Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy

Political and Social Thought Program

Distinctive to the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy is an intellectual framework that all members of the Centre share and affirm, namely, political and social thought, broadly understood.  The Centre is also internally differentiated according to three programs, one of which is political and social thought understood in an academically specialized sense.  This program is designed to offer selective footholds in major traditions of political and social thought as well as theoretical perspectives bearing on democratic agency and citizenship.

The current four members of this specialist PST program, Jack Barbalet, Nikolas Kompridis, Tim Rowse, and Magdalena Zolkos, play a key role in teaching the coursework component of the Doctoral Program in Political and Social Thought.  Although they each have their own individual research programs, Barbalet, Kompridis, Rowse, and Zolkos share a common research domain, which is modern and postmodern political and social thought, and a common methodological orientation, which is focused on the close interpretation and critical analysis of heterogeneous genres of writing and theorizing understood in historical context. This includes an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approach to scholarly inquiry. This is maintained through the strong disciplinary background of each member of the PST node, which includes sociology, philosophy, history and political theory. The compass and diversity of their expertise is impressive, as is the scope and influence of their publications.

As affirmed at the 2010 research retreat by all CCPP members, political and social thought is the “heartland” of CCPP, and therefore it is must be properly and sufficiently resourced to play its key integrative role in the Centre and to raise the level of the Ph.D. program, to make it indisputably the best of its kind in Australasia.

There is another aspect of the Centre’s program in political and social thought.This is the possibility of its articulation with an undergraduate major in political and social thought offered in the BA and BSS in the College of Arts at UWS.  Earlier this year, the Director of the Centre (Professor Anna Yeatman) chaired a Working Party in Political and Social Thought, as requested by the Acting ED of the College, Professor Nancy Wright.  It offered a design for an undergraduate program (Major) and for an Honours program in political and social thought.  Should this initiative be implemented within the Bachelor of Arts, it would provide a bridge between the undergraduate (and Honours) teaching program and CCPP, and open up an opportunity for CCPP staff in the political and social thought program to contribute to the undergraduate curriculum.

Social Economy

Professor Katherine Gibson, who heads this program, has developed an internationally recognized research program focused on imagining and enacting ethical economic practices such as those encapsulated by the term social economy. Along with the late Professor Julie Graham she has “contributed to a fundamental rethinking of the terms of political economic inquiry and debate” within Economic Geography (successful 2010 Nomination statement for J.K. Gibson-Graham for the IAG Australia-International Medal). Gibson-Graham’s theoretical and applied work has been influential not only in Human Geography but also in Anthropology, Politics, Cultural Studies, Political Economy, International Development, Housing Studies, Political and Social Theory, Asian Studies, Urban and Regional Development and Organization Studies. A forthcoming popular book by Gibson-Graham, Cameron and Healy Take Back the Economy, Any Time, Any Place to be published by the University of Minnesota Press is explicitly targeted at a readership interested in the “how to” of building a more robust social economy. Gibson-Graham’s 1996 book, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, that introduced the diverse economy approach was named a Classic in Human Geography (see “Classics in human geography revisited” Progress in Human Geography 34, 1 2010).

The Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy is therefore consolidating a strong platform for theoretically informed research and teaching about the social economy that is of relevance to practitioners and policy makers operating both in Australia and the wider region. The social economy is where new solutions are emerging to the challenge of achieving environmental and social well-being in the 21st century.  Across many fields, including environment, health, education, welfare, care, food and energy ‘business as usual’ models are failing to address ‘wicked problems’. Innovative and experimental solutions are being pioneered within the social economy by businesses, NGOs, self-organized networks and social movements with strong values and articulated missions. In the social economy the boundary between production and consumption is blurred, distributed networks produce and distribute value with the aid of new technologies like solar and broadband, and a premium is put on maintaining relationships and building collaborations. This new kind of economy includes parts of the private commercial sector, the public sector, not-for-profit sector, philanthropic and gift sector and household sector. Currently the social economy, especially in Australia, is an economic landscape that lacks visibility. Its great potential is under-recognized.

Research in the social economy field in Australia is at an early stage. Associate Professor Jo Barraket at QUT’s Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Non-Profit Studies has just completed a mapping project to assess the size of the social enterprise sector. Gibson’s experience as part of a reference group for this project indicates that there is a niche for theoretically innovative and empirically oriented research collaborations around the social economy—a wider concept than just social enterprise. The UK and European experience suggests that this could be a promising area for research grant funding, especially of ARC Linkage Projects and Australian Development Research Awards.

Over the next year Professor Gibson and Dr Gerda Roelvink will be pioneering the extension of social economy research into developing world contexts (specifically Asia and the Pacific); theorizing social economy-ecology interdependencies; and developing action research methodologies for building the social economy. They will be conducting field research in the Solomon Islands, Fiji and rural Australia.

Professor Gibson is frequently invited to present the work of the Social Economy Research Program at international conferences and workshops. She has been invited to present in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and the USA in 2011.

Active Citizenship and Democratic Governance

The CCPP is building research concentration in this area that is designed to be of relevance and assistance to actors who are practically engaged in the contemporary work of government and governance. 

In this program area, CCPP offers an interdisciplinary team of researchers whose disciplinary backgrounds include Sociology, Political Science and Adult Education. Specifically it offers expertise in the following areas:
• democratic decision-making (deliberative democracy; deep democracy)
• public engagement (citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, world cafes)
• power-sharing and partnership between government and NGOs
• network governance (collaborative relationships between government, NGOs, and households)
• new conceptions and practices of citizenship
• citizen participation in relation to new technologies of communication
• corporate social responsibility.
The program began in 2010 and was populated by one professorial fellow, Lyn Carson (who commenced in June 2010) and Dr Pip Collin (who commenced in November 2010).

The highlights for 2010 included the design and organisation of a deliberative democracy workshop (scheduled for February 2011) that attracted considerable funds to the Centre ($75,000 from a non-government organisation, The newdemocracy Foundation). These funds were matched by UWS and enabled a researcher/practitioner workshop to unfold. The unusual design of this workshop (based on deliberative democracy principles) necessitated invitations to ten international scholars and practitioners and a local guest list of fifty.  The aim of the workshop was to create and fund a participant-led research agenda.

Through Professor Carson, the program began to establish a media profile because of the overlap with the federal election and considerable controversy that arose through the announcement of a citizens’ parliament on climate change. Appearances on television (Sky News, ABC 24 News) and radio (Life Matters, ABC Radio National and many short interviews) put the Centre into the spotlight.

Lyn Carson’s expertise is in the area of deliberative democracy and deliberative design; citizens’ assemblies; and citizen engagement in public policy.  Philippa Collin’s areas of expertise includes: young people, participation and technology; institutions, citizenship, political identity and the role of technology; network governance and democracy; partnership between government and non-government organizations.