167 results
218 Social-ecological approach To Outline Risks to Medication adherence during Disasters (STORM MEDs): Preliminary Results
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- Claire Romaine, Erin Peacock, Laura Perry, Stephen Murphy, Marie Krousel-Wood
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- Journal:
- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science / Volume 8 / Issue s1 / April 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 April 2024, p. 66
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OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Limited access to medication and poor medication adherence exacerbate chronic diseases following disasters. Experts recommend individuals in disaster-prone areas be prepared to manage their chronic diseases in the event of resource disruption. This study’s goal is to identify factors underlying personal medical preparedness. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: A cross-sectional survey of 120 insured adults age ≥50 in Southeast Louisiana with hypertension and ≥1 daily medication during the 2023 Atlantic Hurricane Season is underway. The survey includes the Household Emergency Preparedness Index Access and Functional Needs Section (HEPI AFN), a validated measure of medical preparedness that accounts for special circumstances including refrigerated medication and electricity-dependent medical equipment. The mean score of the 9-item tool ranges from 0 to 1, with higher scores indicating more preparedness. The survey also includes 3 open-ended questions where participants can explain difficulties with medication adherence during hurricanes in their own voice. Data collection is ongoing. This interim analysis provides descriptive statistics. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: An interim analysis of the first 50 respondents included 46% women, 52% Black, mean age 61.2 (SD=7.3) years, and mean 52.5 (SD=16.2) years living in a hurricane-impacted area. Participants had a median of 1 comorbid condition; 72% reported taking >5 daily medications. Most respondents (94%) stated their household was at least “somewhat prepared” to handle a disaster and reported medical preparedness on an average of 82% of HEPI-AFN items (mean score = 0.82, SD=0.18); 90% reported that they had never had a healthcare worker talk to them about personal medical preparedness. On open response questions, participants cited insurance restrictions as the primary barrier to having extra medication on hand. In the final sample, regression models will be used to examine factors associated with increased preparedness. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: While most participants in this insured, disaster-experienced preliminary sample are medically prepared, few have discussed preparedness with a healthcare provider. Identifying socio-demographic factors associated with preparedness will help to strengthen mitigation strategies addressing widening of health disparities during disasters.
Updating and evaluating a research best practices training course for social and behavioral research professionals
- Elias Samuels, Mary R. Janevic, Alexandra E. Harper, Angela K. Lyden, Gina M. Jay, Ellen Champagne, Susan L. Murphy
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- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science / Volume 8 / Issue 1 / 2024
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 27 December 2023, e12
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Introduction:
The clinical and translational research workforce involved in social and behavioral research (SBR) needs to keep pace with clinical research guidance and regulations. Updated information and a new module on community and stakeholder engagement were added to an existing SBR training course. This article presents evaluation findings of the updated course for the Social and Behavioral Workforce.
Methods and Materials:Participants working across one university were recruited. Course completers were sent an online survey to evaluate the training. Some participants were invited to join in a focus group to discuss the application of the training to their work. We performed descriptive statistics and conducted a qualitative analysis on focus group data.
Results:There were 99 participants from diverse backgrounds who completed the survey. Most reported the training was relevant to their work or that of the study teams they worked with. Almost half (46%) indicated they would work differently after participating. Respondents with community or stakeholder engaged research experience vs. those without were more likely to report that the new module was relevant to study teams they worked with (t = 5.61, p = 0.001), and that they would work differently following the training (t = 2.63, p = 0.01). Open-ended survey responses (n = 99) and focus group (n = 12) data showed how participants felt their work would be affected by the training.
Conclusion:The updated course was rated highly, particularly by those whose work was related to the new course content. This course provides an up-to-date resource for the training and development for the Social and Behavioral Workforce.
