Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Reading the State as a Multi-Identity Formation: The Touch and Feel of Equality Governance

  • Published:
Feminist Legal Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

How does a sense of touch, figuratively and practically, get deployed within equality governance, and to what questions and ways of thinking about the state does this direct us? Taking 2009–2010 as a snap-shot moment in the development of British equality reform—the year leading up to passage of the Equality Act 2010—this article explores the relationship between touch (the haptic) and equality governance from three angles. First, how have governmental bodies used touch language and imagery, including in geometrical representations of disadvantage? Second, what other, more challenging encounters and actions are imaginable; specifically, can touch mobilise the feeling state as a critical form of active citizenship? Third, what re-conceptualisations of the state does the touching, feeling state invoke, and with what effects? Specifically, does conceiving of the state as a multi-identity formation reframe the risks associated with a haptic state, thereby opening up new strategies for political action?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. There is also the specific apparatus and machinery of equality governance associated with the devolved nations—Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

  2. For discussion of the institutional landscape of equality governance, see Squires and Wickham-Jones (2002); O’Cinneide (2007); Spencer (2008).

  3. See Theresa May, Minister for Women and Equalities, “Equality Strategy Speech”, 17 November 2010, Coin Street Community Centre, London.

  4. See for instance, GEO, The Equality Bill: Duty to Reduce Socio-economic Inequalities, January 2010, p. 30, praising Brighton and Hove Housing Service for addressing socio-economic disadvantage through “a balance of support and enforcement to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour problems”.

  5. Government Equalities Office, Working Towards Equality, October 2009, p. 19.

  6. GEO, Turning Policy into Action, Business Plan, 2010–2011, March 2010, p. 2.

  7. E.g., Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Women Councillors’ Taskforce Report, October 2009; also EHRC, Cohesion and Equality Guidance for Funders, October 2009, p. 4.

  8. April 2010, p. 34.

  9. See EHRC, Cohesion and Equality: Guidance for Funders, October 2009, p. 7.

  10. See EHRC, The Public Sector Equality Duties and Financial Decisions, March 2009, p. 5. “Under the Gender Equality Duty, public authorities must consult staff, service users and other relevant bodies. Under the Disability Equality Duty, authorities must promote disabled people’s participation and involve disabled people. Involvement requires much more active engagement of disabled stakeholders than consultation.”

  11. See EHRC, Positive Action Briefing Note, July 2009, p. 9.

  12. See Trevor Phillips, “Poor white boys are victims too”, Sunday Times, 27 April 2008, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3822685.ece.

  13. Discriminators are classified by organisational identity as a public body, service provider, company, club etc., not in terms of social relations of gender, class, race etc.

  14. See EHRC ‘Our Space’ website; http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/key-projects/youth-projects/our-space/ [last accessed 18 January 2011].

  15. This example is drawn from Marianna Valverde (2003).

  16. For a useful discussion of geometry’s relation to touch, see Paterson (2007).

  17. Olmec, A Guide to Equality and Diversity in the Third Sector, June 2008. For a more sophisticated framework, see EHRC, Developing the Equality Measurement Framework, 2009, p. xiii; a three-dimensional matrix involving: (1) inequality (of outcomes, process and autonomy); (2) across ten domains of social life and activity; (3) and involving eight social characteristics, including class.

  18. GEO, The Equality Bill: Duty to Reduce Socio-economic Inequalities, A Guide, January 2010, p. 14.

  19. DCLG, Creating a Single Equality Scheme for 2010–2013, Consultation, December 2009, p. 9.

  20. Although external pressure can become incorporated and thus legitimated, see for instance GEO, The Equality Bill: Duty to Reduce Socio-economic Inequalities, A Guide January 2010, p. 28, which explicitly refers to citizen engagement as an “effective mechanism for ensuring compliance with the duty”.

  21. For an example of one senior governmental officer’s self-portrayal as an activist within official political structures, see Hunter and Swan’s (2007) interview with Angela Mason (especially p. 490).

  22. There are parallels here with Didi Herman’s (2011) discussion of judicial “way-finding”.

  23. CLG, Fairness and Freedom: The Final Report of the Equalities Review: A Summary, February 2007, p. 6.

  24. For a contemporaneous example, see the British government’s expression of regret following the Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry on British soldiers firing and killing protestors in Londonderry in 1972. BBC News Northern Ireland, 15 June 2010; http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10320609 [last accessed 29 November 2010].

