Politics and Capitalism Schemata

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7.4 Politics and Capitalism Schemata

Rudy: So our current economic system is described as capitalist. So basically you know competing businesses, private property rights, and where people are rewarded based on how hard or how little they work. What do you think of this economic arrangement? Fernanda: I don’t know. Rudy: Are you taking a civics or government class right now? Fernanda: I’m taking government. Rudy: Ok cool. Can you think of any other political alternatives or economic alternatives? Fernanda: Are you talking about how, [long pause] no. Bresee participant When it came to discussions on government and alternative political- economic systems, all of the Mainstream young people expressed a disinterest and overall limited understanding on these topics that was noticeably less detailed than the accounts offered by the CriticalPolitical and ArtsyIndie groups. Jack, Alice, and Lindsey Bermondsey participants, for example, all chose to skip the questions concerning capitalism and their opinions on alternative political systems, stating that they did not know much about these topics. Others like Anthony and Josh Bermondsey participants and Maurine and Dennis Zoo participants brought up socialism, but expressed a partial and somewhat skewed understanding of it describing it as an unfair system that rewards everyone the same regardless of how hard they work. 69 When it came to the issue of voting, most of the London participants generally commented that politicians are not responsive to the needs of the poor, but like most of the LA participants, believed that voting was still necessary. 70 The major difference found on this topic is that LA participants expressed the view that voting was a very important mechanism for governmental responsiveness and 69 While these views on socialism were laced with negative sentiments, these may be related to their underdeveloped understanding of what socialism actually entails. This partial and skewed understanding may also help to explain why their responses to these questions did not evoke strong valence reactions that would mark these young people as emphatically anti-socialist. However, I do not want to speculate too much on this particular weakstrong valence distinction, as it could be the case that I simply did not probe deeply enough into these questions and so did not give my participants the opportunity to elaborate in more detail their views on these questions. Had I done this, I might have elicited higher level valence responses. But, if my highly speculative weak valence assessment is correct, it may have significant implications for strategies aimed at helping these young people to develop more comprehensive political understandings. I will elaborate on this in the following chapter. Nonetheless, incorporating more systematic priming methods in future research may help to investigate this distinction more thoroughly. 70 The exceptions were Bermondsey participants Jack and Lindsey and Zoo participant Karina, all of who expressed the view that they would not vote because politicians will do as they please with little regards to the wishes or interests of the poor. 217 social change. For example: Rudy: What do you think about voting? Maria: [..] If [people] want change strongly, than they have to vote for that change to occur. Otherwise everything is going to stay the same. Rudy: So you think voting is an effective way to bring on change? Maria: Yes. Zoo participant Rudy: What do you think about voting? Ela: I think it’s very important to vote, because it’s your future, you’re going be the one that is stuck with the problems. Maurine: I would vote, [cause] it’s getting your opinion across. Zoo participants However, they were less enthusiastic about ways to effect change outside of the ballad box, with only a few of them mentioning that they support peaceful strikes and protests with the exception of Maurine who expressed an emphatic opposition to labour strikes. 71 On issues related to environmental politics and practices, the few that expressed an opinion on this issue stated that they recycle, and that the government should do something to address environmental problems, but did not elaborate on what that should be. On the questions concerning their views on capitalism, Mainstream young people were also different from the other two classifications in their automatic and strong valence attitudes towards capitalism, viewing it as a fair economic system that rewards individual effort and ambition. To be certain and similar to their views on the causes of poverty, their overwhelmingly positive views of capitalism were devoid of structural criticisms in that they contained no acknowledgement of some of the negative effects of capitalism. The potential and mild exception to this was the acknowledgement by Tirian that luck can play a role in how some people are rewarded under capitalist systems as exemplified in the following extract. Rudy: The economic system that we live under [capitalism], it is assumed that if you work hard basically, in this system, that you will get rewarded based on how hard you work. […] 71 The topic on labour unions was something I was hoping would be more naturally brought up and elaborated on by my participants. However, while this did occur in some cases, I failed to probe my other participants further. Given that dominant neoliberal discourses are generally anti-union, future research should incorporate questions that more directly ask young people about their feelings and views on labour unions. 218 Tirian: I think it’s kind of true, cause if you work hard anyone can become what they want to be in life. I know people say that a lot of the time, but sometimes it’s not always true. Because sometimes things can [hold] you down depending on what’s happening at home, but I can’t really explain it. It’s kind of like fiftyfifty. Some people are just brought up in a lucky life. […] But if you want to become something in life, you can do it. Hackney participant 72 Nonetheless, even the above extract, in the final analysis Tirian affirms the basic premises of capitalist ideology. Indeed, some of these young people, videlicet Dennis Zoo participant, Fernanda Bresee participant, and Tyronne, Sean, and Jenkins Hackney participants, also expressed entrepreneurial aspirations, with Fernanda and Jenkins enthusiastically stating that they hope to someday own several businesses. Correspondingly, they primarily equated success with having a lot of money. However , while these young people’s general knowledge on political- economic systems, including their own was limited, this could be partially attributed to the limited politics education that all of these young people received from their schools. For example, in the cases of the Bermondsey participants, viz., Jack, Anthony, and Dylanda cited one year eight civics course where they mostly discussed voting procedures as their total formal political education, while Alice and Lindsey stated that the civics course they were supposed to take had been removed. Although I neglected to ask the Hackney participants about their pre- college formal politics education, Tirian, Sean, Tyrone, Jenkins, and Iris all attended or had attended vocational colleges with no civics or politics curriculum. Similarly Mainstream Zoo participants and Bresee participant Fernanda, cited their 12th grade civics and economics and 10th grade world history classes as the sources of their formal political education , with Dennis stating, “actually school is the only political influence I have”. This contrasts significantly from the formal political educational experiences of CriticalPolitical young people like Aimee, 72 A debate erupted during these questions between Tirian and Sean who was also part of this focus group interview. This consisted of Sean asking me where I was from, and after telling him of my working-class upbringing in South-Central Los Angeles, Sean directed the following comment at Tirian, “see if Rudy can make it, anyone can make it”. I did not intervene during this debate, and allowed these participants to express their views with Sean taking an even more affirmative stance on basic capitalist ideology than the somewhat more qualified stance by Tirian as noted above. 