Examining the publicness of spaces on European social housing estates: a position paper
- Ellen Braae, Henriette Steiner, Svava Riesto, Marie Glaser, Eveline Althaus, Liv Christensen, Lillin Knudtzon, Melissa Anne Murphy, Inger-Lise Saglie, Beata Sirowy, Bettina Lamm, Gilda Berruti, Maria Cerreta, Laura Lieto, Paola Scala, Maria Federica Palestino, Marilena Prisco, Anne Tietjen
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- Journal:
- arq: Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 27 / Issue 2 / June 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 30 November 2023, pp. 143-157
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- June 2023
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The concept of ‘publicness’ addresses the intersection between people and their physical surroundings, and the ways in which they affect each other in an ongoing process. This point of relational exchange is the core concept behind ‘Public Space in European Social Housing’ (PuSH), a three-year HERA-funded project conducted by a transnational, multidisciplinary team of researchers. Large-scale modernist postwar housing estates, often used for social, cooperative, or mass rental housing, tend to be problematised as places of segregation and disintegration in European cities. Yet they are potentially also primary sites for integration between people of different cultural origins and social backgrounds. By investigating publicness in relation to social housing, including cooperative housing and mass rental housing estates, PuSH aims to better understand how cultural encounters happen, and ultimately to reflect on how integration can be better sustained. In this paper, we take a relational conception of publicness as our point of departure to explore the differentiations and intersections between sites and modes of public life in relation to our approach and the social housing estates we investigate. Moreover, we present our conceptual contribution to the concept of publicness, both theoretically and methodologically using multidisciplinary theories and methodologies, and four analytical categories: heritage, practices/policies, democracy, informality, and moreover exhibitions are used as a research tool. This paper is a collaborative output whereby different researchers on the project present their theoretical developments and positions, identify the analytical categories and theoretical vocabularies on which they daw, and reflect on potential ways in which these concepts can be operationalised, and on the synergies that may develop between them. Taken together, our approach offers significant interpretations of publicness in relation to questions of public space, and tackles some of the most pronounced tensions in discussions of public space.
Design and implementation of a digital site-less clinical study of serial rapid antigen testing to identify asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection
- Apurv Soni, Carly Herbert, Caitlin Pretz, Pamela Stamegna, Andreas Filippaios, Qiming Shi, Thejas Suvarna, Emma Harman, Summer Schrader, Chris Nowak, Eric Schramm, Vik Kheterpal, Stephanie Behar, Seanan Tarrant, Julia Ferranto, Nathaniel Hafer, Matthew Robinson, Chad Achenbach, Robert L. Murphy, Yukari C. Manabe, Laura Gibson, Bruce Barton, Laurel O’Connor, Nisha Fahey, Elizabeth Orvek, Peter Lazar, Didem Ayturk, Steven Wong, Adrian Zai, Lisa Cashman, Lokinendi V. Rao, Katherine Luzuriaga, Stephenie Lemon, Allison Blodgett, Elizabeth Trippe, Mary Barcus, Brittany Goldberg, Kristian Roth, Timothy Stenzel, William Heetderks, John Broach, David McManus
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- Journal:
- Journal of Clinical and Translational Science / Volume 7 / Issue 1 / 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 10 May 2023, e120
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Background:
Rapid antigen detection tests (Ag-RDT) for SARS-CoV-2 with emergency use authorization generally include a condition of authorization to evaluate the test’s performance in asymptomatic individuals when used serially. We aim to describe a novel study design that was used to generate regulatory-quality data to evaluate the serial use of Ag-RDT in detecting SARS-CoV-2 virus among asymptomatic individuals.
Methods:This prospective cohort study used a siteless, digital approach to assess longitudinal performance of Ag-RDT. Individuals over 2 years old from across the USA with no reported COVID-19 symptoms in the 14 days prior to study enrollment were eligible to enroll in this study. Participants throughout the mainland USA were enrolled through a digital platform between October 18, 2021 and February 15, 2022. Participants were asked to test using Ag-RDT and molecular comparators every 48 hours for 15 days. Enrollment demographics, geographic distribution, and SARS-CoV-2 infection rates are reported.
Key Results:A total of 7361 participants enrolled in the study, and 492 participants tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, including 154 who were asymptomatic and tested negative to start the study. This exceeded the initial enrollment goals of 60 positive participants. We enrolled participants from 44 US states, and geographic distribution of participants shifted in accordance with the changing COVID-19 prevalence nationwide.
Conclusions:The digital site-less approach employed in the “Test Us At Home” study enabled rapid, efficient, and rigorous evaluation of rapid diagnostics for COVID-19 and can be adapted across research disciplines to optimize study enrollment and accessibility.
Appendix: Ireland
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 167-174
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Summary
This appendix offers readers who are unfamiliar with Ireland a brief introduction to the 100-year-old Irish state and its institutional features. Understanding Ireland's distinct social ecology and how it impacts on the functioning of politics, administration and economy is important to make sense of the case study sections at the end of each chapter. Apart from its openness and peripherality, three features of the Irish state merit particular attention from the perspective of transformation: the small size of the state (approximately 5.1 million in 2022); its highly centralised distribution of power; and the scale and speed of recent change.
Institutions
Irish public and policy institutions have evolved in a relatively consensusoriented democracy characterised by a centralised multi-party system with a two-chamber parliament and a prime minister (Taoiseach) with a moderate amount of influence. The institutional and policy context is characterised by the paradox of a strongly centralised state and weak local government, alongside a political culture dominated by strong localism that is reinforced by a proportional national electoral system organised around 41 constituencies. A growth in agencies is fracturing central power and creating new veto points which pose challenges for climate and social policy implementation (Torney, 2020). While local county loyalty is strong, sub-national or ‘county’-level power in Ireland is weak, with low density populations and one-off housing creating consequences for institutional capacity, planning and governance (Dekker, 2020). The local autonomy index (Ladner et al, 2015) ranks Ireland as one of the weakest countries in Europe with respect to local autonomy, with strong limiting consequences for the potential role of local government in local procurement and regional planning. In comparative terms, Ireland is grouped with countries with unitary governance and weak local autonomy including Portugal, Romania and Slovenia.
The relatively unique electoral system – proportional representation through a single transferable vote (PR-STV) – reinforces a pre-existing political culture of brokerage and clientelism and fosters localism and a strong sense of local community and loyalty which was a strong asset in the context of pandemic responses and is potentially an anchor for societal responses to climate change.
PART I - From problems to solutions: a post-growth ecosocial political economy
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 11-12
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Summary
While this is largely a book about how welfare and social policy needs to change, the starting point is defining the problem: how the political economy of 21st-century capitalism impacts so negatively on both environmental sustainability and societal inequality. Inspired by Polanyi (1944), a fruitful way of understanding social policy is as a reaction and a decommodifying response to capitalism and its unrelenting commodification of labour, land and money (Gough et al, 2008, p 327; Kirby, 2021). A call for decommodification underpins the analysis throughout this book.
Contemporary political economy models and the related worlds of welfare capitalism are deficient, failing to secure gender and other equalities, socioeconomic justice, health and wellbeing, social reproduction, democratic participation as well as sustainable ecologies. The case for transformation is altogether stronger from these multiple perspectives and demands a comprehensive political response. The case for an ecosocial solution is manifold, and true from the obvious perspective of climate change, as well as the wider perspective of system change.
The analysis rejects green-growth solutions that are overly productivist or techno-optimist in nature. This is consistent with a post-growth transformation to an ecosocial model that demotes economic growth as a policy objective, instead maximising human wellbeing, meeting basic needs and protecting our common eco-system. Each chapter concludes by exploring the chapter topic in the anchoring case study of Ireland.
6 - Participation Income
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 93-108
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Summary
Transition of a sufficient scale towards an ecologically oriented social model demands a fundamental overhaul of existing welfare trajectories. This means shifting focus away from institutions and policies that ‘commodify’ labour and prioritise productivity growth and employment as the primary mechanism to social citizenship. This necessitates practical changes in supporting institutions (discussed in Chapter 4) and UBS (discussed in Chapter 5) but also to income supports, the focus of this chapter. Decommodification requires that policy and practice promote greater varieties of participation beyond the labour market and reciprocal interdependent care relationships throughout our life cycles.
The income support system needs to complement principles of an enabling and facilitating welfare system that primarily works through UBS to meet collective needs. The first section of this chapter explores a spectrum of income support options including Universal Basic Income (UBI), Minimum Income Guarantees (MIG) and Participation Income (PI). The mid-section of the chapter offers PI as an example of a state income support system that de-emphasises production, consumption and employment, and enables and values other forms of work, recovering time for activities that have social and ecological value such as providing care, democratic participation and sustaining the environment. The Irish case study offers a blueprint for income support reform towards a PI, in the form of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) and a 2022 artist basic income pilot.
An income support to complement UBS
Options for income support
So far, this book has argued that a just transition demands a fundamental overhaul of existing welfare trajectories. However, the role of social policy in enabling sustainable transition remains marginal within the literature on decarbonisation (Bohnenberger, 2020). Recent literature argues that transitioning towards an ‘ecosocial’ welfare model requires re-anchoring welfare institutions in a ‘post-productivist’ architecture wherein income supports and public services are targeted at meeting essential needs rather than catalysing labour productivity and economic growth (Hirvilammi and Koch, 2020). While there is a growing consensus about the need for such an ecosocial policy agenda, there is far less agreement about what specific social policies might contribute to this reorientation.
3 - From an unequal society to ecosocial welfare
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 43-58
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Summary
The contemporary global model of financialised capital not only leads to environmental destruction, loss of biodiversity and global warming but also, without doubt, leads to greater inequality (Piketty, 2014). The first part of this chapter focuses on inequality, itself unequally experienced across different groups in society and between nations. It explores how inequality intersects with the ecological crisis, increasing wants and fuelling consumption in the Global North, while leaving countries and people in the Global South vulnerable to poverty and ill-equipped to meet the challenges that climate change is already presenting. This is particularly true for women and girls who bear the worst impacts of both inequality and climate change. The second part of the chapter discusses tensions at the heart of welfare policy in the Global North. A less conditional and more enabling and flourishing form of careful social policy is needed to resource the scale of active citizenship required in an ecosocial state. The challenge is to redistribute and support work, income, time and democratic participation in a post-growth society and economy. The chapter concludes by reviewing the state of inequality and wellbeing in Irish society.
Social inequality
Inequality
The Oxfam Inequality Report is launched annually to coincide with the opening of the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, an annual gathering of the rich and influential. The contrast works. The Inequality Reports have become an important annual statement. Sobering statistics and memorable frames and images are used to illustrate the degree to which wealth is increasingly concentrated. The 2022 report highlighted how a new billionaire emerged every 30 hours during the COVID-19 pandemic, the same time it took nearly a million to fall into extreme poverty. There were 573 more billionaires in the world by March 2022 than in 2020, while a million people every 33 hours were pushed into extreme levels of poverty, 263 million people in 2022, because of the pandemic, growing global inequality and rising food and energy prices that have been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. These Oxfam reports work as an excellent example of framing, discussed in Chapter 8.
4 - Reciprocity and interdependence: enabling institutions
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 61-76
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Summary
There is an interdependence between people's agency ‘to do and be’ and the societal, culture and structural institutions that mediate their lives (see Chapter 7). An anthropological view of humanity illuminates how survival and flourishing are generated through three functions: distribution/production (the market economy); redistribution (the state); and reciprocity (society, community, kin). A reimagined welfare system needs to address these three roles. While market production and purchase are the primary vehicle of survival in capitalism, reciprocity and redistribution remain embedded features of contemporary societies and imaginative reform can draw on mechanisms to integrate welfare into the tissue of social interdependence.
‘We cannot save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed’ (Thunberg, 2019). Institutions are ‘the formal and informal rules, norms, precedents, and organisational factors that structure behaviour’ (Pomey et al, 2010). As humanly-devised constraints and enablers, they structure our political, economic and social interactions (Folbre, 2021, p 23). They influence our opportunities to be and do what we value, while also enabling and constraining our agency, and unequally impacting on different social groups often exacerbating social divisiveness. A new ecosocial paradigm needs to resituate freedom and liberty and generate substantive equality through collective reciprocity and mutual aid. New institutions need capacity to promote new norms, or revive old ones, that can counter behaviours and beliefs that maintain myths of individualism, competition, consumption and selfishness (Folbre, 2021; Jackson, 2021).
This chapter establishes the need for a balanced ecosocial settlement (Button and Coote, 2021). The first part focuses on how institutions might creatively balance reciprocity, freedom and our collective interdependence. The second part discusses how particularly local institutions need to reimagine work and care, enable or facilitate autonomy, and work collaboratively through a culture of co-production, collaboration and participation. This rebalancing requires a rethinking of activation policy as a tool for just transition. Enabling institutions are needed to facilitate socially useful and environmentally sustainable work, enabling social inclusion policy and employment in the care and social economies (Dukelow, 2022). This theme is explored in the Irish case study in the third section of this chapter.
PART II - Building an ecosocial imaginary
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 59-60
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Summary
Part I of this book argued that the contemporary capitalist political economy's destructive impacts on both environmental sustainability and society underpins the urgent and compelling need for transformation. The case for an ecosocial state is manifold, from the obvious perspective of climate change, but also from the wider perspective of systemic change. Our political economy models and our related worlds of welfare capitalism are deficient, failing to secure gender and other equalities, socio-economic justice, health and wellbeing, social reproduction, democratic participation as well as sustainable ecologies. The case for change is altogether stronger from these multiple perspectives and demands a comprehensive politics of transformation embracing recognition, redistribution, representation and sustainability (Fraser, 2013).
Part II attempts to apply the theory to practice and link welfare reform with the urgent need to decarbonise the economy and pursue other environmental goals including biodiversity. While a variety of policies are needed, as illustrated in the ‘Policy ingredients for a post-growth ecosocial world’ box in Chapter 3, the focus here is on three core options:
• An enabling institutional infrastructure to enhance the eco-system of people's lives and limit our collective dependance on the market to deliver core services and supports.
• A foundational economy as a network of provisioning systems for satisfying basic and essential needs and a way of meeting our collective needs through a system of Universal Basic Services.
• A Minimum Income Guarantee, a form of Participation Income, to enable participation in socially useful activity and life choices consistent with a post-growth world that values and supports care, reciprocity, mutual interdependence and democracy.
Dedication
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp v-vi
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Conclusion: The case for systemic transformation
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 160-166
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Summary
This book began by reflecting on Naomi Klein's candid admission that she came late to climate change politics. Rebecca Solnit has also reflected on how she realised it was time to shift her priorities and make her ‘mild engagement with climate something larger and fiercer’, and challenges us to find our place in engagement with climate change, ‘not just changing what you do, it means being part of the demand for systemic change’ (Solnit, 2016, pp 135– 6). This book echoes that challenge, identifying a clear problem and proposing an ecosocial solution as part of a broader transformative agenda to a post-growth world. It also sketched a political strategy for making it happen. In this conclusion these propositions are interrogated to test whether they are coherent and convincing arguments.
Restating the urgent problems and solutions
Problem
The UK legal contestation of a third runway at London's Heathrow airport and the December 2022 UK decision to open a new coalmine in Whitehaven, Cumbria that will produce annually 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, throws into sharp light the inherent conflict between growth driven by ever-increasing consumption and profit, and the climate emergency which threatens our very existence. Both highlighted the link between high levels of inequality, needless consumption, excessive travel, use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. We can no longer think about climate crisis, economic inequality and never-ending consumerism in isolation. Tackling them requires action now to develop new ecosocial policies to enable us to reduce consumption by collectively meeting our needs. This means moving ultimately to a post-growth economy and society. Recent COPs and IPCC reports shine a nuanced light on inequality and climate injustice but make clear that the rich are the major contributors to worsening climate change, mainly in the Global North, but with rapidly rising numbers in the Global South (Sweeney, 2020). Developed countries, as perpetrators of such inequality and suffering, need to step up and bear their disproportionate responsibility.
