The meaning of ‘civilisation’ was politically retooled after the war toward social welfare.

Evidence

In the wake of the war, ‘civilisation’ was retooled in a social-democratic direction, and even liberals increasingly recognised that competing with the temptations on the left and the right required them to recognise the social and economic needs of the working classes. … ‘To be civilized, in the old liberal sense’, the historian Mark Mazower notes, ‘was not necessarily to be modern’. … On the contrary, it was to prioritise a set of civil liberties and property rights that increasingly appeared antiquated. … For the neoliberals, too, these developments threatened to subject the whole world to totalitarianism. … The threat to the central values of civilisation, identified in the MPS statement of aims, was, first of all, a threat to market competition in the face of the ‘revolt of the masses’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 143

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows how the term ‘civilisation’ was a contested ideological signifier — old-liberal property rights vs. new social-democratic welfare meaning.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how rights discourse is politically constructed — ‘civilisation’ as a floating signifier in the UDHR drafting. — connects to: Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 233; Neoliberals replaced the old language of civilisation with a market-based standard — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 64; Culture as shared meaning-making became democratized rather than elite civilization. (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Political reclamation rearticulates a stigmatized term rather than replacing it #expands (0.85) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 233
• Neoliberals replaced the old language of civilisation with a market-based standard #complicates (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 64
• Culture as shared meaning-making became democratized rather than elite civilization. #qualifies (0.78)