NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

Intersectional insights and frameworks are put into practice in a multitude of highly contested, complex, and unpredictable ways. We group such engagements with intersectionality into three loosely defined sets of practices: applications of an intersectional framework or investigations of intersectional dynamics; debates about the scope and content of intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological paradigm; and political interventions employing an intersectional lens. We propose a template for fusing these three levels of engagement with intersectionality into a field of intersectional studies that emphasizes collaboration and literacy rather than unity. Our objective here is not to offer pat resolutions to all questions about intersectional approaches but to spark further inquiry into the dynamics of intersectionality both as an academic frame and as a practical intervention in a world characterized by extreme inequalities. At the same time, we wish to zero in on some issues that we believ...

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Toward a Field of Intersectionality Studies: Theory, Applications, and Praxis

Frantz Fanon’s explosive Black Skin, White Masks is a merciless expose of the psychological damage done by colonial rule across the world. Using Fanon’s incisive analytical abilities to expose the consequences of colonialism on the psyches of colonized peoples, it is both a crucial text in post-colonial theory, and a lesson in the power of analytical skills to reveal the realities that hide beneath the surface of things.  
Fanon was himself part of a colonized nation – Martinique – and grew up with the values and beliefs of French culture imposed upon him, while remaining relegated to an inferior status in society. Qualifying as a psychiatrist in France before working in Algeria (a French colony subject to brutal repression), his own experiences granted him a sharp insight into the psychological problems associated with colonial rule.  
Like any good analytical thinker, Fanon’s particular skill was in breaking things down and joining dots. His analysis of colonial rule exposed its implicit assumptions – and how they were replicated in colonised populations – allowing Fanon to unpick the hidden reasons behind his own conflicted psychological make up, and those of his patients. Unflinchingly clear-sighted in doing so, Black Skin White Masks remains a shocking read today.

An Analysis of Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks

The term intersectionality references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability, and age operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but rather as reciprocally constructing phenomena. Despite this general consensus, definitions of what counts as intersectionality are far from clear. In this article, I analyze intersectionality as a knowledge project whose raison d'etre lies in its attentiveness to power relations and social inequalities. I examine three interdependent sets of concerns: (a) intersectionality as a field of study that is situated within the power relations that it studies; (b) intersectionality as an analytical strategy that provides new angles of vision on social phenomena; and (c) intersectionality as critical praxis that informs social justice projects.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-soc-073014-112142

Intersectionality's Definitional Dilemmas

In the context of the second Gulf war and US and the British occupation of Iraq, many ‘old’ debates about the category ‘woman’ have assumed a new critical urgency. This paper revisits debates on intersectionality in order to show that they can shed new light on how we might approach some current issues. It first discusses the 19 th century contestations among feminists involved in anti-slavery struggles and campaigns for women’s suffrage. The second part of the paper uses autobiography and empirical studies to demonstrate that social class (and its intersections with gender and ‘race’ or sexuality) are simultaneously subjective, structural and about social positioning and everyday practices. It argues that studying these intersections allows a more complex and dynamic understanding than a focus on social class alone. The conclusion to the paper considers the potential contributions to intersectional analysis of theoretical and political approaches such as those associated with poststructuralism, postcolonial feminist analysis, and diaspora studies.

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Ain't I A Woman? Revisiting Intersectionality

