In this paper I criticize a growing movement within public policy circles that self-identifies as neoliberal. The issue I take up here is the sense in which the neoliberal label signals a turn away from libertarian political philosophy. The are many import ant figures in this movement, but my focus here will be on Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center, not least because he has most prolifically written against libertarian political philosophy. Neoliberals oppose the idea that the (...) rights that libertarianism claims people have are useful guides for making the world a freer place because they forestall too much governmental/democratic political action that they purport to be necessary for increasing freedom. Wilkinson mistakenly takes libertarianism to be a set of ideal public policies for achieving a perfectly free society. If it were, he would be right to turn away from it. But placing rights to freedom at the center of their theory of justice does not commit libertarians to an all-or-nothing approach to political change. Consequences and strategy matter – particularly in a non-ideal world – without abandoning the idea that each individual has a right to freedom. In mistaking libertarian moral claims as a set of policy prescriptions, Wilkinson complains that idealistic policy prescriptions not only fail to take account of how those who disagree will respond to such policies if implemented, but also thereby undermines the justice of those policies in the first instance. Wilkinson proposes that change in the direction of freedom must go through the proper channels of actually-existing democratic legitimacy. It as this stage that Wilkinson’s project comes into direct conflict with libertarianism. Whilst libertarianism is not committed to any particular method of creating a free society under non-ideal conditions, and therefore does not rule out democratic political activism as one among many means of doing that, it cannot be committed to the permanence of democratic political authority, and this is what Wilkinson’s neoliberalism demands above all else. It turns out that Foucault’s characterization of neoliberalism long ago is still accurate to Wilkinson’s own view: that neoliberalism is not about creating a society of free individuals, it is about designing the state apparatus in ways that are inspired by the workings of free society – it is about legitimizing the chains, not breaking them. Neoliberalism is not a pragmatic alternative to libertarianism, but rather a gross misapplication of it. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article explores how neoliberal and populist elements were initially fused in US political talk to legitimize the expansion of corporate power and socioeconomic inequality that has occurred over recent decades. Applying neo-Gramscian critical semiotic analysis to speeches, news texts and legislative statements about the 1981 Reagan economic plan, I illustrate how a distinctive neoliberal-populist discourse articulates signs of ‘the American people’ with signs of market individualism, and further connects these signs to the neoliberal political project’s (...) class='Hi'>policy moves to roll back state protections and deliver large tax cuts. Neoliberal populism is a paradigmatic instance of what Stuart Hall has termed the ‘trans-coding’ of distinct semantic elements to form a new hegemonic discourse. Through neoliberal-populist signifying processes, people who are deemed unable or unwilling to inhabit market-centric subjectivities, or to promote policies defined as ‘free market,’ are ideologically drawn outside the perimeters of social esteem and political legitimacy. These processes have created obstacles to imagining a unified, politically effective opposition to the neoliberal project in the United States. Moreover, by ideologically constructing ‘the American people’ as anti-statists in the realm of economic and social welfare policy, neoliberal-populist discourse makes it difficult to articulate democratic values and practices with the state as a mechanism through which greater economic equality and substantive democracy could be realized. My analysis illuminates the immediate historical roots of a public discourse with deep anchors in popular common sense which continues to pervade official US policy talk. The cultural resonance and political influence of neoliberal-populist discourse help to explain the persistence of the neoliberal project in the USA. (shrink)

The paper aims to develop a theoretical reflection on existing knowledge in public policy and its implementation in the nineties. This is a documental research design of bibliographical nature. The results reveal that the body of knowledge in public policy has been under the domain of rational choice theory and the assumptions of the neoclassical school. I conclude that, in the context of an alternative model to the neoliberal one, one need a different theoretical tool for alternative (...) public policy that consider social rationality moving away from a deterministic and technical policy. Este trabajo tiene como propósito desarrollar una reflexión teórica al conocimiento existente en materia de política pública y de su implementación en la década de los noventa. Esta es una investigación documental con un tipo de diseño de carácter bibliográfico. Los resultados revelan que el cuerpo de conocimientos en materia de política pública, ha estado bajo el dominio de la Teoría de la Elección Racional y de los supuestos de la Escuela Neoclásica. Se concluye que, en el marco de un modelo alternativo al neoliberal, se necesita un instrumental teórico diferente para una política pública alternativa. Esto pasa por considerar una racionalidad social que se aleje de una concepción determinista y técnica de la política. (shrink)

In November 2011, Citizenship and Immigration Canada paused the parents/grandparents (PGP) sponsorship immigration and announced a new Super Visa program simultaneously to facilitate family reunification, specifically among older adults waiting to be reunified with their children in Canada. We conducted a qualitative study to understand the experiences of immigrant families with the Super Visa Program. In total, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Toronto with Chinese immigrants and parents holding a Super Visa. Our findings revealed that Super Visa program is (...) helpful for family reunification, especially for those whose regular visa applications are not successful. However, Super Visa is still a visitor visa and parents/grandparents have to leave after a maximum of two years. This temporary status of their parents does not promote among immigrants a sense of belonging in Canada, but reinforces their feeling of being treated as “foreigner”. They also debunked the stigma that older parents/grandparents come to Canada for better welfare and are non-contributor and a burden to Canadian society. We observe older parents/grandparents are categorized as “undesirable” and their unpaid contributions to immigrant family and Canada society are rendered invisible. We argue there exits an inherent link between PGP policy changes and social injustice. Behind the negative portrayal of older parents/grandparents and policy changes on them is State’s neoliberal governmentality grounded upon market norms and mechanism. The immigration and social injustice inflicting on older PGP migrants manifests that neoliberal immigration regime is still structurally raced, gendered, classed, and may be intertwined with other stigmatizing dynamics such as ageist, ableist etc. within the State’s power relationship. (shrink)

Peter Hall introduced the concept of paradigm shifts into the public policy discourse. His account explains the seismic transition the world experienced in the 1980s. With this neoliberal paradigm...

