Introduction: The Many Forms of Privatization

In political economy, as in everyday usage, the terms "public" and "private" are used to distinguish both between states and other organizations in the formal economy, and between households or communities and formal economies, including their state sectors. Although the terms have been useful as analytical tools, it has long been recognized by many political economists that they are not dichotomous, readily separable entities. Rather, public and private in both senses of these terms are interpenetrating and complex categories that shift over time in relation to content and degree of separation. The nature, and representation, of either private or public are constantly being constructed not only by states and by the search for profit, but also by the individual and collective struggles of citizens. Both the public and the private are contested terrains, as are their degrees of separation. Although important insights are to be gained at various levels of abstraction, the public and the private can be fully understood only in an historically specific context and through investigations of particular interventions along with their consequences for particular groups. This issue of SPE considers some of the ways public and private are being rapidly reconstructed in Canada. The reconstruction is simultaneously material and ideological, with neoconservative and neoliberal ideologies driving changes that influence both experiences and ideas. In the state sector,