Introduction - Gail Lewis Expanding the Social Policy Imaginary Gender and the Analysis of Social Policy - Ruth Lister Gender and Welfare Regimes - Jane Lewis The Social Relations of Care - Tom Shakespeare Foucault and the Study of Social Policy - Sophie Watson Constituting Welfare Subjects through Poverty and Sexuality - Jean Carabine Constructing Gendered and Racialized Identities - Ann Phoenix Young Men, Masculinities and Educational Policy Children as Welfare Subjects in Restructured Social Policy - Sharon Pinkney Social Policy and the Body - Julia Twigg Social Policy and the Emotions - Paul Hoggett Class and Social Policy - Gerry Mooney From the KWNS to the SWPR - Bob Jessop New Approaches to Comparative Social Policy - Lynne Poole The Changing Face of Central and Eastern European Welfare A World of Difference? Globalization and the Study of Social Policy - John Clarke Decriminalizing Criminology - John Muncie Crime Control, Social Policy and Liberalism - Kevin Stenson Rethinking Violence, Rethinking Social Policy - Elizabeth Stanko Discursive Histories, the Pursuit of Multiculturalism and Social Policy - Gail Lewis The Demise of Professional Self-Regulation - Celia Davies A Moment to Mourn Exchange and the Metaphor of Exchange - Maureen Mackintosh Economic Cultures in Social Care Social Justice, New Labour and School Reform - Sharon Gewirtz Redefining Work and Welfare in Europe - Jane Pillinger New Perspectives on Work, Welfare and Time Principals of Recognition and Respect in Welfare - Fiona Williams

Rethinking social policy

Taking as its starting point the success of the concept of intersectionality in generating feminist inquiry in Europe, this article explores the disavowal and displacement of race that have accompanied intersectionality as it has traveled across the Atlantic. In a context in which race continues to be a structuring principle in European societies, the article explores some implications for feminist practice. It argues that such disavowal and displacement has several effects: it serves to ghettoize race as meaning-making and a site of knowledge production, it silences and subordinates those identified with the genesis of intersectionality as an analytic, and it occludes whiteness as a racialized and racializing category. Working within a psychodynamics-of-organization and black feminist frame, it argues that this has profound implications for interactions among feminists racialized as white and of color as they encounter each other in spaces of feminist infrastructure.

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Unsafe Travel: Experiencing Intersectionality and Feminist Displacements

Book synopsis: This book explores the relationship between 'race', gender and policy to develop an important and original argument about social welfare and racial formation in the late twentieth century

The book presents a layered and finely textured analysis of the issue of 'ethnic minority' women in professional social work in Britain The analysis contextualizes their entry in terms of an understanding of the developing relationship between racial formation and its expression in local and central policy and policy-making In the process, the author builds upon and greatly extends the current analyses of social policy and 'race' and gender Using a skilful mix of theory, empirical research and interviews, the book explores the complexities of the racialized and gendered world of the social services department The result is an important contribution to the literature that draws on feminist, postcolonial, psychoanalytic and social constructionist perspectives to develop an argument about processes of racial formation

'Race', Gender, Social Welfare: Encounters in a Postcolonial Society

The introduction to this ERS Special Issue sets out the broad frame through which the six articles can be coherently viewed. It does so by suggesting that, more recently, different governments' attempts to manage the tensions surrounding asylum, labour needs and multicultural citizenship have increasingly involved a 'redrawing' or 'refixing' of immigration and multicultural political and policy approaches. This 'redrawing' process places a traditional stress on policing national borders and excavates older discourses of assimilationism through an emphasis on cultural integration, social cohesion and a notion of a core national identity. This process is apparent in wider European and Australian contexts and can be particularly seen in the current British government's legislative interventions on asylum and migrant labour. The introduction sets out the specificity of the British context and outlines how each of the subsequent articles speaks to the labile political and policy landscapes of migration and belonging.

Introduction: Contemporary political contexts, changing terrains and revisited discourses

This article explores some of the ways in which UK Government policies inscribe tensions between tolerance of cultural difference, on the one hand, and an attempt to instil a regime of normalizing discipline, on the other. It argues that these tensions are expressed in the ambiguity of the figure of 'the immigrant woman', who simultaneously embodies the possibility of assimilation into and destabilization of the nation and the national. This is because this figure has come to occupy a significant place both in the struggles over the meaning of cultural plurality and as the subject around whom the characterization of the nation as tolerant and modern is invested.

Gail Lewis

Papers

Rethinking social policy

Unsafe Travel: Experiencing Intersectionality and Feminist Displacements

'Race', Gender, Social Welfare: Encounters in a Postcolonial Society

Introduction: Contemporary political contexts, changing terrains and revisited discourses

Welcome to the margins: diversity, tolerance and policies of exclusion