Since the outburst of the financial-economic crisis in 2008, there has been quite some public discussion about the failure of neoliberal policies since the 1980s. Much less attention has been paid to its ideological character. Meanwhile, neoliberalism is still there, guiding the course of societies, organizations and individuals. We can observe the ‘strange non-death of neoliberalism’. In this article two questions are explored: which key philosophical elements characterize neoliberalism, and why has it got an ideological character? First, three statements (...) on neoliberalism are formulated. Next, its anthropological and social-philosophical development is considered, taking advantage of Taylor’s grand narrative of modernity. Finally, the potential of a new architectonic critique of society is considered. (shrink)

This timely and provocative book challenges the conventional wisdom that neoliberal capitalism is incompatible with social justice. Employing public choice and market process theory, Nick Cowen systematically compares and contrasts capitalism with socialist alternatives, illustrating how proponents of social justice have decisive reasons to opt for a capitalism guided by neoliberal ideas. Cowen shows how general rules of property and voluntary exchange facilitate widespread cooperation. Revisiting the works of John Rawls, he offers an interdisciplinary reconciliation of Rawlsian principles (...) with liberal democracy by introducing Robust Property-Owning Democracy, a new form of governance that aims to achieve social justice via practical, liberal means. Chapters address the knowledge problem and the incentive problem that emerge when aiming for a fair distribution of social resources and demonstrate how everyday political bargaining can help achieve just outcomes for all. Utilising insights from philosophy, politics and economics to show the role of market institutions and constitutional government in producing social justice, this book is crucial reading for academics, researchers and students of PPE and the political sciences. Its practical policy proposals will further benefit policymakers interested in mechanisms that spread the benefits of economic growth equitably. (shrink)

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve’s shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the “neoliberal dilemma.” In the context of generally deteriorating economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual (...) process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled “markets to do the Fed’s work for it.” These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state’s active role in managing the economy. (shrink)

In this article, Strandberg analyses the development of Swedish cultural policy during the last decades. In contradistinction to the first policy proposition from 1974, which emphasised the importance of counteracting the negative impact of the market, the cultural policies that have been in place for the last twenty to thirty years consider the forces of the market to be conducive to the freedom of culture and the arts. This has entailed a paradigm shift in Swedish culture that has (...) opened up the field of cultural policy for the so-called creative industries, equated culture with creativity, and collapsed the distinction between culture and creative forms of entrepreneurship. When analysing this, Strandberg relates the modern history of Swedish cultural policy to the wider international development that has given rise to the paradigm of the creative industries and discusses how the equation of culture with creativity has made the autonomy of culture and the arts more and more difficult to uphold. (shrink)

When we talk about ideology and new genetics we tend to think of concepts like geneticisation and genetic essentialism, which present genetics and biology in deterministic terms. However, the aim of this article is to consider how a particular economic ideology - neoliberalism - has affected the bioeconomy rather than assuming that it is the inherent qualities of biotechnology that determine market value. In order to do this, the paper focuses on the discourses and practices of economic competitiveness that pervade (...) biotechnology policy-making in the UK, Europe and the USA. Finally it will consider how the manufacture of scarcity - in order to produce the bioeconomy - has led to a problematic focus on a specific innovation paradigm that may prove detrimental to the development and distribution of new biotechnologies. (shrink)

Within the current Dutch policy context the role of informal care is revalued. Formal care activities are reduced and family and friends are expected to fill this gap. Yet, there is little research on the moral ambivalences that informal care for loved ones who have severe and ongoing mental health problems entails, especially against the backdrop of neoliberal policies. Giving priority to one’s own life project or caring for a loved one with severe problems is not reconciled easily. (...) Using a case study we illustrate the moral ambivalences that persons may experience when they try to shape their involvement and commitment when a relative is in need. The case comes from a research project which explores whether it is possible to reduce coercive measures in psychiatry by organizing a Family Group Conference. The purpose of the article is to explore what theoretical concepts such as ‘communities of fate’, ‘communities of choice’ and ‘personal communities’ add in understanding how persons shape their involvement and commitment when a family member experiences recurrent psychiatric crises. (shrink)

This paper draws on ideas about policy innovation and adaptation to assess the extent to which ‘payments for ecosystem services’ (PES) can be seen as a challenge to traditionally more bureaucratic, state-centered ways of paying for the provisioning of environmental goods from agricultural landscapes through agri environmental policy (AEP). Focussing on recent experience in the United States and the UK, the paper documents the extent to which PES is now an established term of reference in AEP research and (...) debate in both countries and postulates that this may usher in a new discourse of environmental provisioning in agriculture. The PES landscape is, however, currently highly fragmented and largely experimental, with ‘PES-like’ approaches being piloted in the field through partnerships between state agencies and localized private and charitable interests. State-supported AEP programs remain substantially intact, and rather than any displacement of state action, there appears to be a more gradual insertion of PES approaches and metrics into standard AEP operating procedures. This institutional stickiness is partly due to the continuing difficulty of agreeing the metrics necessary for measuring outcomes but may also be due to the politically well defended nature of traditional AEP entitlements and associated policy networks. We conclude by suggesting a need for further research to better understand these specifically political constraints and sources of resistance to PES and the ambiguous consequences for institutions, policy networks, rural communities and environment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Advocates of Bitcoin and Modern Monetary Theory present their ideas as radical utopian alternatives to the neoliberal dominant, but these claims neglect the utopian strain in neoliberal monetary theory itself. This strain manifests in that theory’s faith in the capacity of markets to perfect human society. Bitcoin and Modern Monetary Theory express this same faith. After a brief survey of the older, more radical money utopias of More and Proudhon, this article traces the origins of Bitcoin and (...) MMT in the more conventional monetary theories of metallism and chartalism and then analyzes the utopian discourse of both movements, revealing that Bitcoin sees state intervention as the only obstacle to properly functioning markets, while MMT blames disfunction on an inadequate mobilization of labor, proposing state intervention as the remedy. In both cases, their policies only seek to enable the utopian potential of the market, falling in line with neoliberal orthodoxy. The conclusion offers some speculation about what the emergence of these two theories might tell us about the future of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Neoliberal reforms have changed the conduct of academic research in, and beyond, science, technology and society. Social science scholars have undertaken critical studies regarding the negative consequences of neoliberalism, such as the globalization of poverty and the inattention to rights and fairness. However, science and technology studies (STS), which should take a critical approach to science and technology, has generally not addressed the problem of neoliberalism. Rather, some currents in STS may be viewed as supportive of neoliberal transformations. (...) 1 Why is this so? To address this question, Japanese public policy will provide a case study. In Japan, public policy changed, affected by neoliberal reforms in the 1990s. Consequently, a broad area of Japanese social sciences was altered regarding how to be engaged in public policy. STS in Japan was formed at this time and shifted to neoliberal public policy. As a result STS, as well as many other social sciences, transformed their critical function. These circumstances seem to have overlapped and caused STS in Japan to be uncritical of neoliberalism. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest (...) slogan or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

Exploring teaching as an upper secondary school teacher through lived experience offers pedagogical insights that have been challenged over a period of 25 years, when neoliberal educational policies gradually transformed the conditions for teaching in Swedish schools. The article is grounded in the assumption that the teaching profession is complex and there are multiple tacit dimensions inherent in being and becoming a teacher. Several of these dimensions are captured by the notion of pedagogical tact and have to be learned (...) through practice. However, over the past few decades, the implementation of neoliberal policies in the Swedish education sector have changed the conditions for teaching, and created an area of tension between the teacher’s pedagogical alignment and the educational practices influenced by neoliberal values. The aim of the study is to describe how the author experienced these tensions, and what they meant for her becoming and being a teacher in three different pedagogical sites: a higher education preparatory program, a vocational preparatory program, and in adult education. The description is grounded in the lifeworld phenomenological approach and carried out through personal narrative. (shrink)

The Forestry Pilot Plan set intomotion collectively-owned and managed forestry in overforty communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico and hasshown the promise of a forestry development model thatpromotes conservation by giving local people a genuinestake in sustainable resource management. Today, thelegacy of the PPF is under great pressure. Externally,neoliberal policy reform restructures agrarianproduction in ways that favor individual overcollective management of natural resources.Internally, organizational problems createinefficiencies within both forestry ejidos(cooperative agrarian communities) and theirintermediate level forestry civil societies. Peasants'capacity to (...) defend their interests and dealeffectively with their production problems throughstrong representative organizations is beingundermined by new rules for economic associationwithin the ejidos and by the turning over of technicalservice financing to the market. Though organizationalinnovations within the ejidos hold positive potential,existing civil societies merit continued assistance askey actors promoting sustainable forestry. Studyingcommon property management regimes across multiplelevels and dimensions reveals that in Mexico, policyreform overlooks the crucial social resourcesrepresented by peasant organization, undermining thepossibility of sustainable forest management whileassigning the peasant most of the cost ofconservation. If conservation is indeed encouraged bythe genuine participation of those with a stake insustainable use of natural resources, national andinternational communities that value Mexico's tropicalforests should also invest in both social and economiccosts of conservation. (shrink)

In Sweden, and most Western countries, pervasive neoliberal policies have dramatically transformed the entire education sector in a matter of decades. As teacher educators, we have experienced how neoliberal currents have pushed Swedish teacher education towards a teacher training paradigm which may risk undermining the foundations for professional judgement. Moreover, the Bologna Process and the introduction of New Public Management have had significant consequences for what it means to be a teacher educator. In this study, we present our (...) everyday experiences of being teacher educators, immersed in a teacher education culture in Sweden which has evolved under the pressures of neoliberalism. To address these complex lived experiences we engaged in a phenomenological first-person account. Three main themes emerged from an analysis of lived experience descriptions: Alignment Slaves; Audit Puppets; Techno Phobes. These themes reflect different lived dimensions of being teacher educators confronted with neoliberal agendas. The paper concludes with a call for resistance to bring about change within teacher education. (shrink)

Through an analysis of policy texts, population statistics and a targeted sample from the popular press, this paper both furthers knowledge about changing meanings of working motherhood in the contemporary US, and proposes a refinement to existing conceptual work relating to how wage-work and care-work are combined. I focus analysis on recent US social policy which grants new rights and protections for women seeking to combine lactation and wage-work (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2011). I (...) critique this policy through Bernise Hausman’s work on the politics of motherhood, arguing that it represents a form of work-life integration that is particularly burdensome for working mothers. I further argue that maternal practice as well as well as expectations of working motherhood in the contemporary US are being reshaped around the demands of neoliberalism, producing what I term ‘neoliberal motherhood’. I assert that this policy represents a way of combining wage-work and care-work that is not captured within existing feminist theory, and suggest that a re-working of theory in this area is needed in order to address cases in which embodied care-work is enfolded within the time and space of wage-work. (shrink)

The care for older and disabled people has been described as a core area of the Nordic model. The Nordic countries’ welfare model has also been described as women friendly, as women are not forced to make harder choices than men between work and family. The Swedish eldercare system has, during the last several decades, undergone significant changes. Previously, eldercare could be described as universal, meaning a publicly provided, comprehensive, high-quality service available to all citizens according to need and not (...) based on the ability to pay. In later years transformation of eldercare has been influenced by neoliberal politics, which emphasize economic efficiency and cost reduction through competition. Eldercare has become a more diverse multidimensional system, and a private market for home-based eldercare has been created. The numbers of eldercare providers have increased considerably, and new ways of organizing eldercare have been established. In January 2009, the Act on System of Choice in the Public Sector was introduced. The Act was supposed to provide an opportunity for interested municipalities and county councils to expose their publicly provided services to market competition, and to enable users to choose their providers. This article aims to illustrate how neoliberal reasoning dominated the policy process leading to adoption of the Act on System of Choice in the Public Sector. With the use of a discursive policy analysis the authors specifically explore how neoliberal logic dominated, and also how choice and equality were understood and interpreted in the policy process. They conclude that the neoliberal turn in eldercare claiming to centre on the individual choice of persons in need of care runs the risk of creating unequal care that decentres the eldercare worker and creates precarious work situations. (shrink)

Liberal egalitarians argue that the state is justified in taxing members of a political community to achieve distributive justice and ensure political equality and regime stability. This involves an uneasy compromise between equality and efficiency, a compromise that many argue has recently been undermined by the growth of unchecked wealth and income inequality. This essay argues that there is also a trade-off between selecting fair processes for taxation and aiming for particular distributive outcomes. The way people accumulate wealth, and the (...) way states tax often matters more than distributive outcomes. Policymakers must allow for the fair assessment of tax liabilities, avoid excessive enforcement costs and prevent political actors from using tax systems to achieve their partial ends. Recognizing these considerations justifies a systematic scheme of taxation while constraining the mechanisms for collecting revenue. I justify this position using comparative analysis, which I contrast with the conceptual intuitionistic approach associated with egalitarianism. (shrink)

Classic feminist social theory highlights the exploitation of women’s labor in capitalist societies traditionally through an examination of how housework and childcare is perceived and organized, excluding an explicit analysis of older adult care work. In light of the surge in the demand for older adult caregiving over the last several decades, this paper uses older adult care work as a new lens to understand how gender, and its intersections with other critical identities such as race, ethnicity, and nativity, are (...) a basis for continued exploitation and marginalization in modern capitalist systems. Building on Marxist feminism and Sylvia Wynter’s work on social value and domination, I argue that women’s care labor, both paid and unpaid, is an instrument of capital accumulation that differentially exploits women based on key intersectional identities. An examination of the system of older adult care work in the United States allows us to see the multilayered and complex system of exploitation that creates and institutionalizes existing social hierarchies as capitalism seeks to expand. The paper ends with a discussion of two potential family care paths America could conceivably pursue in the coming years; one toward increased commodification of care work in line with neoliberal capitalism, and the other toward more comprehensive social welfare policies that alleviate women’s reproductive labor burden and begin to break down gendered and racialized hierarchies. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, foodbanks have become a widespread solution to addressing hunger within high-income countries. The primary reason for their establishment has been widely recognised as neoliberal policies, particularly those that led to massive cuts in social welfare assistance. Foodbanks and hunger have subsequently been framed within a neoliberal critique. However, we argue that critiques of foodbanks are not unique to neoliberalism but have deeper historical roots, meaning that the part neoliberal policies have played is not as (...) clear-cut. In order to understand the normalisation of foodbanks within society, and gain a more extensive understanding of hunger and appreciation as to how this issue could be addressed, it is therefore important to gain a historical understanding of food charity development. In this article, we achieve this by presenting a genealogy of food charity within Aotearoa New Zealand, which witnessed a fluctuation in the use of soup kitchens during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a rise of foodbanks in the 1980s and ‘90 s. Highlighting the historical parallels and major economic and cultural shifts that have allowed for the institutionalisation of foodbanks, we explore the patterns, parallels and differences exposed, and how they yield an alternative understanding of hunger. Using this analysis, we then discuss the wider implications of the historical foundations of food charity and hunger to better understand the role neoliberalism has played in the entrenchment of foodbanks, and advocate the importance of looking beyond a neoliberal critique in order to entertain alternative solutions to addressing food insecurity. (shrink)

