 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
What
is distinctive about New Labour and Blairism as forms of politics? How do
they differ from ‘Old Labour’ and from Thatcherism?
The studies in this volume answer these questions. Blairism, the dominant tendency within New Labour, is not a rebranded version of Thatcherism, but a new political formation. It should be seen as a movement away from the social authoritarian neo-liberalism of Thatcherism, towards a statist (or managerialist) form of neoliberalism.
While Thatcherism combined market-led policies with a social authoritarianism, Blairism uses the state to impose and manage our identities and ways of living – individualistic, meritocratic, yet strongly pressured. Declaring the end of left-right differences, it seductively redefines socialist and social-liberal aims to fit its project. It persuades us with hopes of social progressivism, while subjecting us to the disciplines of global capital.
Contributors Beatrix Campbell, John Clarke, Debbie Epstein, Chris Haywood, Richard Johnson, Ken Jones, Joe Kelleher, Mairtin Mac an Ghaill, Michael McKinnie, Janet Newman, Pat Noxolo, Liza Schuster, Lisa Smyth, John Solomos, Deborah Lynn Steinberg, Valerie Walkerdine, Jeffrey Weeks.
Deborah Lynn Steinberg is a Reader in the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. Her books include Bodies in Glass: Genetics, Eugenics, Embryo Ethics (1997); and Mourning Diana: Nation, Culture and the Performance of Grief (with Adrian Kear 1999).
Richard Johnson is Professor of Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University, and taught at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies from 1974 to 1993. He has also been published widely on education and cultural studies. He is co-author of Schooling Sexualities (1998) and co-editor of Border patrols: Policing the boundaries of Heterosexuality (1997).