order to derive even more and fuller benefits of this research, by promoting additional activities across projects. New venues would probably need to be created.
3. Create a forum to discuss when and under what conditions social innovation is best treated as an input (independent variable) or as a result (dependent variable).
4. Encourage researchers to include in their proposals the shareholders as co-producers of social innovations knowledge, and to design dissemination activities that include shareholders as the main recipients of knowledge transfer and mobilization, when it is possible.
5. Include historians in projects or projects by historians as well as a focus on historical precedents. This would provide necessary perspective on what is “new” in the domains examined by social innovation research.
6. Create a forum for a cross-project assessment of commonalities in the conceptualisation of social innovation as well as the reasons for any variations considered necessary.
7. Create a mechanism for cross-project work on the definition or set of nested definitions of the concept of social innovation that could be deployed in a consensual way.
8. Consider the normative as well as empirical grounding of concepts such as “good” and “new.” Include in the discussion, and therefore the research projects, specialists in philosophy and ethics drawn from the Humanities.
The report ends with a discussion looking forward toward Horizon 2020, and identifies five research fields that did not draw much attention in the projects reviewed and that are areas for further development. They are:
1. social innovation to overcome the inequalities of health and re-pattern the social determinants of health
2. social innovation in rural areas and societies
3. social innovation in the financial sector
4. social innovation and the private sector
5. social innovation for managing diversity
Introduction Even as some political scientists were promoting the concept of ‘permanent austerity... more Introduction
Even as some political scientists were promoting the concept of ‘permanent austerity’ and arguing that the new politics of the welfare state could bring only retrenchment if it brought any change at all, policy communities within international organisations and national governments, and including university-based policy experts, were designing and promoting significant reforms to ‘modernise’ their welfare regimes. The years at the middle of the last decade
of the 20th century were marked by activity that we can now, with hindsight, label significant innovation, involving a move away from both the Keynesian welfare state of the trente glorieuses and the standard neo-liberalism of the 1980s.
Social Politics, 2015
Despite rhetorical commitment to gender equality as a fundamental value at international , supran... more Despite rhetorical commitment to gender equality as a fundamental value at international , supranational and national level, we continue to see economic and social inequalities in long-familiar areas. This article explores public policy communities' contribution to this resilience of inequalities in income, work and care by focussing on three responses to socioeconomic restructuring and new social risks: labour force activation; the social investment perspective; treating gender as one of multiple discriminations. The article stresses the importance of making an analytic distinction between a policy discourse that displays " gender awareness " and one that identifies gender equality as a policy goal. By making this analytic distinction it is possible to identify a major change that has occurred in the last two decades in the universe of political discourse. This is the displacement of the gender equality discourse , despite rising gender awareness. The discourse on equality in income, work and care has been down-played within the universe of political discourse as other diagnostics either write gender equality out, rename women as " mothers, " or fold gender inequalities into a discursive frame of multiple and intersecting inequalities.
Histoire Sociale / Social History, 2024
Canadian Historical Review, 2023
Histoire sociale / Social History, 2022
The general fluidity and ambiguity of property relations during colonization meant settlers, who ... more The general fluidity and ambiguity of property relations during colonization meant settlers, who were often "squatters," relied on land agents to fix their relationship with property-owners. In turn, the latter needed the agent's on-the-ground expertise to manage their affairs and responsibilities for "improvements." Land agents thus became intermediaries between cash-poor settlers and absentee owners. George Bonnallie, active in the northern part of Stukely Township and western Orford Township had a repertoire of routine practices he pursued. Organized in a typology, they provide detail about late colonization and reveal the part played by entrepreneurial intermediaries in fixing property relations in areas still peripheral to the market economy. With in-coming settlement completed in these townships by the mid-1860s, after municipal reform, and with the arrival of speculation by local notables, neither property-owners nor settlers needed the suite of routines deployed to enable settlement. A standardized market for land transfers had developed.
