ABSTRACT
The neo-liberal logic of globalization 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 neo-liberalism 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. Globalization 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 reinvent the family and the community as social units; they merely reorient them to the demands of neo-liberalism. 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.