This article is based on the question “How does the current governing party in Turkey, namely Justice and Development Party, reproduce its social power?” In order to answer this question, it is suggested that a combination of the different techniques of governmentality of the ruling party should be analyzed, with particular reference to the policies and institutions reconfiguring the role of the state and the notion of public deliberation in the midst of the rising discontents of neoliberalism in Turkey. As (...) an instance of such a technique of neoliberal governmentality in populist content, the formation of the communication centers by the AKP in Turkey will be investigated. For this purpose, firstly, the rise of the populism will be related to the increasing need for channels of political participation and a solution to public demands in the midst of rising authoritarian tendencies, in order to solve the political legitimacy crisis as well as creating new forms of represen... (shrink)

Following in the footsteps of a variety of previous research that elaborates on the current state of affairs in academia, this article sets out the argument that neoliberalism and its corresponding iterations of science and technology and research funding policies in this country have implications for the types of knowledge that can be generated within and communicated without contemporary institutions of higher education. Using agricultural biotechnology as the lens through which to focus analysis, the article outlines a number of empirical (...) examples that illustrate how the free flow of knowledge either critical of or not readily appropriated by capital is being impeded. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between everyday talk, the reproduction of political ideology and the interactional accomplishment of situated identities through analyzing how institutional members index neoliberal ideology in their everyday interactions. Analysis of audio- and video-recorded data from racially diverse business members of two Texas chambers of commerce illustrates how chamber members indirectly index neoliberal ideology through taking stances toward government policies. White, upper class participants display neoliberal stances through using complaints – constituted by questions, humor, (...) idioms and inference-rich terms – about the Affordable Care Act because it is a form of government interference that increases taxes and the federal deficit. Minority business members use discursive strategies such as double-voiced discourse and self-repairs to balance tensions between criticizing neoliberal ideology because it does not benefit minorities yet still orient to its taken-for-granted value in their business community. Overall, while participants’ interactions generally seem to operate within the structural constraints of neoliberal ideology, our analysis illustrates how participants take up neoliberal ideology in situated ways that, at times, provide avenues for negotiating the relevance of neoliberal ideology to everyday life. (shrink)

Like most goods‐producing sectors in the West, modern health‐care systems have been profoundly changed by globalization and the neoliberal policies that attend it. Since the 1970s, the role of the welfare state has been considerably reduced; funding and management of health systems have been subjected to wave upon wave of reorganization and assimilated to the private sector. At the same time, neoliberal policy has imposed the notion of patient empowerment, thus turning patients into consumers of health. The (...) literature on nursing has accordingly reported on the significant repercussions on all aspects of the profession, from delivery of care and treatment, through training for new nurses, to legislated policy reforms regarding the role and responsibilities of modern nurses. In light of these developments, this paper analyses and theorizes about the way the injection of neoliberal policy is linked to and affects the practice of nursing. Drawing on a number of Nietzschean arguments, we begin with an exploration of the complex effects of neoliberalism, bureaucratization, and technocratization on the health system and the practice of nursing. Our main theoretical point here is that neoliberal policy engenders and promotes a neoliberal tide, which results in the conversion of the values that drive modern nursing practice. We then examine this tide in the light of Nietzsche's concepts. Starting with an analysis based on the ontology of the will to power, we show that nurses are dominated by neoliberal values embedded in technocratic and bureaucratic ideologies. Finally, we argue that the application of neoliberal policy constitutes a form of domestication from which one might potentially be freed through the Nietzschean concept of transvaluation of values. This transvaluation, as its freeing from some of the neoliberal tide, may be accomplished in accordance with a hierarchy of specific life‐affirming values for nursing culture and practice. (shrink)

Recent findings in epigenetics have been attracting much attention from social scientists and bioethicists because they reveal the molecular mechanisms by which exposure to socioenvironmental factors, such as pollutants and social adversity, can influence the expression of genes throughout life. Most surprisingly, some epigenetic modifications may also be heritable via germ cells across generations. Epigenetics may be the missing molecular evidence of the importance of using preventive strategies at the policy level to reduce the incidence and prevalence of common (...) diseases. But while this “policy translation” of epigenetics introduces new arguments in favor of public health strategies and policy-making, a more “clinical translation” of epigenetics is also emerging. It focuses on the biochemical mechanisms and epigenetic variants at the origin of disease, leading to novel biomedical means of assessing epigenetic susceptibility and reversing detrimental epigenetic variants. In this paper, we argue that the impetus to create new biomedical interventions to manipulate and reverse epigenetic variants is likely to garner more attention than effective social and public health interventions and therefore also to garner a greater share of limited public resources. This is likely to happen because of the current biopolitical context in which scientific findings are translated. This contemporary neoliberal “regime of truth,” to use a term from Michel Foucault, greatly influences the ways in which knowledge is being interpreted and implemented. Building on sociologist Thomas Lemke's Foucauldian “analytics of biopolitics” and on literature from the field of science and technology studies, we present two sociological trends that may impede the policy translation of epigenetics: molecularization and biomedicalization. These trends, we argue, are likely to favor the clinical translation of epigenetics—in other words, the development of new clinical tools fostering what has been called “personalized” or “precision” medicine. In addition, we argue that an overemphasized clinical translation of epigenetics may further reinforce this biopolitical landscape through four processes closely related to neoliberal pathways of thinking: the internalization and isolation of socioenvironmental determinants of health and increased opportunities for commodification and technologicalization of health care interventions. (shrink)

