Foucault, Weber,Neoliberalism and the Politics of Governmentality.Terry Flew -2015 -Theory, Culture and Society 32 (7-8):317-326.detailsThis paper argues that Michel Foucault’s lectures that form The Birth of Biopolitics owe a considerable debt to the thought of Max Weber, particularly in their analysis of how different socio-legal regimes shape distinctive national forms of capitalist economies, and the role that is played by social and economic institutions in the shaping of individual identities. This is in contrast to a common interpretation of Foucault’s account ofneoliberalism, which synthesizes his work into neo-Marxist notions of hegemony and capitalist (...) domination. It also identifies Foucault’s approach toneoliberalism as an exploratory one, which considers insights into how a particular relationship between ideas and institutional practices may help in imagining socialist forms of government practice. (shrink)
Foucault,Neoliberalism, and Equality.Tuomo Tiisala -2021 -Critical Inquiry 48 (1):23-44.detailsThis article presents a new account of the relationship between Michel Foucault’s work andneoliberalism, aiming to show that the relationship is significantly more complicated than either Foucault’s critics or defenders have appreciated in the recent controversy. On the one hand, I argue that Foucault’s salutary response to some of Gary Becker’s ideas in the lecture course from 1979 should be read together with the argument of Discipline and Punish. By means of this contextualization I show that Foucault’s sympathetic (...) response to Becker is limited to the domain of penal practices, specifically concerning the question of how to resist their rationality of normalization, and thus it involves no broader commitment to neoliberal economic theory or its political implications. On the other hand, however, I argue that there is a strategic allegiance between Foucault’s work and the ascendance of the neoliberal rationality of governing, although it has nothing to do with his sympathetic engagement with Becker’s work. Instead, I explain how Foucault’s focus on the political stakes of subjectivity has helped to congeal, in the posthumous neoliberal context, a conception of politics that leaves out the topic of economic equality. To explain how Foucault’s work has had this unintended yet lasting effect, I introduce the concept of topical exclusion. It designates a social mechanism of producing ignorance, which operates by directing attention instead of creating false consciousness. The strategic relationship between Foucault’s work andneoliberalism today illustrates that this type of explanation is essential in the analysis of power relations. Thus, my account motivates the adoption of topical exclusion as a conceptual supplement that equips the Foucaultian framework to study cases in which relations of power harness, produce, and sustain ignorance, not knowledge. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and neoliberals: What are we talking about?Martin Lipscomb -2020 -Nursing Inquiry 27 (1):e12318.detailsThe termsneoliberalism and neoliberal play a variety of roles ranging from major to trivial in the papers they appear in. Both phrases carry pejorative connotations in nurse writing. Yet irrespective of the role assumed in argument, readers are rarely provided with enough information to determine what the descriptors mean in a substantive or concrete sense. It is proposed that scholars who use these terms in their work should consider expressing themselves more carefully than often occurs at present. Virtue (...) signalling in academic writing should, absent critical argument, be discouraged. (shrink)
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Distinguishing Financialization fromNeoliberalism.Aeron Davis &Catherine Walsh -2017 -Theory, Culture and Society 34 (5-6):27-51.detailsNeoliberalism and financialization are not synonymous developments. Financialized nations are directed by particularly financialized epistemologies, cultures, and practices, not only neoliberal ones. In examining the financialization of the UK economy since the mid-1970s, this study discovers a socio-economic shift beyond the broad transition from Keynesianism towards free-market fundamentalism. Economic developments were guided by the very particular economic paradigms, discursive practices, and financial devices of the City of London, as financial elites became influential in the Thatcher governments. Five epistemological elements (...) specific to finance are discussed: the creation of money in financial markets, the transactional focus of finance, the centrality of financial markets to economic management, the orthodoxy of shareholder value, and the intensely micro-economic approach to financial calculation. Identifying these distinctions creates new possibilities for understanding financialization, elites, and the neoliberal condition that brought about both the financial crash of 2007–8 and the political and economic crises that have followed. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism and STS in Japan: Critical Perspectives.Francis Remedios -2013 -Social Epistemology 27 (2):123 - 124.detailsNeoliberalism advocates for the construction of free markets, which are to be used for solutions to economic and social problems rather than state solutions to those problems. Though Neoliberal reforms in Japan have affected its science and technology, STS literature has not focused on responses toneoliberalism through the lens of a country. Japan has a discrete STS history and Japan makes a good case study to the influence ofneoliberalism on STS. In August 2010, at Tokyo’s (...) Social Studies of Science (4S) meetings, there were several sessions onneoliberalism and STS. At these sessions, Kunio Goto, Yasumoto Fujita, Hidetoshi Kihara, Hideto Nakajima, Steve Fuller, David Hess, Francis Remedios presented different responses toneoliberalism and STS. This special issue explores two themes. The first theme is Goto's and Fujita's call for a revitalization of Marxist STS as an alternative to the influence ofneoliberalism on STS in Japan. The second theme is Kihara's and Nakajima's call for a revitalization of a critical function of STS in Japan. Hess examines STS as a field and its response toneoliberalism in Europe and Anglophone countries. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and the History of STS Theory: Toward a Reflexive Sociology.David J. Hess -2013 -Social Epistemology 27 (2):177 - 193.detailsIn the sociology of science and sociology of scientific knowledge, the decline of functionalism during the 1970s opened the field to a wide range of theoretical possibilities. However, a Marxist-influenced alternative to functionalism, interests analysis, quickly disappeared, and feminist-multicultural frameworks failed to achieved a dominant position in the field. Instead, functionalism was replaced by a variety of agency-based frameworks that focused on constructive or performative processes. The shift in the sociology of science from Mertonian functionalism to the poststrong program, agency-based (...) sociology of scientific knowledge has parallels with the broader shift in political ideologies from social liberalism toneoliberalism. The argument is made in a way that is cognizant of the criticisms raised against interests analysis and avoids the ?short circuit? of class imputation. Instead, the approach defends the potential for a more integrated approach to the structure-agency-meaning triangle in STS via the use of field sociology. (shrink)
Prisons,neoliberalism and neoliberal states.Pat O’Malley -2014 -Thesis Eleven 122 (1):89-96.detailsWhile many connections can be drawn with some confidence betweenneoliberalism and penal policy and practice, it is difficult to support Loïc Wacquant’s attempt to render punitive penality integral toneoliberalism, 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 ofneoliberalism’s own variability, but also because of the impact of local conditions and the multiple ways through which penal policy may (or may not) 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)
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KnowingNeoliberalism.Jana Bacevic -2019 -Social Epistemology 33 (4):380-392.detailsCritical accounts over the past years have focused onneoliberalism as a subject of knowledge; there has been a recently growing interest inneoliberalism as an object of knowledge. This article considers the theoretical, epistemological and political implications of the relationship betweenneoliberalism as an epistemic subject andneoliberalism as an epistemic object. It argues that the ‘gnossification’ ofneoliberalism – framing it an epistemic project, and deriving implications for political engagement from this – avoids (...) engaging with numerous ambiguous elements of the production of knowledge. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of the ‘scholastic fallacy’ and Boltanski and Chiapello’s work in sociology of critique, the article lays out a framework for the study of the relationship between epistemic, moral, and political elements of critique ofneoliberalism, including the conditions of its own production in contemporary academic contexts. (shrink)
Overcomingneoliberalism.Frank C. Richardson,Robert C. Bishop &Jacqueline Garcia-Joslin -2018 -Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 38 (1):15-28.detailsPsychology may have to get seriously political as human aims in living and selfhood itself are increasingly influenced in a deleterious manner by the vicissitudes of living in a neoliberal political economy and one-sided “enterprise culture” (Martin & McLellan, 2013; Sugarman, 2015). This article reviews recent writings of several social critics, including Jackson Lears (2015), Sebastion Junger (2015), Philip Blond (2010), and Christopher Lasch (1995), who richly flesh out the picture of this detrimental state of affairs. We note that many (...) of these critics have little to say about credible alternatives toneoliberalism. The article then seeks to identify resources within theoretical and philosophical psychology, including hermeneutic philosophy and interpretive social science, for helping to overcomeneoliberalism. They might help clarify and nurture a renewed democratic populism or engaged democratic politics and contribute to gaining what Lasch termed a much-needed “wisdom of limits” in today’s society. (shrink)
Futilitarianism:neoliberalism and the production of uselessness.Neil Vallelly -2021 - London: Goldsmiths Press.detailsIf maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of howneoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximisation and the common (...) good. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms--including "the futilitarian condition," "homo futilitus," and "semio-futility"--to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximisation traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. This urgent and provocative book chimes with the mood of the time by at once mapping the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, developing an original framework for understandingneoliberalism, and recounting the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. At a time of epoch-defining disasters, from climate emergencies to deadly pandemics, countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future" -- Publisher description. (shrink)
Neoliberalism in Action.Maurizio Lazzarato -2009 -Theory, Culture and Society 26 (6):109-133.detailsThis paper draws from Foucault’s analysis of liberalism andneoliberalism to reconstruct the mechanisms and the means wherebyneoliberalism has transformed society into an ‘enterprise society’ based on the market, competition, inequality, and the privilege of the individual. It highlights the role of financialization, neglected by Foucault, as a key apparatus in achieving this transformation. It elaborates the strategies of individualization, insecuritization and depoliticization used as part of neoliberal social policy to undermine the principles and practices of mutualization (...) and redistribution that the Welfare State and Fordism had promoted. It shows that the aim of neoliberal politics is the restoration of the power of capital to determine the distribution of wealth and to establish the enterprise as dominant form; this requires that it target society as a whole for a fundamental reconstruction, putting in place new mechanisms to control individual conduct. The analysis refers to the case of workers in the culture industry to illustrate the operation of these mechanisms in practice. It also outlines the main elements of the analytical apparatus that makes visible the new role of the state as an ensemble of apparatuses constituting the conditions for neoliberal market capitalism and the new type of individual appropriate for it. The paper thus adds a new dimension to Foucault’s analysis. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and Disability: The Possibilities and Limitations of a Foucauldian Critique.Scott Yates -2015 -Foucault Studies 19:84-107.detailsIn this article, I reflect back on the period since the publication of the first edition of Foucault and the Government of Disability in order to argue that the intervening years have seen the increasing advance of neoliberal politics that impact on the lives of disabled people. Beginning from an overview of Foucault’s 1978-9 lectures onneoliberalism, I seek to demonstrate that a range of policy developments that affect disabled people can be read against the background of Foucault’s analyses (...) of neoliberal rationalities and practices of government. The impact of these developments has been economically harsh for many; hence, the article considers the potential for effective critique of these issues starting from a Foucauldian analytics. I argue that Foucault’s works, whilst useful in unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about subjectivity and autonomy given by neoliberal governmental rationalities, do not, in and of themselves, suggest a form of critique that is capable of mounting an effective challenge to the neoliberal consensus. My argument ends with a challenge to Foucault-inspired social scientists to ally the valuable insights available from Foucauldian analyses to a critical perspective that can, in addition, diagnose and respond to problems of economic marginalisation, the concentration of wealth, and the marketisation of the social. (shrink)
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Foucault,Neoliberalism, and Beyond.Stephen W. Sawyer &Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins (eds.) -2018 - Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield International.detailsOffers a comprehensive account of Foucault’s relationship toneoliberalism that is driven not by polemics but a careful reading of Foucault’s texts and political positions.
