Introduction
We live in unsettled and troubling times, with previous certainties unravelling and taken-for-granted assumptions in disarray. One such certainty was centred on assumptions about the character and purposes of the state, as affording security and facilitating prosperity for its citizens, as well as ensuring minimum standards of care and support for its most vulnerable members, centred on the proposition of the welfare state. By contrast, and as we elaborate below, mass movements of displaced populations and the advent of global terrorism, in addition to the volatility of global financial markets, among other developments, have placed unprecedented strain on the capacities and resources of governments to provide previously guaranteed services. In the process, the very idea of “the state” has attracted heightened scrutiny and growing scepticism.
As we also elaborate below, this book takes up three key ideas arising from this complex situation: the modern state; social capital; and social enterprise. This chapter begins the task of identifying the theoretical and material relationships among these ideas, and also of exploring some of the ways in which they might provide the foundation for reframing the provision of necessary services and support. More broadly, this debate raises significant questions about statehood, citizenship, globalisation and social justice, as all of us grapple with living and learning with one another and with the planet in the early to mid-twenty-first century.
The chapter has been divided into three sections:
- An outline of the book’s focus;
- Conceptual issues relevant to the book’s three research questions focused on examining broader, present-day questions about the role of the modern state in enabling social capital and social enterprise;
- The impetus for the book, and an overview of the book’s two parts and 16 chapters.
The Focus of This Research Book
The Irish President’s powerful and poignant evocation of “[a] caring state” (Higgins, 2017) encapsulates neatly the focus of this research book. The chapters in the book, including this one, explore in diverse ways the crucial intersections among three powerful ideas: social capital; social enterprise; and the modern state. Given the current character of the world, it is particularly important that these intersections are mapped and analysed in ways that render transparent and visible the winners and the losers, the included and the excluded, and the powerful and the powerless with regard to late capitalism in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. This is vital to understanding, and where possible to ameliorating, contesting and reframing, the forces of control and marginalisation that beset our contemporary world.A caring state, and the building of such a state, is the responsibility of all citizens. A caring state does not grow from nothing, but must be founded on articulation and action by concerned citizens who not only visualise a democratic society, but [also] make a case for it and support its realisation. (President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins, 30 June 2017)
More specifically, we are witnessing a deep transformation of the role of the modern state, caused by significant socio-structural changes and shifting political ideas, as well as by unanticipated events such as the 2007–2008 global financial crisis (Blanco, Griggs, & Sullivan, 2014; McInerney, 2014). As a result, organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have played a central part in formulating and implementing economic policies by placing an emphasis on austerity and cuts (Brazys & Regan, 2017). This emphasis has in turn highlighted the relevance and significance of both social capital and social enterprise (which are conceptualised more fully in the next section of this chapter) to current debates about understanding and financing the fundamental relationship between the state and its citizens and other community members.
In a telling instance of these wider developments, with the advent of austerity in the United Kingdom, the then Prime Minister David Cameron introduced the “Big Society” manifesto in 2010 in the run up to a general election (Cabinet Office, 2010). This manifesto promised to “redefine the role of the state as a provider of public services”, narrated as a strategy to empower communities, encourage a diversity of service providers and foster volunteerism (Whelan, 2012). To enable such a vision, there was an emphasis on “localism”, “self-governing”, “resilience”, “pay by results”, “social value”, “social capital” and “social enterprise”, all focused on the rhetoric of the common good. At the core of the “Big Society” agenda was “commissioning”, which is the process of tendering the provision of services (Alcock, 2016; Grover & Piggott, 2015; Shaw, 2012).
These same far-reaching and widespread changes are being manifested and experienced by many governments across the globe. To take just one example, all levels of the Australian public sector are reforming and reviewing their service provision with a focus on returning the budget to surplus. Indeed, some elements of the “Big Society” are present at both the state and the federal levels of government in Australia (Whelan, 2012). The consensus in the academic literature is that the narrative presented about the “Big Society” “is a slippery one” (Coote, 2011, p. 82) with a hidden agenda:
Beneath its seductive language about giving more power to citizens, the “Big Society” is a major programme of structural change that aims to overturn the post-war welfare state. The key idea is to divest the state of responsibility for meeting needs and managing risks that individuals cannot cope with alone. (Coote, 2011, p. 82)
These shifts have sparked a debate about what the role of the state is, which has been described on the one hand as a “passive state” or on the other hand as an “enabling state” focused on collaborative approaches, bottom-up initiatives and participation (Elvidge, 2014; Sullivan, 2012). Against this backdrop of policy-making and politics, it is timely to look again at the relationship between society and governments and to reflect especially on the possibilities and the desirability of imagining and interacting with the enabling state. This edited research book explores the complexities of investigating these shifts and challenges, and is focused, in particular, on the changing role of the modern state and both the viability and the sustainability of the spheres of social capital and social enterprise.
In doing so, the book builds on and extends from several ideas previously presented in Community Capacity Building: Lessons from Adult Learning in Australia (Postle, Burton, & Danaher, 2014). That earlier volume investigated diverse conceptualisations of, and approaches to, community capacity-building from the perspective of university-community engagement in contemporary Australia. The discussion traversed multiple current social issues that community organisations and universities worked in tandem to address. These issues ranged from disenfranchised youth and older men to refugees and technological inclusion, to the roles of regional and local government, and to evaluating the community benefits of social interventions and ensuring the sustainability of such interventions.
The earlier book analysed social issues that are familiar to many readers of this volume, including from countries other than Australia. Those issues were explored through the prism of community capacity-building, understood as universities engaging strategically and sustainably with various community organisations to address “real world” issues from an integrated cross-disciplinary and multi-sectoral perspective and against the backdrop of Australia’s distinctive policy-making and political landscape. By contrast, this volume’s geographical reach has been widened to include Bangladesh and Ireland as well as Australia, as well as drawing on the latest international scholarship in this important area of public policy. Furthermore, the social issues have been broadened to include social housing and homelessness, educational inclusion, local governments and social enterprise, older men and digital technologies, microcredit for women entrepreneurs, refugee settlement experiences, mental illness and social entrepreneurship, business people helping to build social capital, university-community partnerships that enable pathways to higher education and employment for marginalised individuals and the utility of developing asset-based regional economies.
Conceptual Resources for Researching Social Capital and Social Enterprise in the Modern State
There are multiple conceptual resources that can be deployed to conduct research into social capital and social enterprise in the modern state. “The state” evokes ideas such as “governance”, “government”, “politics” and “polity”, and is predicated on notions of hierarchy, structure and the power to make and implement decisions (such as the provision of services and the promulgation of laws) applicable to the citizens of a geographically located and bounded area. A current definition of “the state” focused on four identified crucial characteristics:
The classical approach of...