This article explores sex selective abortion as a form of structural violence within the broader notion of women's ‘protection’ in contemporary India. While SSA tends to be framed more generally within ethical and choice-based frameworks around abortion access and reproductive ‘rights’, and specifically in India around preference for sons as a discriminatory, cultural, technological misogyny, this article argues that sex selective abortion in India needs to be understood as an outcome of broader systemic economic, political and social processes. The deepening (...) of neoliberal values through state policies has impacted significantly on social relations, shaping SSA as a manifestation of structural violence. State-driven policies in India reflect a neoliberal governmentality through state patriarchy that is implicit within the neoliberal developmental, governmental and capitalist paradigm of contemporary India. This article argues that SSA is structurally produced and therefore cannot be remedied through awareness-raising strategies such as beti bachao or financial inclusion as a means to ‘protect’ or ‘save the girl child’. Indeed, it is neoliberal economic forces that actively, though seemingly inadvertently, promote anti-women, sex selective abortion as a reproductive strategy, which is then disciplined through neoliberal governmentality. This highlights SSA as a form of gendered and structural, rather than discriminatory, violence. (shrink)

En los últimos 30 años asistimos a un drástico proceso de cambio que ha modificado profundamente los parámetros con los que se guiaba la relación entre el Estado y la Sociedad civil. Este proceso, ligado a la hegemonización mundial del neoliberalismo, ha generado intensas transformaciones en los diversos campos. Este artículo se propone indagar en esas transformaciones. Para ello, examina las características principales que definen a este paradigma, dando cuenta de la apropiación que han hecho sus principales teóricos del concepto (...) de globalización. En segundo término, analiza los efectos que sus políticas han provocado en la política, la economía, la cultura y la sociedad. Se sostiene que el éxito del “sistema global neoliberal” reside en que ha logrado despolitizar en gran medida a la sociedad y a su propio discurso. En este sentido, se coloca el eje en sus efectos de despolitización, en particular durante la década del noventa, fase critica del sistema. En el tramo final, se pregunta acerca de las alternativas surgidas en las nuevas democracias latinoamericanas al modelo de globalización neoliberal. (shrink)

The neoliberal globalization project of expanding and maintaining capitalism globally requires the shaping of neoliberal nation-states that will entrench its ideology, political structures, and practices. In that sense, the neoliberal nation-state provides an appropriate conceptual site for investigating the local-global nexus in the dynamics of global capitalism. Using the Philippines as an example, this paper investigates the various factors or dimensions in the making of the Philippines as a neoliberal nation-state from the colonial era to the (...) supranational structures that exert external control on the Philippine political economy: the global power of transnational corporations, the IMF, American and Chinese imperialism, including the American military aid that supports militarization and counter-insurgency against movements that challenge the neoliberal agenda of the past and current regimes. In addition, this paper offers implications for policy changes and strategies for global resistance that anti-globalization movements can consider. (shrink)

This article unfolds in three stages. First, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing Europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. Second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. Finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy (...) of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in Canada. The result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales. (shrink)

The political ideology of neoliberalism is widely recognized as having influenced the organization of national and global economies and public policies since the 1970s. In this article, we examine the relationship between the neoliberal variant of globalization and science. To do so, we develop a framework for sociology of science that emphasizes closer ties among political sociology, the sociology of social movements, and economic and organizational sociology and that draws attention to patterns of increasing and uneven industrial influence amid (...) several countervailing processes. Specifically, we explore three fundamental changes since the 1970s: the advent of the knowledge economy and the increasing interchange between academic and industrial research and development signified by academic capitalism and asymmetric convergence; the increasing prominence of science-based regulation of technology in global trade liberalization, marked by the heightened role of international organizations and the convergence of scientism and neoliberalism; and the epistemic modernization of the relationship between scientists and publics, represented by the proliferation of new institutions of deliberation, participation, activism, enterprise, and social movement mobilization. (shrink)

The production of genetic knowledge -- Scientific and economic strength of genetic reductionism -- Policy implications : discourses of genetic enlightenment as new disciplinary devices -- Genetic conceptualizations of normality and the idea of genetic justice -- Beyond genetic universality and authenticity, the lure of the genetic underclass -- Previews of the future as background -- Economic and actuarial perspective on genetics and insurance -- Practical and normative arguments against genetic exceptionalist legislation -- The changing social role of private (...) insurance : risk as a new representational regime. (shrink)

When genetically modified (GM) imported corn was found growing in Oaxaca and the Tehuacán Valley of Puebla, Mexico (2000–2002), it intensified the debate between activists, academics, and government officials about the effects of trade liberalization on Mexican corn farmers and maize biodiversity. In order to understand the challenges faced by corn farmers and in situ diversity, it is important to contextualize GM corn within the recent neoliberal corn regime and its regional manifestations. This essay offers a case study of (...) how indigenous corn farmers from the southern Tehuacán Valley have adapted to such neoliberal reforms and economic crisis by combining local corn production with US-bound labor migration. (shrink)

To grasp what might exist beyond neoliberalism, we need to rethink the history of development before neoliberalism. This article makes two arguments. First, for poorer countries, processes of commodification which are highlighted as evidence of neoliberalism often predate the neoliberal era. Third World development policies tended to make social and economic life more precarious as a corollary to capital accumulation before neoliberalism as an ideology took hold. Second, the intense theoretical and discursive focus on neoliberalism has obscured a tangible (...) shift towards de-commodification in much of the global South. The most salient examples today are state-led social assistance programs that have been implemented across the former Third World. These emerged not out of technocratic fixes from above but often out of political and social struggles from below. The rise and spread of these programs are not only in stark contrast to popular conceptions of a neoliberal reinforcement, but are also specifically targeted at social strata whose precarity commonly originated in developmental policies before the neoliberal era. Utilizing a database of 183 active flagship social assistance programs in 84 developing countries, we present macro-level quantitative evidence of the rise and spread of social protection policies over the past two decades in the global South. We then detail these programs for four middle-income countries—China, Brazil, India, and South Africa. To those who lament that the 2008 crisis has produced no Polanyian double movement, we argue that these state-driven social assistance policies are such a mechanism. (shrink)