Post-Neoliberalism? An Introduction.William Davies &Nicholas Gane -2021 -Theory, Culture and Society 38 (6):3-28.detailsThis article provides an introduction to the special issue on post-neoliberalism. It does so by considering challenges to the neoliberal order that have come, post-financial crisis, from the political right. It looks closely at the relation ofneoliberalism to conservatism, on one hand, and libertarianism, on the other, in order to address the threat posed to the neoliberal order by paleoconservatism, neoreactionary politics, ordonationalism, libertarian paternalism, and different forms of sovereignty and elite power. The final section of this (...) introduction reflects on the challenge to the neoliberal orthodoxy posed by the current COVID-19 crisis. For while events of 2020–21 have facilitated new forms of privatization of many public services and goods, they also signal, potentially, a break from the neoliberal orthodoxies of the previous four decades, and, in particular, from their overriding concern for the market. (shrink)
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(1 other version)Neoliberalism and education.Lawrence Blum -2023 - In Randall R. Curren,Handbook of philosophy of education. New York, NY: Routledge. pp. 257-269.detailsNeoliberalism is an approach to social policy, now globally influential, that applies market approaches to all aspects of social life, including education. Charter schools, privately operated but publicly funded, are its most prominent manifestation in the U.S. The neoliberal principles of competition, consumerism, and choice cannot serve as foundations of a sound and equitable public education system.Neoliberalism embraces socio-economic inequality overall and in doing so constricts any justice mission its adherents espouse in virtue of serving a relatively (...) disadvantaged student population, as charter schools often (by no means always) do. It constricts educational justice by (1) embracing a “human capital” approach as the primary good of education, (2) creating educational inequality through (unofficially) selecting a relatively advantaged segment of the disadvantaged demographic it serves, (3) denying the effect of poverty on educational performance, and (4) devaluing its students’ familial ethnic cultures. (shrink)
DisorientingNeoliberalism: Global Justice and the Outer Limit of Freedom.Benjamin L. McKean -2020 - Oup Usa.detailsMany people believe the global economy is unjust, but they don't know what to do about it. What responsibilities do American consumers have to workers in China making their iPhones? Should they still buy clothes made in Bangladesh's sweatshops? Offering an overview of howneoliberalism orients us to the world, Benjamin L. McKean shows the practical shortcomings of neoliberal approaches to the world and develops an alternative way of thinking and acting guided by a compelling new account of freedom. (...) DisorientingNeoliberalism offers a framework for understanding the politics of the global economy and shows how we can act in solidarity to promote justice. (shrink)
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Health, illness andneoliberalism: an example of critical realism as a research resource.Priscilla Alderson -2021 -Journal of Critical Realism 20 (5):542-556.detailsNeoliberalism, health and illness are all vast topics that range from global to local, personal to political. Critical realism offers valuable concepts, which help to extend and deepen analysis of...