  25. Trevor Phillips, “Foreword”, Our Human Rights Strategy and Programme of Action; 2009–2012, p. 1 (EHRC).

  26. EHRC, Cohesion and Equality: Guidance for Funders, October 2009, pp. 3–4. Emphasis added.

  27. See R (Kaur and Shah) v. LB Ealing [2008] EWHC 2062 (Admin), judgment of Moses LJ that Ealing council was in breach of their duty under the Race Relations Act 1976 for failing to properly consider the racial impact of requiring that organisations funded by them to provide domestic violence services must make such services equally available to all, regardless of race. The EHRC was an intervenor in this case, and their subsequent report (discussed here) can be interpreted as simply explaining the law given the decision in this case. At the same time, reports have a tone which conveys (or produces) particular feelings.

  28. Public bodies recognise, to varying degrees, that inequalities such as gender, sexuality, and race work differently. However, the equality governance structure discussed treats them as broadly analogous—as the same kind of thing. This analogising has been driven by social movement organisations, writers and scholars as well as legal and governmental bodies. While it helps some organising principles, such as sexuality, to be treated more seriously—fitted within an already existing framework—sexuality is only recognised as generating inequalities to the extent it is deemed the same sort of phenomenon as gender or race—and, of course, to the extent they can be analogised to each other.

  29. See O’Cinneide (2007, p. 159) for a critique of the EHRC for applying a “soft touch”.

  30. DCLG, Creating a Single Equality Scheme, 2010–2013 Consultation, December 2009, p. 11.

  31. There are also problems in approaching the state as a series of agentic bodies, I have not the space to pursue further here.

References

  • Ahmed, Sara. 2004. Collective feelings or, the impressions left by others. Theory, Culture & Society 21: 25–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Billig, Michael. 1995. Banal nationalism. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chandler, David. 2000. Active citizens and the therapeutic state: The role of democratic participation in local government reform. Policy and Politics 29: 3–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Choudhury, T.A. 2006. The commission for equality and human rights: Designing the big tent. Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law 13: 311–322.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, John, and Janet Newman. 1997. The managerial state. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Classen, Constance. 2005. The book of touch. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina. 1994. Sexing the city: Lesbian and gay politics within the activist state. London: Rivers Oram.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina. 1996. Institutional illegality and disobedience: Local government narratives. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 16: 255–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina. 2004. Challenging diversity: Rethinking equality and the value of difference. Cambridge: CUP.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina. 2006. Active citizenship and the governmentality of local lesbian and gay politics. Political Geography 25: 921–943.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina. 2011. Theorising nudist equality: An encounter between political fantasy and public appearance. Antipode 43: 326–357.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, Davina, and Surya Monro. 2003. Governing from the margins: Queering the state of local government. Contemporary Politics 9: 229–255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cooper, R., and J. Law. 1995. Organisation: distal and proximal views. In Research in the sociology of organisations, ed. Samuel Bacharach, Pasquale Gadliardi, and Bryan Mundell, 237–274. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corbin, Alain. 1986. The foul and the fragrant: Odor and the French social imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cruikshank, Barbara. 1994. The will to empower: Technologies of citizenship and the war on poverty. Socialist Review 23: 29–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Curtis, Bruce. 2008. “I can tell by the way you smell”: Dietics, smell, social theory. Senses & Society 3: 5–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cvetkovich, Ann. 2003. An archive of feelings. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Derrida, Jacques. 2005. On touching—Jean Luc Nancy (trans: Christine Irizarry), ed. W. Hamacher. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

