Cultural Values and Social Differentiation: The Catholic pillar and its education system in Belgium and the Netherlands

The notion of political consumerism has two implications. First, consumers wield some kind of power that they can use to effect social change through the marketplace. Second, political consumerism refers to and somehow combines the rationalities of two subsystems, politics and the economy. Yet regarding their everyday, individualized shopping decisions, consumers do not appear to command a great deal of power. What kind of influence, then, can individual economic decisions have on producers? Is that influence robust enough to attribute power to consumers? And if consumers do indeed have power, how can we conceive the implied translation of political concerns into the monetary logic of the economy? An answer to those questions needs to take into account the societal context of political consumerism. This paper analyses how political consumerism relates to the functional differentiation of modern society and how social movements are fundamental to understanding it. Through what I shall call role mobilization, social movements turn the role sets of their supporters into transmission belts for political objectives, and by authoritatively communicating those objectives, they provide signals to producers, who otherwise would not know a great deal about their consumers’ preferences.

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“…The term ‘pillarization’ describes such an arrangement in Belgium and the Netherlands (cf. Vanderstraeten, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political consumerism between individual choice and collective action: social movements, role mobilization and signalling

Holzer

2006

Int J Consumer Studies

139

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“…[La] réalité sociopolitique du système belge de la décision publique est caracté-organisée » (Reman, 2002) au sein de laquelle cohabitent différentes communautés. Dans une diversité de secteurs, chacune de ces communautés a alors mis en place un certain nombre d'organisations qui, ensemble, constituent ce que les intellectuels belges et néerlandais ont pris l'habitude de nommer un pilier (Seiler, 1997 ;Vanderstraeten, 2002) ou un segment (Lijphart, 1979(Lijphart, , 1985. Le concept de pilier -et le processus de pilarisation -sert à désigner ce processus au travers duquel une communauté culturelle organise sa vie collective en mettant en place des organisations actives dans des champs différents.…”

Section: Bernard Delvaux Et éRic Mangezunclassified

“…que dans des secteurs moins personnalisés (inance, industrie, etc.) (Vanderstraeten, 2002). S'il est évident que les piliers ont perdu une partie de leur solidité institutionnelle, s'il est évident également qu'on assiste aujourd'hui à une forme de dissociation entre les organisations propres aux piliers et leurs bases sociologiques (De Munck, 2002), il n'en demeure pas moins qu'ils ont donné une certaine épaisseur et une certaine consistance à la culture politique belge.…”

Section: Bernard Delvaux Et éRic Mangezunclassified

Le rôle des connaissances dans le champ de l’éducation belge francophone : de la nécessité de discrétion au développement hétéronome de connaissances

Delvaux¹,

Mangez²

2013

rfp

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Revue française de pédagogie Recherches en éducation 182 | 2013 Connaissances et politiques d'éducation : quelles interactions ? Le rôle des connaissances dans le champ de l'éducation belge francophone : de la nécessité de discrétion au développement hétéronome de connaissances The role of knowledge in the French-language Belgian field of education. From required discretion to the heteronomous development of knowledge

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“…In this sense, they slowly developed a degree of cohesion, formulating common problems and sharing cognitive references. While consociational democracies are often described as ‘societies‐in‐a‐society’ (Vanderstraeten, 2002) or systems‐in‐a‐system, it is possible that recent changes will lead to the creation of a more integrated system.…”

Section: Re‐inventing Education Policy‐making In Belgium: Creating a mentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Knowledge‐based Policy in Fragmented Societies: the case of curriculum reform in French‐speaking Belgium

Mangez

2010

Euro J of Education

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This article examines the relationship between knowledge and policy in French‐speaking Belgium. It starts by describing Belgium as a consociational democracy, i.e. a society that is largely organised around integrated pillars of society (Catholic, secular), each of which provides a wide range of services (educational, training, health, health insurance, social care, family planning, leisure) to ‘its’ people. This special political‐institutional arrangement has profound implications for the way knowledge circulates (or not) and the way it is used (or not) both within pillars and across the policy community. We argue that consociational democracies are not likely to generate knowledge‐driven policy communities. Since knowledge could threaten the peace, some things are better left unknown: the co‐existence of distinct communities requires a form of discretion (Mangez, 2009). Recently, however, globalisation has led to changes in this long‐standing state of affairs: elites are now seeking more knowledge about systems and joint regulation is on the rise. In the education sector, several policy issues, including curriculum issues, have been subject to new joint regulation. In the second part of the article, we take curriculum reform as a case study to investigate these changes. Although all school networks from both pillars are now obliged to follow common guidelines (influenced by globalisation), they are still responsible for transposing them to their individual curriculum programmes. Lexico‐statistical analysis reveals that when they transpose these common guidelines to their own curricula, each network reasserts its own values and cultural references (including its own view of the role of knowledge).

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Cultural Values and Social Differentiation: The Catholic pillar and its education system in Belgium and the Netherlands

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

Political consumerism between individual choice and collective action: social movements, role mobilization and signalling

Political consumerism between individual choice and collective action: social movements, role mobilization and signalling

Le rôle des connaissances dans le champ de l’éducation belge francophone : de la nécessité de discrétion au développement hétéronome de connaissances

Global Knowledge‐based Policy in Fragmented Societies: the case of curriculum reform in French‐speaking Belgium

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