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Neoliberalism’s conditioning effects on the university and the example of proctoring during COVID-19 and since.Sioux McKenna -2022 -Journal of Critical Realism 21 (5):502-515.detailsNeoliberalism has shaped the academy in ways that constrain its potential as a public good.Neoliberalism is based on the assumption that, by submitting to the so-called neutral forces of the market, wealth can be created alongside the achievement of equality and efficiency. Although this assumption is demonstrably false,neoliberalism remains politically powerful. As an example, this article discusses howneoliberalism has enabled the rapid uptake of proctoring software during the covid pandemic and since. ‘Proctoring' is (...) the online monitoring of students’ behaviour as they sit for exams. Many within the academy consider proctoring software to be dehumanizing – essentially legalized spyware. They argue that the software invades privacy and is inherently racist and ableist, amongst other things. It is hoped that by understanding how structural forces such asneoliberalism affect both our agency and university activities, frequently against the common good, strategies can be developed to change these structures. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism, Moral Precarity, and the Crisis of Care.Sarah Miller -2021 - In Maurice Hamington & Michael A. Flower,Care Ethics in the Age of Precarity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 48-67.detailsAfter offering an opening consideration of the hazards ofneoliberalism, I address the general shape of the crisis of care that has evolved under its auspices. Two aspects of this crisis require greater attention: the moral precarity of caregivers and the relational harms of neoliberal capitalism. Thus, I first consider the moral precarity that caregivers experience by drawing on a concept that originates in scholarly work on the experiences of healthcare workers and combat veterans, namely, moral injury. Through this (...) concept, we can see how caregivers in late-stage capitalism face a seemingly unavoidable violation of their own significant moral beliefs. Second, I examine how the crisis of care results not only in individual harms of moral injury but also in harms to relationships themselves, as I continue to track the impact of moral injury on our intrapersonal and interpersonal lives. Ultimately, I argue that an important facet of the crisis of care is how it operates as a crisis of relationality in which our intrapersonal and interpersonal connections are placed under practical and moral strain. In taking a broader view, we can see how the fraying of particular intrapersonal and interpersonal connections can accumulate, resulting in the unraveling of wider webs of interdependency, just when we need them most. Throughout the paper, I zero in on the moral implications of the crisis of care driven byneoliberalism, featuring the damages that caregivers and their relationships sustain when situated in morally precarious ways. In doing so, I drive home the point that the crisis of care underneoliberalism is as much a moral and relational crisis as it is a political and economic one. (shrink)
Foucault andNeoliberalism.Daniel Zamora (ed.) -2015 - Malden, MA: Polity.detailsMichel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death,neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work onneoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even (...) dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towardsneoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced byneoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures. (shrink)
Neoliberalism versus distributional autonomy: the skipped step in rawls’s the law of peoples.William A. Edmundson &Matthew R. Schrepfer -2019 -Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (2):169-181.detailsABSTRACT: Debates about global distributive justice focus on the gulf between the wealthy North and the impoverished South, rather than on issues arising between liberal democracies. A review of John Rawls’s approach to international justice discloses a step Rawls skipped in his extension of his original-position procedure. The skipped step is where a need for the distributional autonomy of sovereign liberal states reveals itself.Neoliberalism denies the possibility and the desirability of distributional autonomy. A complete Rawlsian account of global (...) justice shows the necessity and possibility of a charter between liberal states, assuring each a proper minimum degree of distributional autonomy. (shrink)
Liberalism,neoliberalism, social democracy: thin communitarian perspectives on political philosophy and education.Mark Olssen -2010 - New York: Routledge.detailsIntroduction: Beyondneoliberalism -- Friedrich A. Hayek : markets, planning, and the rule of law -- The politics of utopia and the liberal theory of totalitarianism : Karl Popper and Michael Foucault -- Pluralism and positive freedom : toward a critique of Isaiah Berlin -- From the Crick report to the Parekh report : multiculturalism, cultural difference and democracy -- Foucault, liberal education and the issue of autonomy -- Saving Martha Nussbaum from herself : help from friends she didn't (...) know she had -- Social democracy in the 21st century : Hobson, Keynes and complexity. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and the government of nursing through competency‐based education.Thomas Foth &Dave Holmes -2017 -Nursing Inquiry 24 (2):e12154.detailsCompetency has become a key concept in education in general over the last four decades. This article examines the development of the competency‐based movement with a particular focus on the significance it has had for nursing education. Our hypothesis is that the competency movement can only adequately be understood if it is analyzed in relation to the broad societal transformation of the last decades—often summarized under the catchwordneoliberalism—and with it the emergence of managerial models for Human Resource Management (...) (HRM) for the reorganization of social services. Classical professions, which were characterized under welfarism by an esoteric knowledge based on ethical norms, have now become marketable commodities that can be evaluated in the same way as other commodities. We want to underline that while this development is still under way, it is the concept of competency that was the decisive political instrument enabling this profound change. With the widespread implementation of competency‐based education that now governs nursing knowledge, the development of a critical, oppositional perspective becomes more challenging, if not entirely impossible. We will be focusing primarily on nursing education in Canada, although we maintain that it has relevance for nursing internationally. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism: A Bibliographic Review.William Davies -2014 -Theory, Culture and Society 31 (7-8):309-317.detailsIn recent years, there has been a surge in critical and historical work, dedicated to uncovering the roots of neoliberal thinking. In the process, the concept of ‘neoliberalism’ has become used in a far more nuanced way, contrary to the frequent allegation that it is merely a pejorative slogan used against capitalism generally. This bibliographic review identifies the texts that have mapped out this more sophisticated account ofneoliberalism, and which distinguish between its different varieties and trajectories. In (...) particular, the recognition thatneoliberalism is not simply about laissez-faire economics becomes a basis on which to interrogateneoliberalism more sociologically, learning especially from Foucault’s lectures on the topic. The review concludes by identifying those texts which point towards possible futures forneoliberalism. (shrink)
The Political Theory ofNeoliberalism.Thomas Biebricher -2018 - Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.detailsWhat isneoliberalism? -- The state -- Democracy -- Science -- Politics -- European crises, causes, and consequences -- Ideas, uncertainty, and the ordoliberalization of Europe.
A Brief History ofNeoliberalism.David Harvey -2005 - Oxford University Press.detailsWriting for a wide audience, Harvey here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. He constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for more socially just alternatives.
Vygotsky,Neoliberalism and Post-structuralism: A Response to Jacob Klitmøller and Two Further Reviews of my Book “Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and Human Development”.Michalis Kontopodis -2016 -Outlines. Critical Practice Studies 17 (1):129-134.detailsThe paperback edition of “Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and Human Development”, which was published in 2014, almost coincided with the publication of two book reviews; one kindly written by Fabienne Gfeller and one by Jacob Klitmøller. A third review of “Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and Human Development” has recently been published with Power and Education. As a first response to the discussion, which the book provoked, I try to briefly explore below a central question: Is linking post-structuralist thinking and Vygotskian scholarship meaningful?
AuthoritarianNeoliberalism and Asylum Seekers: the Silencing of Accounting and Accountability in Offshore Detention Centres.Sendirella George,Erin Twyford &Farzana Aman Tanima -2024 -Journal of Business Ethics 194 (4):861-885.detailsThis paper examines how accounting can both entrench and challenge an inhumane and costly neoliberal policy—namely, the Australian government’s offshore detention of asylum seekers. Drawing on Bruff, Rethinking Marxism 26:113–129 (2014) and Smith, Competition & Change 23:192–217 (2019), we acknowledge that theneoliberalism underpinning immigration policies and the practices related to asylum seekers takes an _authoritarian_ tone. Through the securitisation and militarisation of the border, the Australian state politicises and silences marginalised social groups such as asylum-seekers. Studies have exposed (...) accounting as a technology that upholdsneoliberalism by representing policy as objective and factual. Curiously, there has been a wilful intention by successive Australian governments to silence the accounting for offshore detention. We seek to demystify this _un_accounting and _un_accountability by exploring counter-accounts produced by meso-level organisations that support asylum seekers. We apply a close-reading method in analysing limited governmental accounts and various counter-accounts to demonstrate how counter-accounts give visibility to practices that an authoritarian neoliberal regime has obfuscated. We also reflect on the potential for counter-accounting to foster broader social change by holding the Australian government accountable to moral and ethical standards of care for human life. This paper considers the intersections between accounting and authoritarianneoliberalism and presents counter-accounts as mechanisms that can challenge these neoliberal norms. (shrink)
Neoliberalism, the Alt-Right and the Intellectual Dark Web.Alan Finlayson -2021 -Theory, Culture and Society 38 (6):167-190.detailsDrawing on research from digital media studies, political theory and rhetoric, this article explores online radical conservative and reactionary ‘ideological entrepreneurs’. It argues that online media are uniting an ‘ideological family’ around concepts of natural inequality and hostility to those who deny them. Placing this phenomenon in context, the article shows how online culture reinvigorates well-established discourses of opposition to bureaucrats, intellectuals and experts of all kinds, rejecting one version of the neoliberal state and of its personnel, a ‘new class’ (...) understood to dominate through discursive, cultural power and imagined through the figures of the ‘Social Justice Warrior’ and the ‘Cultural Marxist’. In competing for a share of the marketplace of ideas, these ideological entrepreneurs promise insights – the revelations of the ‘red pill’ – critiquing ‘actually-existing’neoliberalism yet insisting on the ‘rationality’ of governance through markets and promising adherents techniques for achieving success as liberated entrepreneurial selves. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism and the Future of Democracy.Travis Holloway -2018 -Philosophy Today 62 (2):627-650.detailsThis paper describesneoliberalism and summarizes new works on democracy in Continental philosophy. Unlike laissez-faire or liberal economic theory—a “leave us alone” strategy in which the state does not interfere with private enterprise—neoliberal governments use the resources of the state to assist the market directly and employ the market to direct or oversee the resources of the state. Alongside neoliberal government, and in its wake, is a society in which the guiding axioms for each human being are self-entrepreneurship and (...) competition. Over the last decade, however, a new body of philosophical work has been dissociating democracy from neoliberal government, critiquing a failed system of political representation, and considering to what extent democracy must take place beyond or outside of the current state. Of equal concern to these philosophers is how to take flight from a way of life that is characterized by self-entrepreneurship and competition. For some, the start of a political future beyondneoliberalism hinges upon a recent distinction between constituent and destituent forms of power. Whereas constituent power attempts to reform one’s government through demonstrations in public space, destituent power abandons the project of reforming one’s government momentarily or even completely in order to experience another form of life entirely. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism and the Defence of the Corporation.Nicholas Gane -2023 -Theory, Culture and Society 40 (3):63-80.detailsThis article addresses a little-known event in the history ofneoliberalism: a conference at Stanford University held in 1982 to reconsider Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means’ The Modern Corporation and Private Property 50 years after its initial publication. This event is important as it is where key members of the neoliberal thought collective sought to define and defend the powers and freedoms of the corporation. First, this article outlines the political commitments of Berle and Means by considering the core (...) arguments of The Modern Corporation and Private Property; second, it addresses key papers from the event published subsequently in the Journal of Law and Economics; and third, it analyses the neoliberal defence of the corporation that emerged from these papers, and reflects on the limitations of the work of Berle and Means for developing a response to their neoliberal critics. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism, the Financial Crisis and the End of the Liberal State.Mauricio Lazzarato -2015 -Theory, Culture and Society 32 (7-8):67-83.detailsThe article turns to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of state capitalism and their theorization of money and debt in their critique of capitalism to develop an analysis of the governmental management of the current crisis determined by ordo- andneoliberalism. The paper argues that analyses which fail to properly recognize the power of capital to determine both state apparatuses and economic policy thereby fail to grasp the real functioning of money, debt and the Euro in the crisis and end (...) up unwittingly supporting liberalism. This is true of positions such as heterodox theory that, though critical of conventional and neoliberal political economy, nevertheless continue to uphold the state as an independent or mediating mechanism in relation to the power of capital. The neglect of the role which money plays in the strategies of capital to control both the creation of value and the functioning of the state is to be found even in Foucault’s genealogy ofneoliberalism, a neglect which undermines his analysis of power. The paper highlights the implications of the standpoint of state capitalism for a more incisive analysis of the current crisis that reveals what is at stake for political struggles. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and Academic Repression: The Fall of Academic Freedom in the Era of Trump.Erik Juergensmeyer,Anthony J. Nocella Ii &Mark Seis (eds.) -2019 - BRILL.details_Neoliberalism and Academic Repression_ provides a theoretical examination of how the current higher education system is being shaped into a corporate-factory-industrial-complex. This timely collection challenges the neoliberal emphasis on valuation based on job readiness and outcome achievement.
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New femininities: postfeminism,neoliberalism, and subjectivity.Rosalind Gill &Christina Scharff (eds.) -2011 - New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.detailsThis volume brings together twenty original essays on the changes and continuities in gender relations and intersecting politics of sexuality, race, class and location. The book is located in debates about contemporary culture at a moment of rapid technological change, global interconnectedness and the growing cultural dominance ofneoliberalism and postfeminism. The collection traverses disciplines, spaces and approaches. It is marked by an extraordinarily wide focus, ranging from analyses of celebrity magazines and makeover shows to examinations of the experiences (...) of young female migrants, 'mail order brides' and young women who repudiate feminism. The contributions are united by their attempts to think through the ways in which experiences and representations of femininity are changing in the twenty-first century. Are we seeing new femininities? Areneoliberalism and postfeminism constructing new identities and subjectivities? What kinds of analytic tools and cultural politics are needed to critically engage with the current moment? This book will be of interest to everyone studying gender, media or cultural studies. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and the Right to be Lazy: Inactivity as Resistance in Lazzarato and Agamben.Tim Christiaens -2018 -Rethinking Marxism 2 (30):256-274.detailsNeoliberalism has installed an unending competitive struggle in the economy. Within this context activists have pushed for a reappraisal of laziness and inactivity as forms of resistance. This idea has been picked up by Maurizio Lazzarato and Giorgio Agamben in different ways. I start with explaining the former’s appraisal of laziness as a release of potentialities unrealizable under financial capitalism. Lazzarato’s appraisal of laziness however resembles neoliberal theories of innovation, because both share the conceptual persona of a subject whose (...) potentialities exceed the current status quo. Potentiality is thus not an unambiguous antagonist of capitalism, as Lazzarato suggests. In order to adequately opposeneoliberalism, Lazzarato should question the role of potentiality in capitalism. Agamben has undertaken such a project. In the second part of the essay I consequently argue that Agamben’s philosophy of inactivity as impotentiality is able to circumventneoliberalism and the society of the spectacle. (shrink)
The Psychic Life ofNeoliberalism: Mapping the Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity.Christina Scharff -2016 -Theory, Culture and Society 33 (6):107-122.detailsThis article adds to contemporary analyses ofneoliberalism by shedding light on its psychic life. Writers in the Foucauldian tradition have explored how subjectivities are reconstituted underneoliberalism, showing that the neoliberal self is an entrepreneurial subject. Yet, there has been little empirical research that explores entrepreneurial subjectivity and, more specifically, its psychic life. By drawing on over 60 in-depth interviews with individuals who may be entrepreneurial subjects par excellence, this article adds to our understanding of how (...) class='Hi'>neoliberalism is lived out. The article is divided into 10 sections, with each section exploring a distinct contour of entrepreneurial subjectivity. They show, for example, that competition is not only other-directed underneoliberalism, but also directed at the self, and that exclusionary processes lie at the heart of the constitution of entrepreneurial subjectivities. By providing a theoretically informed analysis of a wealth of empirical data, the article makes an original contribution to our understanding of the psychic life ofneoliberalism. (shrink)
Adorno andneoliberalism: the critique of exchange society.Charles A. Prusik -2020 - New York: Bloomsbury Academic.detailsThe first book to investigate the relevance of Theodor W. Adorno's work for theorizing the age of neoliberal capitalism. Through an engagement with Adorno's critical theory of society, Charles Prusik advances a novel approach to understanding the origins and development ofneoliberalism. Offering a corrective to critics who defineneoliberalism as an economic or political doctrine, Prusik argues that Adorno's dialectical theory of society can provide the basis for explaining the illusions and forms of domination that structure contemporary (...) life. Prusik explains the importance of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism in shaping Adorno's work and focuses on the related concepts of exchange, ideology, and natural history as powerful tools for grasping the present. Through an engagement with the ideas of neoliberal economic theory, Adorno andNeoliberalism criticizes the naturalization of capitalist institutions, social relations, ideology, and cultural forms. Revealing its origins in the crises of the Fordist period, Prusik develops Adorno's analyses of class, exploitation, monopoly, and reification to situate neoliberal policies as belonging to the fundamental antagonisms of capitalist society. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism and its Effect on Women in Poverty.Olivia Bako -2011 -The Lyceum 1 (1):32-40.detailsThere is a negative influence ofneoliberalism on poverty in Canada, specifically its impact on women in the lower socioeconomic sectors; the relationship between the government and women; and the importance of addressing women‟s issues in the context of welfare.
Neoliberalism, leadership, and democracy: Schumpeter on “Schumpeterian” theories of entrepreneurship.Natasha Piano -2022 -European Journal of Political Theory 21 (4):715-737.detailsThis article reinterprets Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship in a decidedly un-“Schumpeterian” way, and argues that continued emphasis on Schumpeter’s alleged glorification of the entrepreneur constitutes a missed opportunity for democratic critics of capitalism andneoliberalism. I demonstrate that Schumpeter did not exalt the individual entrepreneur as the paradigm for economic and political leadership in capitalist societies, and I show that he offers a surprisingly robust resource for reconceptualizing entrepreneurship. Schumpeter theorized entrepreneurship: (1) as a phenomenon that could not be (...) exemplified by either individual persons or strictly private entities; (2) as a conceptual mechanism for analyzing change in the history of capitalism; and (3) even as evidence that political and economic leadership should not be conflated in modern democratic societies. By contextualizing Schumpeter’s discussions of the entrepreneur, I suggest that a reconsideration of Schumpeter’s actual theory of entrepreneurship would invigorate contemporary debates about the role of leadership in capitalist economies and liberal-democratic polities. (shrink)
Hegemony and education underneoliberalism insights from gramsci.Peter Mayo -2015 - New York: Routledge.detailsBased in a holistic exposition and appraisal of Gramsci’s writings that are of relevance to education in neoliberal times, this book--rather than simply applying Gramsci's theories to issues in education--argues that education constitutes the leitmotif of his entire oeuvre and lies at the heart of his conceptualization of the ancient Greek term hegemony that was used by other political theorists before him. Starting from this understanding, the book goes on to compare Gramsci's theories with those of later thinkers in the (...) development of a critical pedagogy that can confrontneoliberalism in all its forms. (shrink)
Neoliberalism and mental health education.Michelle Maiese -2022 -Journal of Philosophy of Education 56 (1):67-77.detailsJournal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 56, Issue 1, Page 67-77, February 2022.
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Isneoliberalism a Liberalism, or a strange kind of bird? On Hayek and our discontents.Matthew Sharpe -2009 -Critical Horizons 10 (1):76-98.detailsThis paper examines the theoretical ideas of Friedrich von Hayek, arguably the key progenitor of the global economic orthodoxy of the past two decades. It assesses Hayek's thought as he presents it: namely as a form of liberalism. Section I argues that Hayek's thought, if liberal, is hostile to participatory democracy. Section II then argues the more radical thesis thatneoliberalism is also in truth an illiberal doctrine. Founded not in any social contract doctrine, but a form of constructivism, (...) neoliberal thought at its base accepts the paradoxical need to "discipline subjects for freedom", however this might contravene peoples' natural, social inclinations. The argument is framed by reference to Aristophanes' great comedy, The Birds, whose off shore borderless empire ironically prefigures the dream of neoliberal social engineers, and their corporate supporters.
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Neoliberalism and judicialization of politics: a possible genealogy.Pablo Martín Méndez -2018 -Estudios de Filosofía Práctica E Historia de Las Ideas 20 (1):1-27.detailsLa "judicialización" es un fenómeno amplio, que resulta de la confluencia de innumerables tendencias históricas y que produce diversos efectos en las prácticas económicas, sociales y políticas. Algunos analistas contemporáneos han advertido que la judicialización implica una profunda transformación sobre las prácticas de gobierno. Este artículo sostiene quela judicialización, especialmente la denominada "judicialización de la política", tienen estrechos vínculos con el neoliberalismo. El problema consiste en que, al día de hoy, son escasos los estudios capaces de corroborar tal relación. ¿Cómo (...) y hasta qué punto la judicialización fue promovida por el neoliberalismo? Para contestar esta pregunta, se procederá al análisis genealógico de una serie de documentos redactados a mediados del siglo XX, siguiendo la hipótesis de que allí emerge un programa de gobierno donde la judicialización no sólo es admitida e incluso promovida, sino además propuesta como una práctica privilegiada de intervención estatal sobre la sociedad. "Judicialization" is a broad phenomenon, which is the result of the confluence of innumerable historical trends and that produces diverse effects on economic, social and political practices. Some contemporary analysts have observed that the judicialization implies a profound transformation in government practices. This article argues that judicialization, especially the so-called "judicialization of politics", has close relations withneoliberalism. The problem is that, at present, there are few studies capable of corroborating this relationship. How and to what extent was the judicialization promoted byneoliberalism? To answer this question, we make a genealogical analysis on a set of documents written in the mid-twentieth century. According to our hypothesis, these documents emerge a program of government where the judicialization is not only admitted and even promoted, but also proposed as a privileged practice of state intervention on society. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism Studies and Media Studies.Simon Dawes -2024 -Diogenes 65 (2):264-275.detailsThis short article provides an overview of the various theoretical and methodological approaches to analysingneoliberalism, paying particular attention to political-economic and governmental approaches (and the extent to which they can be contrasted or combined), and argues for a more theoretically- and methodologically-informed, interdisciplinary critique ofneoliberalism in media studies. In emphasising the heterogeneity of approaches to studying an object such asneoliberalism, as well as the differences in how those approaches are deployed in different ‘studies’, it (...) will thus also argue for the applicability of such concerns to research in multiple disciplines in other countries (such as France) as well. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism, culture and subjectivity. “An economic way of looking at life”.Luis Henríquez Riutor -2024 -Ideas Y Valores 73 (185):59-77.detailsNeoliberalism is fundamentally a mode of production of subjectivity which, as a political rationality, Michel Foucault and other authors inscribe in a history of governmentality, whose singularity is the establishment of a type of government tending to validate an economic way of seeing life, as an articulating principle of the disposition to the competence of the individual entrepreneur of himself. This implies that each individual establishes a type of relationship with himself as human capital that he must make profitable, (...) for which he counts on an industry and technologies of selfhelp tending to his permanent realization. (shrink)
