Book Review: Interrogating the Neoliberal Life Cycle: The Limits of Success

Jagriti Gangopadhyay

doi:10.5195/aa.2021.344

Abstract

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Highlights

Based on the life cycle, this volume is divided into four major thematic segments: “Childhood, Youth and Schooling,” “The University under Neoliberalism,” “Work, Success and Failure,” and “Death and Dying.” The book brings together contributors from a range of disciplines such as philosophy, theology, sociology, criminology, gerontology, anthropology, education, psychology, and psychotherapy
Emphasizing the need to move away from a model which primarily constructs aging as a medical condition, Pickard urges for an alternative framework of old age, which acknowledges frailty as part of the aging process, and is more inclusive of diverse experiences of aging and of the inevitability of death
In the final chapter (10), co-editor Beverley Clack draws from the death manuals of Philip Gould and Kate Gross who were involved with the New Labor Project of the Labor Party under the leadership of Tony Blair (236) and both urge their readers to go beyond the neoliberal framework and to locate meaning within their families and social network

Summary

Introduction

Based on the life cycle, this volume is divided into four major thematic segments: “Childhood, Youth and Schooling,” “The University under Neoliberalism,” “Work, Success and Failure,” and “Death and Dying.” The book brings together contributors from a range of disciplines such as philosophy, theology, sociology, criminology, gerontology, anthropology, education, psychology, and psychotherapy. Beverley Clack and Michele Paule interrogate the conceptualization and realization of the “good life” (6) across the life course under the gambit of neoliberalism.

Results

Conclusion