219 James, and Sam Islington participants, and Lisa and Arlene World Vision participants who were each receiving a comprehensive political education from their respective colleges and high schools. While this factor alone does not explain why other CriticalPolitical and ArtsyIndie young people who also received a limited formal political education still expressed more detailed political-economic knowledge than all of the Mainstream young people, the former had institutional outlets outside of their schools that played a role in the development of their political-economic schemata, the latter did not, and as described in this chapter and in sections 4.2.3, 4.2.5, and 4.2.7, are mostly exposed to institutional settings that directly disseminate or do not contest neoliberal discourses. Nonetheless, this suggests that Mainstream young people are not apolitical per se , but are rather apathetic as they did not express an avid rejection of politics as did some of the ArtsyIndie young people. Instead, they expressed a disinterest in politics which may be related to their limited abilities to connect wider political-economic concerns to their everyday lives andor lack of awareness of alternative means to get governments to be more responsive to their citizens. Both of which may in turn be tied to the limited formal political education afforded to them. In other words, there is no telling what the effects of a more comprehensive and formal political education on these young people may be, but given one, it likely could not hurt in helping them to develop more critical views and dispositions which may help to temper their existing self-interested and consumerist dispositions. 7.5 The “Crisis in Democracy” “We do not say that the man who shows no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business, we say that he has no business here at all. ” Pericles 73 Furthermore, as briefly discussed in section 3.4, much of the literature on youth and politics has centred on concerns regarding contemporary young people’s lack of interest in formal politics Biesta Lawy, 2006; Edlestein, 2001; Harris, 2008; Liu Kelly, 2010. This is generally referred to as the ‘crisis in democracy’ whereby the majority of Western young people are deemed to have abandoned the civic and political realm in favour of consumer lifestyles andor 73 Cited in Wolff 1996, p.1. 220 more identity or single-cause politics, and consequently tend to be more individualistic and more focused on self-actualizing pursuits than they are on civic and social responsibility. While the accounts from my Mainstream participants to an extent corroborate these concerns, proponents of the ‘crisis in democracy’ thesis seem to overlook the fact that this generational switch has coincided with, and largely reflects the omnipresence of neoliberal discourses over the last 30 years and the extent to which the behaviours of socio-economic subordinates may reflect the structural pressures under which they operate. Hence, in the instance of Mainstream young people, their political-economic schemata and political inactivity, I would suggest, is most likely the result of underexposure to valuable forms of political-economic knowledge, and overexposure to neoliberal discourses; as Gill 2003, p. 118 notes, a rather disturbing feature of neoliberal culture is that it tends to generate a world- perspective that is, “ahistorical, economistic, and materialistic, me-oriented, short- term, and ecologically myopic”. This is in keeping with Flan agan’s 2004 explanation of young people’s inability to conceive of alternatives to their political-economic situation, which she suggests is rooted in a lack of access to knowledge about these alternatives. Other researchers, like Biesta and Lawy 2006 and France 1998 argue that young people’s lack of interest in civic and political affairs is mostly due to wider socio-economic constraints that can hinder their access to political and economic resources and opportunities. For example, in a study exploring the relationship between youth citizenship, rights, and responsibilities, France 1998 argues that his British working- class participants’ dissatisfaction with youth employment schemes and job training programmes, and overall dismal view of their town led to their apathetic views on active citizenship and community involvement. The implication, or logical inference that can be d rawn from France’s 1998 study is that given more substantial state services that also incorporate cultural rights i.e., rights to unhindered and respectful representation of distinct cultural lifestyles and identities, and better employment opportunities, working-class young people would be more inclined to be responsible citizens. Yet, despite their respective structural constraints, most of the working-class Mainstream young people valorized self-reliance, volunteered in their communities, and expressed a general appreciation for voting as an important political practice. In this context, they reflected a practically ideal form of citizenry and social responsibility as described 221 by France 1998. However, equating citizenry and social responsibility along these lines offers a narrow view of democratic citizenship that engenders very passive and limited political practices, and thus the ‘crisis in democracy’ reflects a more fundamentally semantic and conceptual problem about the meaning of democratic citizenship. In other words, if democracy is equated with neoliberal political norms and values centred on discourses of self-reliance and community involvement via occasional volunteerism andor systems of electoral representation, than Mainstream young people are largely fulfilling their roles and responsibilities as citizens despite of their limited political knowledge and political apathy. If, however, democracy means a more direct and egalitarian form of collective decision-making and problem solving, than Mainstream young people, regardless of their social positioning, are neglecting their roles and responsibilities as citizens and conscientious political agents. If the first conception is valid, then there is no crisis; if the second conception is valid, then there is a crisis. However, whilst increasing social services that recognize cultural rights and offer meaningful job opportunities to young people as France 1998 suggests, may allow Mainstream young people to realize their material aspirations, they may have limited effects on their democratic ethos. As I will argue in the next chapter, this requires a more comprehensive education and participation in genuinely democratic values and practices.

7.6 Contesting Neoliberalism: A Partial Opening