A spate of social scientific literature gives the impression that societies in the twenty-first century are overrun with ‘neoliberal subjects’. But what does it actually mean to be a neoliberal subject? And in what ways does this concept relate to ‘neoliberalism’, more generally? In this article, I distinguish between four common ways of thinking about ‘neoliberalism’: as a set of economic policies, as a hegemonic ideological project, as a political rationality and form of governmentality and as a specific (...) type of embodied subjectivity. I argue that while neoliberalisms, and potentially hold clear conceptual connections to one another – notwithstanding the quite real tensions between them – their relationship to neoliberalism is often tenuous at best. That is, the evidence routinely offered to demonstrate the existence of neoliberalism bears almost no necessary relationship to neoliberalisms, or. I conclude that, for both academic and political reasons, scholars should be more careful when invoking the monolithic notion of a ‘neoliberal subject’. (shrink)

En este artículo sostenemos que el discurso del emprendimiento opera como un dispositivo de individualización de la relación salarial que oculta el fuerte contraste entre el plano ideal –autonomía, independencia subjetiva, éxito– y los obstáculos materiales reales –profundización del endeudamiento, alta proporción de fracaso, precarización–. Analizamos empíricamente dos casos: 1) el Foro de Activación para el Empleo de la Comunidad de Madrid que promueve lo que llamamos el narcisismo competitivo neoliberal; y 2) los contrastes entre el plano ideal y (...) material en los discursos de personas en paro entrevistadas durante 2012 y 2013. Concluimos que las políticas de empleo que promocionan el emprendimiento no resuelven el problema del desempleo sino que, fundamentalmente, sirven para gobernar políticamente la precariedad masiva. Proponemos utilizar las categorías de emprendeudores y de emprendeudamiento para una mejor comprensión sociológica del discurso del emprendimiento.This article argues that the entrepreneurship discourse operates as an individualization apparatus of the wage relation which hides the strong contrast between the ideal level -autonomy, subjective independence, success- and the real material obstacles –deepening of debt, high failure rate, precarization-. Two cases are empirically analyzed: 1) The Activation for Employment Forum organized by Madrid regional government, which promotes what we call competitive neoliberal narcissism; and 2) the contrasts between the ideal level and the material level in the discourses of unemployed people who were interviewed in 2012 and 2013. It is concluded that employment policies that promote entrepreneurship do not solve the problem of unemployment but mainly serve to govern politically the massive precariousness. It is proposed to use the categories of emprendeudores and emprendeudamiento [entrepreneurs + debt category] for a better sociological understanding of the entrepreneurship discourse. (shrink)

While many connections can be drawn with some confidence between neoliberalism and penal policy and practice, it is difficult to support Loïc Wacquant’s attempt to render punitive penality integral to neoliberalism, and to regard both as being strategically exported from the US. Neoliberalism is a fluid and variable political formation, both over time and internationally, and is impossible to reduce to a few primary characteristics such as a specific penal policy. Correspondingly, neoliberal doctrines and regimes appear to (...) be consistent with many forms of penal policy other than punitive imprisonment. This is partly because of neoliberalism’s own variability, but also because of the impact of local conditions and the multiple ways through which penal policy may be linked with particular political formations. Not only theoretically but also politically, Wacquant’s thesis remains of questionable strategic utility although evidently valuable in consciousness raising. (shrink)

This article critically examines what might be titled the feminisation of success that is ascribed to optimistic characterisations of new constructions of femininity for young women in the UK, particularly in relation to classed positions. In order to do this it is necessary to understand the complex relationship between feminism, post-feminism, neoliberalism and femininities, especially since the millennium. Young women have been positioned as the beneficiaries of successful social and political change which, together with ideas of individualism and reflexive constructions (...) of identity, almost mandate young women to embody success. The article seeks to examine and assess the discursive constructions of ‘successful femininities’ in relation to their normative limitations and asks in particular whether the putative existence of ‘new femininities’ is attainable for all young women. With the impact of over a decade of neoliberal policies and austerity measures being felt by many, it is argued that the discourses of ‘successful femininities’ work to obscure the recalibrated inequalities that have been forged by neoliberal conditions. (shrink)

Scholarship on gender mainstreaming in the European Union consistently highlights the disappointing implementation of gender mainstreaming. This article contributes to that discussion through the analysis of the first policy frame on gender equality in the work programmes of the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Development, Horizon 2020, from 2014 until 2016. This article analyses how GM as a transformative strategy is contextualised by advisory group experts, and what is being achieved within Horizon 2020 work programmes. In opposition to (...) the Commission’s rhetorical commitment to GM, this article demonstrates that Horizon 2020 work programmes exemplify a failure of implementing GM, further depoliticising gender equality in the Commission’s neoliberal context. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to critically examine a school reform effort that has taken hold in New York City over the past seven years. A largely privately funded venture, the New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI), opened hundreds of new small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City starting in 2002. The theory behind opening small schools on a such a large scale has come from market principles of competition and consumer choice. By flooding the market (...) with hundreds of schools, competition for students would, in turn, drive up the quality of the schools. Although support appears to be ubiquitous for the market-based reforms in New York City, this article argues that we need to look critically at reforms like NCSI, especially with the recent failure of market-driven policies to deliver on their promises. Using neoliberalism as a conceptual framework, this article asks two main questions: (a) How do neoliberal school reform policies play out in individual schools? and (b) To what extent do neoliberal policies contribute or detract from educational equity? (shrink)

