Neoliberal Age Research Articles

The dilemmas of minimum wages of RMG workers in Bangladesh in the age of globalisation and neoliberalism: a qualitative case review

The dilemmas of minimum wages of RMG workers in Bangladesh in the age of globalisation and neoliberalism: a qualitative case review

Charter Cities and de-democratization in the neoliberal age

This paper analyzes how recent processes of de-democratization resonate, materialize, and sustain themselves in the urban context of Latin America, focusing on the phenomenon of Charter Cities. I argue that the city and city building play a central role in political struggles, and understanding disputed over the territory is central to grasping particularities of the crises of democracy in the South.

Neoliberal Reason, Contemporary Music, and Proximal Critique

Abstract Theodor W. Adorno suggested that music is mediated by socially derived forms of reason, a provocation here considered with respect to neoliberalism. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of neoliberalism, which in Wendy Brown's summary takes neoliberalism as ‘a specific and normative mode of reason’, I consider what this means for immanent features of music and processes of its composition. This critical attention to music's formal, aesthetic register enables me to go beyond the more well-established (although nonetheless valuable) frameworks for discussing music and neoliberalism, which focus on music's relation to labour conditions and creative industries. A range of music and sonic art is discussed, work by Chino Amobi, Brian Eno, Bryn Harrison, Sarah Hennies, Johannes Kreidler, Wolfgang Rihm, Marina Rosenfeld, and John Zorn. I ultimately argue that some core features of Adorno's conception of critical art and music need reformulating for the neoliberal age.

Surveilling Sureties: How Privately Mediated Monetary Sanctions Enroll and Responsibilize Families

Abstract In the neoliberal age, ordinary people are increasingly responsible for taking up crime control and surveillance, what we might consider traditional state functions. This article situates commercial bail as a case of responsibilization and identifies monetary sanctions as a mechanism through which private companies offload pretrial risk management onto families. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I present this process via four stages. First, agents use cosigned bail bonds to selectively enroll people they perceive as suitable sureties and surveillants. Second, this monetary sanction is deployed with carceral and financial threats to encourage cosigners to embody the roles. Third, as surveillants, family members engage in invisible emotional labor to cope with or rationalize their deployment as an arm of the state. Last, through their involvement as instruments of surveillance, family members inadvertently become subjects of surveillance and carceral control. From enrollment to subjugation, this process of responsibilization is an uneven one as women, particularly women of color, are disproportionately burdened with risk management and any resulting repercussions.

Spiritual Roots of Protest: Envisioning a Social Spirituality in the Age of Neoliberalism

Spiritual Roots of Protest: Envisioning a Social Spirituality in the Age of Neoliberalism

In Search of Priestly Witness: A Barthian Intervention in the Chinese Church–State Relationship in a Neoliberal Age

Abstract This article suggests a theological proposal for envisioning the relationship between the church and state in the context of the Chinese neoliberal regime. It consists of three interrelated tasks. First, I argue that the rise of a neoliberal state has shaped the Chinese political landscape over the past four decades and constrained the collective responses of the Chinese house churches in their cooperative and negotiating strategies. Then, I examine two recent theological announcements by the church leaders and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in addressing the principles of church–state relations. This critical analysis is followed by a rediscovery of Barth’s theological politics of priestly witness, which has laid the Christological foundation for the integrity of faith communities and shed light on their primary concerns and actions towards the Chinese neoliberal state. In this way, I seek to contribute to the ongoing discussion of Chinese political theology by offering a nascent analysis of the political system encountered by the house churches and reclaiming Barth’s theological legacy for these churches in public witness.