  • Dickens, Linda. 2007. The road is long: Thirty years of equality legislation in Britain. British Journal of Industrial Relations 45: 463–494.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, Allen. 1997. Violence and vision: The prosthetics and aesthetics of terror. Public Culture 10: 24–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grabham, Emily. 2009a. “Flagging” the skin: Corporeal nationalism and the properties of belonging. Body & Society 15: 63–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grabham, Emily. 2009b. Shaking Mr Jones: Law and touch. International Journal of Law in Context 5: 343–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hansen, Thomas Blom, and Finn Stepputat. 2001. Introduction: States of imagination. In Ethnographic explorations of the postcolonial state, ed. Thomas Hansen and Finn Stepputat, 1–41. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herman, Didi. 2011. An unfortunate coincidence: Jews, Jewishness and English law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hetherington, Kevin. 2003. Spatial textures: Place, touch, and praesentia. Environment and Planning A 35: 1933–1944.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hunter, Shona, and Elaine Swan. 2007. Interview: Angela Mason on trips to Skegness, Maoists and briefings with the minister: A life in equalities work. Equal Opportunities International 26: 482–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Irigaray, Luce. 1985. This sex which is not one. New York: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jay, Martin. 1993. Downcast eyes: The denigration of vision in twentieth-century French thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Josipovici, Gabriel. 1996. Touch. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearns, Ade. 1995. Active citizenship and local governance: Political and geographical dimensions. Political Geography 14: 155–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lansley, Stewart, Sue Goss, and Christian Wolmar. 1989. Councils in conflict: The rise and fall of the municipal left. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mann, Michael. 1993. The sources of social power, vol. II. Cambridge: CUP.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Marinetto, Michael. 2003. Who wants to be an active citizen? The politics and practice of community involvement. Sociology 37: 103–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Massumi, Brian. 2002. Parables for the virtual. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Mbembe, Achille. 2003. Necropolitics. Public Culture 15: 11–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. The limits of the state: Beyond statist approaches and their critics. American Political Science Review 85: 77–96.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Janet. 2001. Modernising governance: New Labour, policy and society. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Janet. 2007. The “double dynamics” of activation: Institutions, citizens and the remaking of welfare governance. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27: 364–375.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nolan, James. 1998. The therapeutic state: Justifying government at century’s end. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Cinneide, Colm. 2007. The commission for equality and human rights: A new institution for new and uncertain times. Industrial Law Journal 36: 141–162.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Obrador Pons, Pau. 2009. Building castles in the sand: Repositioning touch on the beach. Senses & Society 4: 195–210.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Painter, Joe. 2006. Prosaic geographies of stateness. Political Geography 25: 752–774.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paterson, Mark. 2004. Caresses, excesses, intimacies and estrangements. Angelaki 9: 165–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Paterson, Mark. 2007. The senses of touch: Haptics, affects and technologies. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, Claire and Michael Brown. 2005. The body politic as spatial metaphor. Citizenship Studies 9: 469–484.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rhodes, R.A.W. 1994. The hollowing out of the state: The changing nature of the public service in Britain. Political Quarterly 65: 138–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rose, Nikolas. 1996. Governing advanced liberal democracies. In Foucault and political reason, ed. Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose, 37–64. London: UCL Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roy, Srirupa. 2006. Seeing a state: National commemorations and the public sphere in India and Turkey. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48: 200–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James. 1998. Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sparks, Holloway. 1997. Dissident citizenship: Democratic theory, political courage and activist women. Hypatia 12: 74–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spencer, Sarah. 2008. Equality and human rights commission: A decade in the making. The Political Quarterly 79: 6–16.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Squires, Judith. 2009. Intersecting inequalities; Britain’s equality review. International Feminist Journal of Politics 11: 496–512.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Squires, Judith, and Mark Wickham-Jones. 2002. Mainstreaming in Westminster and Whitehall: From Labour’s ministry for women to the women and equality unit. Parliamentary Affairs 55: 57–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. 1986. The politics and poetics of transgression. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Steinberg, Philip. 1994. Territorial formation on the margin: Urban anti-planning in Brooklyn. Political Geography 13: 461–476.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Keith. 2005. Magical healing: The king’s touch. In The book of touch, ed. Constance Classen, 354–362. Oxford: Berg.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tully, James. 1999. The agonic freedom of citizens. Economy and Society 28: 161–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Valverde, Mariana. 2003. Law’s dream of a common knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber, Max. 2005. In From Max Weber: Essays in sociology, ed. H.H. Gerth and C.W. Mills. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kent Law School, Eliot College, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NS, UK

    Davina Cooper

Authors
  1. Davina Cooper
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Davina Cooper.

Additional information

This article was initially presented as a keynote lecture at the interdisciplinary Beyond Citizenship Conference, Birkbeck College, 1 July 2010; organised by the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research. The article benefits from questions and comments of participants, as well as feedback from Brenna Bhandar, Emily Grabham, Didi Herman and anonymous referees for Feminist Legal Studies.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Cooper, D. Reading the State as a Multi-Identity Formation: The Touch and Feel of Equality Governance. Fem Leg Stud 19, 3–25 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-011-9166-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-011-9166-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation