2 results
6 - Digital threat or opportunity? Local civil society in an age of global inter-connectivity
- Edited by Paul Chaney, Cardiff University, Ian Rees Jones, Cardiff University
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- Book:
- Civil Society in an Age of Uncertainty
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 16 June 2023
- Print publication:
- 18 October 2022, pp 111-132
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
Writing in the 1960s, the cultural theorist Marshall McLuhan foresaw the emergence of a ‘global village’ as technology dismantled the significance of distance (McLuhan 1964). The metaphor of the village not only conveyed the proximity of social and economic relations in the new global age, but also indicated the forging of a new universal space of social consciousness, identity and belonging, and collective action. In the ensuing decades, the advent of digital technologies extending far beyond those envisaged by McLuhan has facilitated the articulation of a ‘global civil society’ (Keane 2003), underpinned by a growth in global consciousness and a globalisation of values, and mediated by transnational institutions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Arts 2004). Most recently, social media technologies have permitted new forms of transnational social mobilisation that can bypass the mediation of institutions and NGOs, as individuals around the world connect and engage directly and instantaneously, further embedding the ‘villageness’ of global civil society.
It would be tempting to see the corollary of this rise of global civil society as the diminution of local civil society, with the global and the local pitted against each other in a zero-sum game. Certainly, scholars have documented the erosion of traditional structures of civic engagement and lamented the loss of ‘community’ in parallel with globalisation. Robert Putnam (2000), for instance, described the erosion of bonding social capital and local civil society structures in American communities in his seminal study Bowling Alone, which he attributed in part to the atomisation of society under the spell of television and the mass media, even as digital technology was in its infancy. Charts in the appendix of Bowling Alone meticulously detailed the falling membership of conventional civic and local social organisations, but also the expansion of national or international campaigning groups. Other observers similarly noted a shift towards more individualistic, nationally mediated and passive forms of social and political participation, coining terms such as ‘armchair activism’ and ‘cheque-book participation’.
Yet, the popular narrative of the emasculation of the local by the global has long been countered by alternative discourses that have emphasised globalisation-as-hybridisation over globalisation-as-homogenisation (Robertson 1992; Pieterse 2003) and pointed to the relational constitution of localities.
8 - Retiring into Civil Society
- Edited by Sally Power, Cardiff University
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- Book:
- Civil Society through the Lifecourse
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 10 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 21 October 2020, pp 161-184
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Summary
This chapter explores the role played by volunteering in the lifecourse transition from paid work to retirement. As life expectancy rises, the increasing proportion of over-50s in the UK population is challenging the persistent negative stereotypes that signal both older age and retirement as a withdrawal from active life. Many people are now retiring with good levels of health, education and disposable incomes, as well as having outlooks and expectations regarding this phase of life that are different from their predecessors. In this context, volunteering has been promoted in public policy discourse since the early 1990s as a desirable pathway into retirement, which can bring well-being benefits to the individual as well as allowing them to continue contributing to social and economic life.
Despite the promotion of volunteering, various surveys have found that volunteering rates decline post-retirement for both men and women. However, such surveys, although telling us much about broader trends in civil society participation across age cohorts, are arguably limited in their ability to capture the complexity of a great many older lives these days as they negotiate multiple demands on their time and resources. This chapter seeks to go some way towards fleshing out this complexity by drawing on recent work in human geography on the relational geographies of ageing, which foregrounds the concepts of linked lives and non-linearity in life transitions. Drawing on detailed interviews with older volunteers across a number of organisations in mid-Wales, we consider how decision-making in the retirement transition is narrated by these individuals through reference to their relations and connections with other people, places, organisations and events throughout the lifecourse.
Retirement transitions
As discussed by Ian Rees Jones and colleagues (2010), there have been dramatic changes in the perceptions and experiences of the retirement process from the early 1990s onwards. This has been linked in part to a movement away from mandatory retirement ages, as well as greater flexibility on retirement age for some workers across a range of economic sectors (Rees Jones et al 2010). Focusing on the UK context, Blaikie (1992) noted the growing ‘fragmentation’ associated with retirement as an increasingly less consolidated phase of the lifecourse, while Higgs et al – writing a decade later – talk about the growing recognition of ‘multiple pathways‘(2003: 765) into (early) retirement.
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