Restructuring Value Base of Social Sciences in the Age of Neo-Liberalism

Social sciences emerged at the onset of the Enlightenment age. Immanuel Kant proclaimed that henceforth the central theme of discourse in philosophy will be human beings and not God. Since then, the relationship between ‘me’ and ‘the other’ has become a central theme of intellectual endeavour. Now, me and other relationships have three forms: conflict, competition and cooperation or harmony. Three world views developed around these three patterns. The socialist worldview had conflict as a base, with equality as a cherished value. Competition is the base of liberalism, with freedom (to compete) as a cherished value. Harmony is at the base of humanism, with fraternity as a basic value. Today, liberalism and neo-liberalism have become almost unipolar world views. Liberalism claims to be following the three great values of the French Revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity. In recent times, neo-liberalism has developed a system that makes all three values truncated. Liberty, or freedom, has been reduced to the level of my choice as a consumer. Equality has been taken as reducing and abolishing old ascription-based inequality. The rising new and achievement-based inequality is not only not opposed but also eulogised in the name of creativity and achieving society. In place of fraternity and harmony, we have cutthroat competition. A competitive society is considered good. The market is more important now. We have achieved growth. But the basic harmony between human beings and between human beings and other elements of the environment has vanished. So, environmental issues, rising achievement-based inequalities, violation of human rights, rising poverty, failure of market institutions and unnatural lifestyles giving rise to many lifestyle diseases have made many thinkers and social scientists to change the value base of social sciences to restructure social sciences. The new value base could be ethics, equity (social equity, to be specific) and ecological harmony. Keeping these three values as the base, we will have to restructure social sciences to have a better and more humane world order.

Festive Federalism: Race, Nation, and Neoliberal Aesthetics at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, often misunderstood as a reflection of the nationalist hyper-patriotism of the Reagan Era, were in fact a crucial moment in building a neoliberal, global Los Angeles. Tracing the development of LA’84’s Olympic look ‘festive federalism’, this article considers the ways in which organizers in fact made strenuous efforts not to associate the Games with the nation state. It argues that festive federalism – the name given to the colour scheme and iconography of LA’84 design – was more than just an Olympic look. Rather, it was a neoliberal aesthetic, a philosophy for confronting economic challenges posed by local racial contexts. Festive federalism celebrated diversity and colourblindness simultaneously and extolled the neoliberal virtues of individualism, competition, and self-reliance. In doing so, it nullified the risk posed to the Games’ profitability by race-based demands in communities of colour nearby to Olympic venues. In place of race, festive federalism called for a new type of individualistic, post-racial citizen-consumer. Analyzing the application of festive federalism to the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival, this article demonstrates how culture redefined race, national identity, and history for a new, neoliberal age.

Reinvigorating Social Support Systems in Rural Northwestern Ghana: Towards Affective Empathy in a Neoliberal Age

Abstract Scholars frequently allude to the concept of a supportive extended family system that provides a lifeline to less privileged members of society, such as the indigent and the aged. Yet, the extended family and the network of support it enables have come under immense threat from neoliberalism. This article examines the constrained role of the extended family system and its implications, based on residential ethnographic fieldwork data gathered in rural northwestern Ghana. It draws on transnational discourses on empathy and local conceptions of interdependence and unity as encapsulated by African communitarian philosophies such as Ubuntu and Te jaa bonyeni of the Waala people of northwestern Ghana to explore how to generate empathy. Neoliberal individualist values have intensely undermined the support networks of the extended family system. Te jaa bonyeni philosophy, similar to Ubuntu, and many humanistic philosophies, offers important opportunities for reinvigorating debates on African indigenous support networks as important steps towards nurturing affective empathy. This study contributes to discourses on affective empathy by connecting it to communitarianism. Cultivating empathy is necessary towards imagining forms of existence that are dignifying for the marginalized and preventing them from descending into abysmal deprivation.

Desperation or Profession? Beggary in the Neoliberal Age: The Case of Samsun City

Bu çalışmada, dilencilik olgusu neoliberal ekonomi-politiğin getirisi olan “yeni yoksulluk”, “göç”, “kentleşme” ve “çalışmanın reddi” gibi kavramlarla kesişimsel olarak düşünülmüş ve dilenciliğin eskisinden farklı olarak aldığı yeni görünümler ile kültürel edime dönüşme süreci sosyolojik bir perspektifle anlaşılmaya çalışılmıştır. Dilenciler tarafından dilenciliğin bir meslek olarak görülüp görülmemesi, dilencilerin örgütlü bir şekilde çalışıp çalışmadıkları, dilenme motivasyonları ile iç ve dış göçle birlikte dilencilik olgusunda meydana gelen değişimler tartışılmak istenilen temel sorulardır. Araştırmada niteliksel araştırma yöntemi kullanılmış, veriler derinlemesine görüşme tekniğiyle elde edilmiş, verilerin analizinde ise MAXQDA nitel veri analizi programı kullanılmıştır. Araştırmada; dilencilerin “yeni yoksulluk, göç ve mekânsal ayrışma bağlamında dilenciliği mecburiyetle özdeşleştirenler” ve “güvencesiz, eğreti çalışma koşullarından kaçarken, örgütlü bir şeklide dilenciliği meslekleştirerek bir kültür haline dönüştürenler” şeklinde iki temel tipoloji sergilediği; bu durumun hem neoliberal piyasa ekonomisinin bir sonucu olduğu hem de burayı yeniden ürettiği ve bu heterojenliğin farklı sosyal politikalar üretmeyi gerekli kıldığı sonucuna varılmıştır.