The main trust of this article unfolds around the impasse of democratic politics today, marked by the fading belief in the presumably superior architecture of liberal democratic institutions to nurture emancipation on the one hand, and the seemingly inexorable rise of a variety of populist political movements on the other. The first part of the article focuses on the lure of autocratic populism. The second part considers how transforming neoliberal governance arrangements pioneered post-truth autocratic politics/policies in articulation with the (...) imposition of market rule and, in doing so, cleared the way for contemporary illiberal populisms. The third part considers the institutional configuration through which the democratic has been fundamentally transformed over the past few decades in the direction of a post-democratic constellation. The article concludes by arguing for the need to re-script emancipation as a process of political subjectivation unfolding trough a political act. (shrink)

Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about di ferences between “national systems,” the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. (...) The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels. (shrink)

Abstract:For decades, education has been inundated with neoliberal policies described as enabling its structures to adjust to a global knowledge economy. Located at the intersection of such "reform" language and classical liberal economic theory is a troubling paradox–the idea that knowledge should be centrally concentrated in order to "liberalize" education along free market lines. This essay considers implications of centralized knowledge for music education in light of this contradiction and the rhetoric that obscures it. To raise awareness of this (...) paradox, I briefly summarize some of the literature on neoliberalism and state intervention before examining the ideas of an individual skeptical of central knowledge planning despite his pivotal role in the birth of modern educational "reform": Peter Drucker. The ideological collapsing of Drucker's nuanced views by neoliberal interests stands in stark contrast with what could be a less instrumental argument for the development of problem-solving skills for lifelong benefit. Finally, I ask whether we reinforce this contradiction if we champion music's curricular legitimacy and relevance, yet fail to teach students to think musically for themselves as evidenced by prescriptive instructional methods or participation in standardizing musical knowledge through failure to resist the totalizing ideology of the audit culture. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto discute a hipótese de que a crise das democracias contemporâneas é indissociável de dois fenômenos políticos distintos, porém correlatos, analisados a partir das teorizações de Michel Foucault sobre a biopolítica e o neoliberalismo: a) a crescente disseminação de atos e discursos de violência, de ódio e de preconceito contra populações vulneráveis, obedecendo à lógica biopolítica da proteção da vida de alguns ao custo da exposição à morte de vastas parcelas da população; b) a disseminação de políticas neoliberais (...) para a gestão da vida de populações vulneráveis. Considera-se que a articulação entre biopolítica e neoliberalismo produz o paradoxo de uma democracia sem demos, no sentido da desvalorização das lutas políticas coletivas por direitos iguais e por melhores condições de vida. Na conclusão, sugere-se que a reinvenção da democracia exige repensar o poder do demos, isto é, repolitizar o poder político de categorias sociais sujeitas a processos históricos de vulneração. Palavras-chave: Crise da democracia. Biopolítica. Neoliberalismo. Foucault. Butler. Democracy in crisis: biopolitics and neoliberal government of populations: This text discusses the hypothesis that the crisis of contemporary democracy relates to two distinct political phenomena, however correlated, analyzed thru Michel Foucault’s concepts about biopolitics and neoliberalism: a) the ascending dissemination of acts and discourses of hate, violence and prejudgment against vulnerable populations, according to the biopolitical logics of protecting the life of some at the expense of exposing the life of others to death; b) the dissemination of neoliberal policies to administrate the life of vulnerable populations. I argue that both phenomena seem to imply the paradox of a democracy without the demos, in the sense of the devaluation of collective political struggles for equal rights and for better life conditions. At the conclusion, it is suggested that the reinvention of democracy requires rethinking the power of the demos in the sense of re-politicizing the political power of social categories subjected to historical process that render them vulnerable. Keywords: Crisis of democracy. Biopolitics. Neoliberalism. Foucault. Butler. Démocratie en crise : biopolitique et gouvernement néolibéral de populations Résumé : On discute l’hypothèse que la crise de la démocratie contemporaine est associée à deux phénomènes politiques distinctes, mais corrélâtes, analysés par les concepts de Foucault sur la biopolitique et le néolibéralisme : a) la vague accrue d’actes et de mots de violence, haine et pré-jugements contre des populations vulnérables, selon la logique biopolitique de la protection de la vie de quelques-uns au prix du rejet à la morte de la vie des autres ; b) la dissémination des politiques néolibéraux vouées à la gestion de la vie des populations vulnérabilisées. L’articulation entre biopolitique et néolibéralisme semble impliquer le paradoxe d’une démocratie sans demos, au sens de la dévaluation des luttes politiques collectives pour des droits égaux et pour des meilleures conditions de vie. Finalement, on considère la réinvention de la démocratie par la ré-politisation du pouvoir du demos en tant que pouvoir des catégories sociales soumises à la vulnération. Mots-clés: Crise de la démocratie. Biopolitique. Néolibéralisme. Foucault. Butler. (shrink)