Professor Valerie Walkerdine (School of Social Sciences, University
of Cardiff, UK/Visiting Professor, University of Oslo, Norway)
From Political Economy to Advanced Liberalism: Foucault,
Family and
Generation
The town I shall call Steeltown was founded in the 1790s around an iron works. Steel production finally ceased in 2002. The centrality of political economy and pauperism to labouring families in the town cannot be overstated. The affective ties that bound families and passed down generations provided means for avoiding the workhouse and coping with chronic insecurity. In addition, hard labouring masculinity became a central trope through which labour and the avoidance of pauperism was expressed. The closure of the works has brought shifts in advanced liberalism's demands with respect to masculine labour, creating complex changes and difficulties within families and across generations. The paper will exemplify this with respect to entrepreneurialism (a former steelworker becoming a guitar maker) and intergenerational difficulties between fathers and sons.
