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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| John O'Neill, Civic Capitalism: The State of Childhood (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2004)
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| IN THIS SHORT BOOK sociological theorist John O'Neill returns once more to the theme of his earlier work, The Missing Child in Liberal Theory (1994), indicting the failure of liberalism, over the past quarter-century, to protect the rights of children. Civic Capitalism represents an impassioned and at times eloquent plea for a return to the principles of universal social citizenship, articulated most powerfully by T.H. Marshall in his well-known 1949 essay on "Citizenship and Social Class." The difference is that in Civic Capitalism the injuries and inequalities of childhood rather than social class constitute the dominant narrative. "Rather than give the critical voice to the parties or the classes ... I have given it to children, for whom the issues of equity, security, and well-being must be addressed if we are to retain any claim to civility," O'Neill writes. (1) In this respect, his work joins a long tradition of child advocates stretching from Charles Dickens and J.J. Kelso in the 19th century to sponsors of mothers' and family allowances in the 20th by invoking the rights and needs of the child as the fulcrum required to "save capitalism from itself." (7) |
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What is "civic capitalism"? In one of many formulas sprinkled throughout the book, O'Neill defines it as "Civic capitalism = Human Capital + Social Capital + Private Capital." (14) Essentially, O'Neill argues from a human capital perspective that a society's investment in children is as or more important for its future health and well-being than investment in physical capital and that a secure "civic childhood" can only be sustained through generous support of families, of the public health, educational, and social services which determine whether children thrive or fail, and through the cooperation of a private sector which recognizes the costs and obligations of this interdependency. None of the above sounds controversial. Indeed, it describes much of the Keynesian welfare state consensus of the first three decades after World War II. The fact that O'Neill is compelled to make this argument in 2004, in defence of children's rights, is a measure of how far that consensus has in fact unraveled. |
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The blame, according to O'Neill, can be laid at the feet of the three dominant intellectual currents of the past three decades: neo-liberalism, identity politics, and the Foucauldian turn. The "anti-governance" tendencies and possessive individualism of neo-liberalism (56), the fragmenting preoccupation of identity politics with "lifestyle issues," (55) and the Foucauldian stigmatization of the welfare state as a "demon of control," (83) O'Neill argues, have all worked in tandem to erode support for the idea of "something like a standard childhood." (80) The end result, intentionally or unintentionally, has been to undermine the rights of children, the one group which "cuts across the exclusions of race, class, and gender," and yet lacks political voice. (23) Only a renewed dedication to their rights, O'Neill argues, can overcome the current "wilding of capitalism." (5) A focus on children can also "bring the generations together and perhaps thereby to take the edge off class, race, and genderism." (11) |
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In the book's five chapters on "civic capitalism," "civic education," "the civic state," "civic childhood," and the "civic gift," O'Neill sketches in broad strokes the types of family friendly social policies, educational ideals, welfare state reforms, children's benefits, and re-imagined altruism that are required to rehabilitate a liberal state in which children's social citizenship can flourish. High on the list are universal day-care programs, generous children's allowances, affordable and attractive social housing, schools aimed at the pursuit of "learning to learn" rather than applied skills training, income and wage policies which reduce rather than enhance market inequalities, the expansion of public goods in health, recreation, and social services, a guaranteed annual income sufficient for the basic standards of life, and the end of a male breadwinner ideology. At the broadest level, O'Neill also calls for the "institutionalization of an international standard of childhood." (86) These are by now familiar parts of a social democratic agenda and O'Neill makes the case for them forcefully. In the chapters on civic education and civic childhood, by far the strongest in the book, he is particularly eloquent in his defence of some of the normalizing tendencies of the welfare state so criticized by Foucault and his followers. "The standardization of life chances," O'Neill reminds us, "is essential to the covenant we enter into with the children we make." (79) |
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Even the sympathetic reader, however, is left puzzled as to how O'Neill's agenda in defence of civic childhood is to be realized, given the forces arrayed against it. His book is far clearer on what needs to be done than on who will do it, which is another way of saying that Civic Capitalism is primarily an exercise in moral suasion, not political strategy. "We must restate what we can reasonably expect from the market and what we can reasonably ask of government," (39) O'Neill writes without saying what those limits might look like or who should define them. Later on he urges a shift from what he describes as a welfare regime based on a "Gendered Market Contract" [GMC] to one based upon an "Intergenerational Civic Covenant" [ICC], noting that for such a transition to occur "national states must realign income measures around a non-productivist civic covenant." (71) But which groups or forces in society will bring this about? O'Neill does not say. |
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Indeed, the lack of agency in Civic Capitalism is its greatest weakness. Absent from his discussion is a sense of the coalitions, alliances, contradictions, or windows of opportunity which went into creating the welfare state along with the rights of children which he is anxious to defend and enhance. At one point O'Neill notes in passing that "the welfare state as we have known it ... was the product of a social compact between the state, business, church, and labour." (63) But that is about all we get by way of historical analysis. The implicit assumption is that recognition of the plight of children in itself should be the motive force for entrenching their rights, a trope familiar to most child-saving literature. If this were true there would be no need for the book O'Neill has written, since the quest for a "civic childhood" would have long since been resolved. Not all children have been disadvantaged. Nor do all the disadvantaged come from the ranks of children. A strategy designed to rehabilitate social citizenship for the 21st century must clearly include but not be limited to campaigns for children's rights. |
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James Struthers
Trent University |
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