Neoliberalism, science institutions and new experiments in knowledge production

Abstract

The work of Larner on neoliberalism (e.g. Larner, 2003 , 2011 ) has had an important influence on scholars in the arguably most neoliberalized of economies – New Zealand ( Larner et al., 2007 ). Of particular importance is the direct confrontation of one of the key implicit framings within the prior scholarship on neoliberalism which has tended to equate all economic change during the last two decades as being caused by neoliberalization and all outcomes of these transformations as automatically bad. Larner (2011) argues for a decentring of the neoliberalism narrative as a sole explanation of all change in places like New Zealand. This commentary uses the revised approach of Larner and her New Zealand collaborators – Richard Le Heron and Nick Lewis – to briefly examine the consequences of neoliberalization in the context of state-funded science institutions in New Zealand. The result is an understanding of neoliberalization in the context of state-funded knowledge-production that recognizes multiple outcomes which resulted in both a reaffirmation of a core political project around traditional agricultural science, as well as the simultaneous emergence of new approaches, concepts and challenges. These new approaches are demonstrated by a group of new ‘transdisciplinary’ or methodologically innovative projects that are producing new kinds of knowledge about key transformations in primary production and new economic land use in New Zealand.