Chapters 1 to 3 made the link between ecological destruction and social inequality as two sides of the same coin. Inequality of income, resources, power and wealth are unequally experienced across different groups in society.
7 - Power and mobilisation
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 111-128
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Summary
Part II of this book argued that a new model of social organisation, an ecosocial welfare regime, is required. If the old welfare state came about because of a post-war settlement, how might an ecosocial welfare state emerge? Polanyi (1944) understands that social protection emerges as the response of a double movement from society pressuring the state to reregulate the disembedded economy to better serve the needs of society. How might various movements, including those seeking gender, climate and economic justice, coalesce to pressure for a new form of ecosocial welfare? Here we begin to tease out the politics of transformation and how the concept of ecosocial can offer a focus for a wider struggle for transformation.
This chapter is realistic about the strong structural power of those who benefit most from maintaining the status quo, and it is in this context that concepts of power and transformation are unpacked before discussing whether crisis might be an opportunity for change. The second part of the chapter explores civil society as a space for agency and mobilisation. Understanding strategic logics of transformation assists us in identifying barriers to effective transformation and inclusive participation in collective action. The Irish case study focuses on power and recent transformative moments in Ireland.
Power and transformation
Structure and agency
The chilling reality of the structural power of markets and corporations need not deny hope in collective agency. However, discussions about transformation need to be clear about the nature of power relationships and how structure and agency interact dialectically to shape change. Transformative coalitional strategies ultimately engage with dominant power found in democratic and governance institutions in the context of strong structural vetoes dominated by elite power.
This analysis is highly sensitive to the power of capital, vested interests, financialised power and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few, often men, who also control social media and the production of knowledge that frames our individual experiences. The lobbying and advertising power of the fossil fuel industry is particularly ominous (Razzouk, 2022). This structural power cannot be denied and is underpinned by policies, the state and coercive power. Structure refers to these large-scale social institutions and the realities which frame our individual experience. It includes culture, society and static organisational patterns.
1 - Commodification and decommodification
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 13-28
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Summary
This chapter begins by examining the contemporary globalised and financialised eco-political economy and draws on a Polanyian framework and the concept of commodification. It identifies the problem, and the related social and ecological destruction, as commodification, and uses the concept of decommodification to frame potential solutions, pointing to an ecosocial project that de-emphasises the role of the market in favour of an enhanced role for the state and society. It argues that states should focus on addressing need through social, public and local mechanisms in which we care for each other and put our planet at the centre of our policy processes. The chapter concludes by assessing the Irish political economy and market, and its commodified policies and outcomes.
Capitalism and neoliberalism
While the focus in this book is on the ills of the 21st-century political economy, it is useful to recall how capitalism emerged in the 16th century on the back of organised violence, generating mass impoverishment and systematic destruction of previously self-sufficient subsistence economies (Hickel, 2021, p 48). Capitalism worked by impoverishing people in the pursuit of growth which was achieved through excessive profit and accumulation. Traditional welfare systems (granaries, communal irrigation systems, commons) were destroyed and hunger became an everyday threat, while new harsh rules forced people who had lived subsistence lifestyles to work for the benefit of others (Hickel, 2021, p 60; and Chapter 4).
The brutality of this is demonstrated in one simple statistic: life expectancy decreased from an average of 43 years in the 1500s to the low 30s in the 1700s (and as low as 25 years in Manchester) (Hickel, 2021, p 50). Through brutal processes of enclosure of the commons (which describes the accessibility of natural, cultural and societal resources to all members of the society) and the external processes of colonisation, slavery and extraction, capitalism expanded and grew. With profit continually reinvested, growth accelerated ‘like a virus’ (Hickel, 2021, p 87). The 1830s period of transition in Britain, known as the ‘great transformation’, has also been described as an ‘abrupt’, ‘brutal shock’, ‘a lacerating operation’ with the market mechanism eating into the ‘marrow of society’ (Polanyi, 1944, p 106).
Introduction: The case for a welfare imagination
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 1-10
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Summary
This book contributes to the growing number of arguments for a new ecosocial form of welfare and examines the politics of making ecosocial welfare a reality. The problem the book addresses is structural and the solution is ultimately political. My aim is to bring together accessible arguments about the need to recast the welfare state to meet the challenges of achieving sustainability and equality, and to address the politics of making that happen. A key theme is the integration of ecological and social arguments in identifying the problems and solutions, and the political strategies to make change happen. While intentionally light in its presentation of theory, an eclectic range of theory informs and develops the work. It draws on key concepts including globalisation, sustainability, institutions, services, income, imaginaries, transformation and power. These concepts and ideas are brought together to map a welfare reform project, grounded in the transformational potential of social policy, and applied in the context of specific reform proposals across institutions, services and income supports.
An ecosocial solution to climate change and inequality forms part of global agenda that unites poor and rich countries in a new economic and social settlement, the financial responsibility for which must be borne by the Global North (Gough, 2017). Future welfare policy must develop in this international context but will more often be implemented nationally. The more detailed discussions in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 apply predominantly to developed nations’ welfare state reform. The same principles, but not the same policies, may be relevant for the Global South, while global redistribution of resources is essential. The author acknowledges the Global North bias of this book, which results in a relative absence of focus on issues more relevant to the Global South including debt and reparation. The need for different strategies for different regions, and the role of global and regional institutions including the EU, are beyond the scope of this book. This short introductory chapter first outlines the problems, solutions and strategies that inform the underlying argument for ecosocial policy. It then justifies the case for imagination and hope, my motivation for authoring the book and the choice of Ireland as an anchoring case study. Finally, the chapter outlines the structure of the book and the content of each chapter.
References
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 177-192
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Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
- Mary P. Murphy
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- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023
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A uniquely hybrid approach to welfare state policy, ecological sustainability and social transformation, this book explores transformative models of welfare change. Using Ireland as a case study, it addresses the institutional adaptations needed to move towards a sustainable welfare state.
8 - Imaginaries and ideas
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
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- Bristol University Press
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- 20 January 2024
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- 05 May 2023, pp 129-140
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Summary
Graeber and Wengrow (2021, p 505) reflect on the possibility that we are stuck and unable to imagine or shape new social realities. The greatest poverty we should fear is poverty of our imagination, and many observe an intellectual vacuum when it comes to imaginative alternatives (Cumbers, 2018; Jones and O’Donnell, 2018). This is a chicken and egg conundrum: it is easier to mobilise people if they believe an alternative is possible, but without mobilisation it is difficult to generate alternatives (Meadowcroft, 2007). Alternatives need not be highly developed, nor do they need to be policy blueprints or detailed maps. Our social and political imagination provides direction or compass points, while our institutional or programmatic imagination can articulate the first steps of travel.
The first section of this chapter argues for policy imagination and for the need to articulate alternatives in the tradition of ‘realist pragmatism’ or ‘real utopias’ and assesses the role of ideas in orienting change during crisis (Wright, 2013; Fitzpatrick, 2014). The second section of the chapter examines the importance of framing alternatives in constructive, offensive rather than defensive, language capable of mobilising a wide range of actors, uniting rather than dividing society and offering hope in being ‘for’ rather than ‘against’. This underscores the importance of who articulates alternatives and draws attention to the ‘vocabularies of our imagination’ (Massey, 2013). The Irish section reviews examples of framing transformative ideas in recent constitutional referendums that led to a level of transformation many middle-aged feminist activists (like me) could only dream would happen in their lifetime.
Imagination and ideas
Imagining how to live together
Many, in exploring the central organising principle of sustainable alternatives, draw on various visual images, myths and parables to demonstrate how ancient wisdoms of sustainable life collectively point towards ‘balance’ as a core principle or value (Green, 2016; Raworth, 2017; Leicester, 2020; Jackson, 2021). This orientation inspired the visual motif of this book, a symmetrical spider's web holding together and joining the dots between the book's themes.
PART III - An ecosocial political imaginary
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Book:
- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 05 May 2023, pp 109-110
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Summary
So far, a compelling argument has been made for system change to address the contemporary failure of our capitalist political economy and welfare system to promote environmental sustainability, societal wellbeing and equality. The case for an ecosocial state is manifold not only from the perspective of climate change, but also from the perspective of gender and other inequalities, socio-economic justice, health and wellbeing, social reproduction, democratic participation as well as sustainable ecologies. Part II outlined a case for ecosocial policy as an underlying feature of wider systemic change and explored the values needed to underpin enabling institutions that could enhance reciprocity and interdependence. It offered two anchoring institutions, Universal Basic Services and Participation Income, as core features of an ecosocial state.
Part III will discuss the democratic challenges of social transformation and mobilisation, the importance of imagination, ideas and language, and the significance of new forms of power, all in the context of what strategies might achieve the scale of transformation required for an ecosocial state. Theories of change and transformation translate into strategies for action. Our imagination and ideas influence what we think is possible and how we approach ‘making it happen’. Democratic engagement of active citizens requires collective mobilisation across different interests and joining the dots across relevant political civil society campaigns and programmes. Ever mindful of the agencystructure dichotomy, agency needs to be of sufficient scale to thwart the obvious power of vested interests who gain from and so defend the status quo. This requires transforming political opportunity structures in democratic institutions and policy processes into a high-energy democracy. Each chapter concludes by discussing lessons from recent episodes of social transformation in Ireland.
2 - From unsustainable environmental outcomes to a post-growth world
- Mary P. Murphy, Maynooth University, Ireland
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- Book:
- Creating an Ecosocial Welfare Future
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 05 May 2023, pp 29-42
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Summary
Chapters 2 and 3 are different sides of the same coin. They demonstrate the impact of the highly financialised and commodified global regime on the environment and the damages associated with dysfunctional treatment of animals, mindless travel and excessive consumption. This chapter explores the impact of this regime on the planet, and the following chapter examines the impact on society; the interrelated problems in both chapters require cojoined solutions. The collective impacts on both the planet's eco system and society cannot be overstated. We are approaching planetary tipping points which may be irreversible; global warming is triggering devastating impacts such as major ice melts and disrupted wind and ocean currents. Mitigating these effects will require radical transformation. Recent reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) conclude that unprecedented transformation and implementation is required within this decade, and that a system change is now required (IPCC, 2022a). The cost of climate transition is already being felt more by those who can least afford and who least contributed to the problem (Gough, 2017), hence the need for transitional justice and welfare state intervention at a global level. Neither technological adjustments nor price mechanisms will achieve such transformation, whereas a post-growth orientation offers a potential pathway to decommodification (Hickel, 2021; Jackson, 2021). The chapter concludes by reflecting on how Ireland's political economy impacts negatively on local and global ecological sustainability and biodiversity.
How bad is environmental degradation?
Climate change refers to a range of complex issues and is integrally related to the concern with conserving and protecting our biodiversity and avoiding ever increasing species loss. More specifically, social environmentalists understand contemporary climate change as rapid global warming caused by humans emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) and carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere and oceans. Major concerns now encapsulated within climate change became dominant over the last 50 years, particularly since Rachel Carson's 1960's book and film, The Silent Spring (Carson, 1962). Following the publication in 1972 of the Limits to Growth report (Meadows et al, 1972), sustainability became a growing concern leading to the establishment of the Brundtland Commission by the United Nations and its 1987 landmark report (Brundtland, 1987).