Globalisation and Third Way Theories: The Beleaguered Family and the Marginalisation of Women

The neoliberal logic of globalisation that shapes today’s world imposes certain roles on the family and the community as important social units for the regeneration of civil society, best done through the reform discourse of Third Way theories. Third Way thinking resurfaced in the vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the retreat of socialism and the inadequacy of unfettered neoliberalism as an effective alternative. The Third Way move to create a public space through the family and the community, separate from state structures and marketplace compulsions, to foster ‘dialogic democracy’ and civil morality poses several problems for women. The first relates to the renewal of family and community, both ‘essentially contested concepts’, without addressing the inequities embedded in these units. The second concerns the onus of renewing and regulating democracy by shifting from the state to civil society, whereby individuals gain agency and class/caste/gender/race and other structural differences are erased. Globalisation intersects in ambivalent ways with already existing caste/class/gender/race relations, rendering complex the notion of using these social units as tools for civil regeneration. Third Way theories do not necessarily re-invent the family and the community as social units; they merely re-orient them to the demands of neoliberalism. These theories must locate the family and the community within the global context of the restructuring of capital itself and perceive capitalism as setting limits on the extent to which both these units can be reformed or regulated.