La question identitaire au Canada francophone. Jocelyn Létourneau (ed) Presses de l'Université Laval, 1994
Handbook on Society and Social Policy, 2020
Several intellectual streams deploy the term ‘social investment’ but differences follow from the ... more Several intellectual streams deploy the term ‘social investment’ but differences follow from the challenge each highlights and the domain within which it arose. One emerged from decades of development literature. The challenge in the 1990s was to discredit neoliberal ideology and demonstrate the interdependence of economic and social development. The second stream appeared in the 1990s, being a political project for modernising social democracy and progressive politics. Its primary challenge was political, to institute a progressive social investment state as a modern platform for successful left-wing politics. The third stream also emerged in the 1990s in social policy communities. The primary challenges were social and economic trends generating demographic problems and new social risks. Each stream tells a different story about the need for social investments, what they should be, and what they can accomplish. This chapter tracks three trajectories for advocacy of a social investment perspective as well as the sceptics and critics of each. The chapter describes convergence around a thin definition of social investment as an encompassing concept with under-defined boundaries. Last, the chapter raises the possibility that social investment as a perspective has reached the end of its policy life cycle.
The Palgrave Handbook of Family Policy, 2020
In recent decades, numerous international organisations have adopted positions that use component... more In recent decades, numerous international organisations have adopted positions that use components of a policy frame familiar from family policy at the national level. They seek to advance one or more of three classic goals of that domain: stabilising demography, ensuring income security, or supporting parents’ labour force participation (Saraceno, 2018: 443). The policy instruments promoted have included income transfers and services, justified variously in the name of social investment, social development, or equality. This chapter examines three such organisations. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank are standard international organisations (IO), being intergovernmental. They are composed of independent member countries and they have no institutions to impose policy choices, although each has a range of policy tools that can compel, induce or encourage their participants to act in particular ways. The European Union (EU) is not a standard IO. While it does have substantial intergovernmental dimensions, it is also in significant ways a supranational organisation. It is a grouping to 27 (28) Member States that have transferred a measure of sovereignty to European-level institutions, thereby providing them some legislative, executive and regulatory capacity. This transfer touches, moreover, on policy domains important to families and family policy.
Quebec Heritage News, 2020
What's Left of the Left, 2011
Global Centre for Pluralism , 2017
Les institutions structurent l'approche d'une société en matière de pluralisme; concept que le Ce... more Les institutions structurent l'approche d'une société en matière de pluralisme; concept que le Centre mondial du pluralisme définit comme une éthique de respect qui valorise la diversité humaine. Pour identifier les effets des institutions sur le pluralisme, nous devons procéder à une analyse qui capture autant les institutions de gouvernance que celles qui définissent la citoyenneté, accordent des droits individuels et collectifs et identifient les obligations des citoyens. Ces institutions peuvent être considérées comme le « matériel » de l'expérience du pluralisme, par opposition au « logiciel » que sont les idées, les normes, les valeurs et les pratiques culturelles. Le travail du Centre porte souvent sur les institutions, particulièrement à l'échelle nationale, mais il se penche également sur les institutions formelles à l'échelle régionale, provinciale et locale ainsi que sur les institutions de la société civile à toutes les échelles. Les institutions appartiennent à l'État et à la société civile. Ses terrains d'action sont locaux, nationaux et internationaux. Elles peuvent augmenter ou diminuer les perspectives du pluralisme en tant qu'éthique de respect qui valorise la diversité. Le message de ce résumé est qu'il ne faut, en aucun cas, les ignorer ou les laisser s'atrophier face à l'opposition aux valeurs du pluralisme. LES FONDEMENTS INSTITUTIONNELS DU PLURALISME Les études par pays réalisées dans le cadre du projet sur l'Optique du pluralisme soulignent à maintes reprises l'importance de la diversité des institutions et de leurs actions pour la santé du pluralisme ainsi que pour le régénérer lorsque l'engagement s'essouffle. • Les Canadiens citent souvent les politiques publiques-par exemple, celles du bilinguisme et du multiculturalisme-qui, dans les années Témoigner du changement dans les sociétés diversifiées est une nouvelle série de publications du Centre mondial du pluralisme. Couvrant six régions du monde, chaque « cas de changement » examine une période durant laquelle un pays a modifié son approche envers la diversité, soit développant, soit en sapant les fondements de la citoyenneté inclusive. L'objectif de la série-laquelle présente également des aperçus thématiques d'éminents universitaires-est de favoriser la compréhension globale des sources d'inclusion et d'exclusion dans les sociétés diversifiées ainsi que des chemins vers le pluralisme.
Global Centre for Pluralism, 2017
Global Centre for Pluralism Intersections, 2019
examines the intersections between concepts of pluralism, as used by the Global Centre for Plural... more examines the intersections between concepts of pluralism, as used by the Global Centre for Pluralism, and social cohesion
Reframing Global Social Policy, 2017
Cramme et al. Progressive Politics After the Crash. Governing from the Left, 2013
International Journal of Canadian Studies, 1996
Concerns about social cohesion currently top the policy agenda of a number of gove... more
Concerns about social cohesion currently top the policy agenda of a number of
governmental and non-governmental institutions. With so many conversations going
on simultaneously, it is not surprising that there is little consensus about definitions
and about links to a family of related concepts. A map is needed. Clarification of
where the discussion is and where it might go is the primary goal of this study.
This concept is often used by policy communities in both Canada and abroad
when they speak of their fears and lack of certainty about how to proceed in these
challenging times. The term “social cohesion” is used to describe a process more
than a condition or end state, while it is seen as involving a sense of commitment,
and desire or capacity to live together in some harmony.
The first part of this study argues that concerns about social cohesion are a
product of our times. The paradigm shift in economic and social policy towards
neo-liberalism has provoked serious social and political strains (e.g., rising poverty,
declining population health) and a loss of confidence in public institutions. Increasing
reliance on market forces and classical liberal ideology has provoked a
widespread conversation among those who fear the high political, social and
economic costs of ignoring social cohesion. They are engaged in reassessing the
responsibilities of the major institutional complexes – the public, private and third
sectors – of modern liberal democracies.
The last decade of the 20th century is not the first time that conversations about
social cohesion have been widely heard. Part I describes the concept of social
cohesion as being the focus of only one of three theoretical traditions that address
the question of social order. Social scientists such as Émile Durkheim in
19th century France, and then the American Talcott Parsons, in the 1940s and
1950s, worried about social cohesion. They had competition then, as they do today,
from classical liberals as well as from theorists of democracy coming from
democratic socialism, Christian democracy and positive liberalism. The goal of this
short discussion is simply to remind the reader that only some theoretical approaches
identify social cohesion – defined as shared values and commitment to a
community – as the foundation stone of social order. Other traditions privilege other
mechanisms and put the accent on institutional processes and conflicting interests
more than on values.
Part II of the paper goes on to map social cohesion in two ways. First it breaks the
concept into its constituent dimensions. These are:
Next it maps the Canadian literature that addresses at least one of these dimensions.
An initial sorting process finds marked differences in the focus of attention of the
authors. Those who focus on the local community are frequently concerned with
individuals – their health or their economic and social inclusion, while the literature
focussed on the whole of society often asks questions about structures and institutions.
For example, it asks how social cohesion affects economic performance. It
also assesses the contribution of institutions to recognising and accommodating
claims to difference and to promoting full citizenship, thereby fostering social
cohesion.
A second sorting of the literature reveals different uses of related concepts that
are often deployed in conversations about social cohesion. These are “social
economy” (and the related concept of the “third sector”) and “social capital.” The
paper describes the varying ways these concepts are defined and used in the
Canadian literature, as a preparation for further discussion in the third part.
Part III of the paper maps gaps and spaces for a research agenda. It asks three
fundamental questions, which are derived from the previous mapping exercise:
1. What fosters social cohesion?
2. Can a country accumulate social capital?
3. Cohesion of what and for whom?
The first question directs attention to forms of participation. The literature on the
social economy is based on the theory that improving one dimension of social
cohesion (inclusion) depends on coupling it with another dimension (participation in
paid work). The two together will then generate stronger feelings of belonging and
full citizenship. An alternative hypothesis, often suggested by those who focus on
the third or voluntary sector, is that any form of participation is sufficient to generate
feelings of belonging; levels of income or even inclusion are not determinants.
This first question, about fostering social cohesion, also reveals research gaps
that need to be filled about the role of institutions, particularly state institutions, in
managing value differences among Canadians. Value differences are inevitable in a
modern pluralist society; they are not a problem in and of themselves. The literature
vi
belonging
inclusion
participation
recognition
legitimacy
/
/
/
/
/
isolation
exclusion
non-involvement
rejection
illegitimacy.
on social cohesion clearly indicates that problems arise when institutions, particularly
public institutions, fail to manage conflicts over recognition, legitimacy of
claims and do not provide sufficient space for democratic dialogue. Therefore,
research is needed to measure our institutions’ contribution to each dimension.
Research is also needed to uncover the linkages between economic well-being and
social cohesion.
The second question asks about social capital. The paper identifies a serious gap
in the discussions. Most considerations of social capital, because of the definition of
the concept itself (as the result of face-to-face contact), focus on the local community.
The paper therefore asks two sub-questions requiring research: Does social
capital aggregate? Is social capital useful in discussions of identities, particularly
national identities?
The third question identifies a major research gap by asking whether too much
attention to social cohesion may not blind us to other equally important matters such
as social justice and equitable outcomes. Much more research is needed on whether
processes considered to foster social cohesion also promote – or hinder – equity.
The paper ends by stressing that social cohesion has always been and remains a
contested concept. Those who use it tend to see social order as the consequence of
values more than interests, of consensus more than conflict, and of social practices
more than political action. Other interpretations may have been displaced by
enthusiasm for social cohesion but they remain as alternative voices in ongoing
conversations. It is for this reason that Part III ends the paper on a note of concern
about too enthusiastic an embrace of an agenda that fails to acknowledge continuing
and legitimate claims for social justice and recognition, particularly in a multinational
and modern country such as Canada.
vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Social innovation research in Europe. Approaches, findings and future directio... more EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Social innovation research in Europe.
Approaches, findings and future directions
Denis Harrisson
Jane Jenson
This report is a stocktaking exercise, undertaken from the perspective of fostering engagement of the European research community in a continuous exchange of ideas and best practices for analysing social innovation and in promoting networking among these researchers. It reviews research projects in Social Sciences and Humanities funded by the European Union's Framework Programmes 5, 6 and 7. These projects analyse challenges facing European policy communities and inquire about the contributions social innovations might make to address these policy challenges. Part 1 identifies the notion of social innovation as one of five key themes identified in the European Union’s strategy Europe 2020. This position makes social innovation a crucial field of research for social scientists and humanists, important for policy analyses within both the Union and member states. Horizon 2020 will provide an opportunity for this potential contribution to be realised. Part 2 charts the uses of the concept of social innovation in the research projects. After an initial examination of the varied definitions of social innovation used in the projects, the report charts why the projects identify social innovations as necessary, how they approach them, and what the projects consider social innovations may accomplish. Part 3 of the report documents how the projects work with theory, noting the interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of the research as well as the explicit focus more on problems than on theory development. It also identifies the institutional and individual levels of analysis as the predominant ones used in these projects and charts the wide reach and multi-scalar approach to analysing social innovations. Part 4 describes the dissemination practices of the projects. The report, including Part 5 which provides Conclusions, makes eight recommendations for future research practices on social innovation. These are:
1. Work on social innovation should be concentrated at the institutional (meso) or the individual (micro) levels of analysis, not the societal level.
2. Encourage useful cross-level discussion among projects, in order to derive even more and fuller benefits of this research, by promoting additional activities across projects. New venues would probably need to be created.
3. Create a forum to discuss when and under what conditions social innovation is best treated as an input (independent variable) or as a result (dependent variable).
4. Encourage researchers to include in their proposals the shareholders as co-producers of social innovations knowledge, and to design dissemination activities that include shareholders as the main recipients of knowledge transfer and mobilization, when it is possible.
5. Include historians in projects or projects by historians as well as a focus on historical precedents. This would provide necessary perspective on what is “new” in the domains examined by social innovation research.