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Neoliberalism and the Changing Face of Unionism: The Combined and Uneven Development of Class Capacities in Turkey.Efe Can Gürcan -2017 - Cham: Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan. Edited by Berk Mete.detailsThis book provides a political, economic, and sociological investigation of howneoliberalism shapes 'working class capacities,' or the power of the working class to organize and struggle for its collective interests. Efe Can Gürcan and Berk Mete discuss the global importance of the labor question as it pertains to Turkey. They apply the main theoretical framework of the combined and uneven development of class capacities to Turkish trade unionism. They also address Turkey's recent history of neoliberalization and its repercussions (...) for class capacities, as mediated by national regulations, conservative unionism, and Islamic social assistance networks. Finally, the authors explore howneoliberalism generates intra-class fragmentation through public regulatory mechanisms and cultural differentiation in the sphere of social unionism. (shrink)
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AuthoritarianNeoliberalism and the Repression of Protest and Dissent in Canada: The Wet’suwet’en Land Defense Movement & #ShutDownCanada.Meghan Mendelin -2025 -Studies in Social Justice 19 (1):43-61.detailsThe Wet’suwet’en land defense movement and the allied #ShutDownCanada protests remain some of the most highly publicized anti-pipeline protest events of the last decade. This protest movement offers an insight into how Canada protects and reproduces its accumulation by resource extraction strategy. Situating this research within an observed global phenomenon of growing intolerance to protest and dissent in democratic contexts, I illuminate the ways through which opposition against extractive projects is repressed by the Canadian settler colonial state in the contemporary (...) era ofneoliberalism. Drawing on the political economy framework of “authoritarianneoliberalism,” I elucidate the legal, discursive, and coercive means through which extractive projects are insulated from public opposition. These means are repressing the democratic right to protest in Canada and indicate that Canada is no exception to a broader global deterioration of democracy under a political-economic system that is antagonistic to social solidarity and collective action. Moreover, these repressive strategies exacerbate the violent and dispossessive nature of Canada’s settler colonial extractive capitalism. (shrink)
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FinancialNeoliberalism and Exclusion with and beyond Foucault.Tim Christiaens -2019 -Theory, Culture and Society 36 (4):95-116.detailsIn the beginning of the 1970s, Michel Foucault dismisses the terminology of ‘exclusion’ for his projected analytics of modern power. This rejection has had major repercussions on the theory of neoliberal subject-formation. Many researchers disproportionately stress how neoliberal dispositifs produce entrepreneurial subjects, albeit in different ways, while minimizing how these dispositifs sometimes emphatically refuse to produce neoliberal subjects. Relying on Saskia Sassen’s work on financialization, I argue that neoliberal dispositifs not only apply entrepreneurial norms, but also suspend their application for (...) groups that threaten to harm the population’s profitability. Neoliberal dispositifs not only produce entrepreneurial subjects, but also surplus populations that are expelled from the overall population to maintain its productivity. Here, the concept of ‘exclusion’ is appropriate if understood in Agamben’s sense of an inclusive exclusion. The surplus population is part of neoliberal dispositifs, but only as the element to be abandoned. (shrink)
Neoliberalism’s Persistence and the Struggle for What Comes After.Claudia Firth -2024 -Theory, Culture and Society 41 (7-8):253-264.detailsIn this article I assess the contribution of works by Nancy Fraser and Wendy Brown onneoliberalism and the rise of right-wing populism. Both theorists report on monstrous and morbid symptoms that have emerged recently: the result of a crisis of hegemony for Fraser, and of contradictions in morality and moral conscience produced byneoliberalism, for Brown. Both also offer a feminist lens in relation to the politics of recognition and identity on the one hand, and wounded angry (...) white maleness on the other. I discuss the differences in their particular contributions to post-Marxist debate and ways forward from the uneasy place in which we find ourselves, in which the moral authority ofneoliberalism both wanes and continues to persist. Their work is of particular importance in understanding how subjects are enrolled intoneoliberalism and, therefore, how alternative principles, practices and subjectivities, and new coalitions and alliances might be built. (shrink)
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NewNeoliberalism and the Other: Biopower, Anthropophagy, and Living Money.Giuseppe Cocco &Bruno Cava -2018 - Lexington Books.detailsThis book proposes a shift in the very concept ofneoliberalism as an ambivalent product of subjectivity. It is not resolved in dichotomies between the included and excluded, interior and exterior, capitalist and noncapitalist.Neoliberalism operates in blurred lines, through flexible structures, and amid internal gradients and varying tensions.
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