6. Create a forum for a cross-project assessment of commonalities in the conceptualisation of social innovation as well as the reasons for any variations considered necessary.
7. Create a mechanism for cross-project work on the definition or set of nested definitions of the concept of social innovation that could be deployed in a consensual way.
8. Consider the normative as well as empirical grounding of concepts such as “good” and “new.” Include in the discussion, and therefore the research projects, specialists in philosophy and ethics drawn from the Humanities.
The report ends with a discussion looking forward toward Horizon 2020, and identifies five research fields that did not draw much attention in the projects reviewed and that are areas for further development. They are:
1. social innovation to overcome the inequalities of health and re-pattern the social determinants of health
2. social innovation in rural areas and societies
3. social innovation in the financial sector
4. social innovation and the private sector
5. social innovation for managing diversity
Introduction Even as some political scientists were promoting the concept of ‘permanent austerity... more Introduction
Even as some political scientists were promoting the concept of ‘permanent austerity’ and arguing that the new politics of the welfare state could bring only retrenchment if it brought any change at all, policy communities within international organisations and national governments, and including university-based policy experts, were designing and promoting significant reforms to ‘modernise’ their welfare regimes. The years at the middle of the last decade
of the 20th century were marked by activity that we can now, with hindsight, label significant innovation, involving a move away from both the Keynesian welfare state of the trente glorieuses and the standard neo-liberalism of the 1980s.
Social Politics, 2015
Despite rhetorical commitment to gender equality as a fundamental value at international , supran... more Despite rhetorical commitment to gender equality as a fundamental value at international , supranational and national level, we continue to see economic and social inequalities in long-familiar areas. This article explores public policy communities' contribution to this resilience of inequalities in income, work and care by focussing on three responses to socioeconomic restructuring and new social risks: labour force activation; the social investment perspective; treating gender as one of multiple discriminations. The article stresses the importance of making an analytic distinction between a policy discourse that displays " gender awareness " and one that identifies gender equality as a policy goal. By making this analytic distinction it is possible to identify a major change that has occurred in the last two decades in the universe of political discourse. This is the displacement of the gender equality discourse , despite rising gender awareness. The discourse on equality in income, work and care has been down-played within the universe of political discourse as other diagnostics either write gender equality out, rename women as " mothers, " or fold gender inequalities into a discursive frame of multiple and intersecting inequalities.
Absent Mandate: Strategies and Choices in Canadian Elections By Harold D. Clarke, Jane Jenson, L... more Absent Mandate: Strategies and Choices in Canadian Elections
By Harold D. Clarke, Jane Jenson, Lawrence LeDuc, and Jon H. Pammett
© 2019
Absent Mandate develops the crucial concept of policy mandates, distinguished from other interpretations of election outcomes, and addresses the disconnect between election issues and government actions. Emphasizing Canadian federal elections between 1993 and 2015, the book examines the Chretien/Martin, Harper, and Trudeau governments and the campaigns that brought them to power. Using data from the Canadian Election Studies and other major surveys, Absent Mandate documents the longstanding volatility in Canadian voting behaviour. The failure of elections to provide genuine policy mandates stimulates public discontent with the political process and widens the gap between the promise and the performance of Canadian democracy.
Reassembling Motherhood Procreation and Care in a Globalized World Edited by Yasmine Ergas, Ja... more Reassembling Motherhood
Procreation and Care in a Globalized World
Edited by Yasmine Ergas, Jane Jenson, and Sonya Michel
Columbia University Press, 2019 - https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a/9780231170505
The word “mother” traditionally meant a woman who bears and nurtures a child. In recent decades, changes in social norms and public policy as well as advances in reproductive technologies and the development of markets for procreation and care have radically expanded definitions of motherhood. But while maternity has become a matter of choice for more women, the freedom to make reproductive decisions is unevenly distributed. Restrictive policies, socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural mores, and discrimination force some women into motherhood and prevent others from caring for their children.
Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to consider the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint. Emphasizing the tension between the liberalization of procreation and care on the one hand, and the limits to their democratization due to race, class, and global inequality on the other, the book highlights debates that have emerged as these multifaceted changes have led to both the fragmentation and reassembling of motherhood.
Quebec Research News, 2020
Canadian Journal of Political Science, 1998
The American Political Science Review, 1993
... is subject to criticism, and one suspects that in the aftermath of the social contract many i... more ... is subject to criticism, and one suspects that in the aftermath of the social contract many in Ontario would extend Tanguay's discovery of an ... Julie White's case study of Canadian Union of Public Workers provides an ex-ample of the compatibility of class and gender issues. ...
De plus en plus, nos sociétés sont marquées par des bouleversements qui remettent en cause nos re... more De plus en plus, nos sociétés sont marquées par des bouleversements qui remettent en cause nos repères. Les phénomènes liés à la mondialisation, la multiplication des tentatives de démocratisation, les changements des formes de protection sociale ou la diversification des formes de participation politique nous obligent à nous interroger sur la pertinence des catégories d’analyse traditionnelles que sont l’État, le développement ou encore la démocratie.
Comprendre, dans l’espace et dans le temps, les dynamiques des forces politiques, l’ampleur de leurs conséquences sur nos vies et les voies nouvelles dans lesquelles elles nous engagent, tels sont les enjeux de la politique comparée. Le livre fournit un panorama de ce champ transversal de la science politique, en montrant ses objets et ses approches théoriques. Dans cette optique, les auteurs se concentrent sur trois thématiques incontournables :
- l’émergence de l’État moderne, ses institutions et les processus qui s’y sont élaborés ;
- la problématique du développement et le changement politique ;
- le débat sur la démocratie, la démocratisation et le rapport entre la démocratie et le développement.
Mamoudou Gazibo est professeur titulaire au Département de science politique de l’Université de Montréal.
Jane Jenson est professeure titulaire au Département de science politique de l’Université de Montréal et titulaire de la Chaire de recherche en citoyenneté et en gouvernance. Elle est également boursière principale de l’Institut canadien de recherche avancée / Programme Bien-être collectif.
... groups. Indeed, according to the authors, the Canadian parties are so undifferentiated that n... more ... groups. Indeed, according to the authors, the Canadian parties are so undifferentiated that not only the Liberals and Conservatives but even the New Democratic party share the commitment to neoconservatism (117). Thus ...
Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, 1980
2000 paper included in project on the Modernization of Governance, CCMD.
In the 1980s and even more rapidly in the 1990s, new programs with child or children in the t... more In the 1980s and even more rapidly in the 1990s, new programs with child or children in the
title have proliferated. The provinces and the federal government, individually and at times
together, have all begun to address childrens needs in a more comprehensive fashion, seeking to
develop more integrated services. They also have reformed their public administration, setting
up new ministries and agencies responsible for children. The focus on children is a welcome
change, but it is not totally unproblematic. There are also some downsides to the shift in
emphasis, in the form of new policy silences and challenges.
Moreover, to say that children occupy a central place in policy discourse does not mean that
children are necessarily better off or that everything promised is being achieved. Child poverty
rates remain high. Increases in income transfers have begun to reduce the depth of child poverty,
but there is a still a gap.
This paper describes this shift in policy focus, by comparing two policy paradigms. The purpose
in speaking of paradigms is to clarify a change in thinking that is sufficiently widespread that it
makes a contribution to reshaping the social policy regime.
... Ces perturbations soulèvent beaucoup d'appréhension quant à l'aptit... more ... Ces perturbations soulèvent beaucoup d'appréhension quant à l'aptitude des Canadiens à se serrer les coudes en tant que citoyens, au fait ... Après la tenue d'une table ronde sur les Perspectives de la cohésion sociale en décembre 1997, Jane Jenson, professeure de science ...
Is there one Canadian people or are there many Canadian peoples? Who are we? Whence do we come? W... more Is there one Canadian people or are there many Canadian peoples? Who are we? Whence do we come? Whither shall we go? Are we a rope of many strands, or are we solidified into a nation by a pure and durable cement? Survey Canada and what do you discern between ...