The stubborn persistence of working-class protest in Turkey in an age of authoritarian neoliberalism

ABSTRACT Under authoritarian neoliberalism, Turkey has seen the number of legal strikes plummet since the mid-1990s. Alongside deepening authoritarianism, the AKP government banned nearly all legal strikes in the 2010s. How have working-class protests fared against this bleak backdrop? Have workers become pliant victims of a repressive regime of accumulation? Or is there evidence of fight left in the Turkish working class? This article addresses these questions through protest event analysis (PEA) of an original dataset of working-class protests between 2015 and 2019. Workers are found to have managed to maintain a significant protest performance despite the increasingly authoritarian environment.

신자유주의 시대의 사회 불안, 국가 폭력, 그리고 공동체의 위기

This study argues that community sustainability—already in threat in the age of neoliberalism and polycrisis—has been undermined owing to long-term structural violence and the lack of social safety net in South Korea. It is thus critical to analyze the mechanisms and effects of structural violence to determine the current nature of community crises. The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, I suggest an expanded view of state violence, which helps articulate its characteristics and influences. Persisting structural violence is inextricably linked to the recent social phenomena such as antisocial violence that signals social tensions and conflicts. Second, I contend that the South Korean government deploys a variety of state violence mechanisms to manage social insecurity and oppress social resistance rather than addressing structural root causes. Subsequently, the government policies proliferate forms of violence, exacerbating social divisions and insecurity. This study proposes a notion of neoliberal punitive state to elaborate on how increasing state violence aims to handle insecurity that stems from neoliberal approaches. Finally, this study calls for further research on state violence to examine structural harm to community flourishing and sustainability.

‘Bleeding Catholicism’: Liberation Theology’s Demise and the Emergence of Pentecostalism in Latin America

This essay examines the apparent decline of Liberation theology and the rise of Pentecostalism in Latin America. Due to the retreat of Liberation theology from the forefront of public discourse in 1989 and the larger loss of emancipatory philosophy, Catholicism in Latin America has experienced bleeding, losing adherence to charismatic religions over time. Through an examination of the socio-religious landscape, this study seeks to determine whether there is any relationship between the growth of Pentecostalism and the demise of Liberation theology in a Neoliberal Age. This study aims to shed light on the complex relationships that exist between social shifts, religious concepts, the evolving religious landscape, and the social order in Latin America.

David Aitchison, The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism

Review/Recension

Book Review: The New Political Economy of Disability: Transnational Networks and Individualized Funding in the Age of Neoliberalism

Book Review: <i>The New Political Economy of Disability: Transnational Networks and Individualized Funding in the Age of Neoliberalism</i>

Problems and possibilities for Swedish working-class literature in a neoliberal age

In recent decades, inequality has increased in Sweden. The increasing gaps are connected with policies that are often called neoliberal. How does working-class literature relate to these social problems and what literary possibilities does it open up? In this article I discuss these questions based on some literary examples from Swedish contemporary working-class literature. These literary examples have attracted much attention. My perspective is that I see working-class literature as literature with a distinct use value and a literature that has specific functions in the working-class literature context (Felski, 2008).&#x0D; Kristian Lundberg, Johan Jönson and Jenny Wrangborg all give personal accounts from workplaces. Such can be valuable. The problem with Lundberg and Jönson is that they tend to be introverted and egocentric. Especially Lundberg lacks the class perspective. Perhaps Lundberg’s Yarden (The Yard, 2009) should be described as confessional literature rather than working-class literature. With Susanna Alakoski the working-class is hidden behind the concept of poverty. The working-class as actor is absent. The labor movement as well. Instead, it is the middle class who appear as actor. Through the role of jester, Jönson makes class society visible. The role of jester could be seen as a specific rhetorical strategy and a literary device to create a distancing effect, or Verfremdungseffekt. Wrangborg connects to the legacy of early working-class literature with struggle poems. From within the workplace she describes work situations and experiences of class.&#x0D; Emil Boss takes a close look at language and concepts in a postpolitical age when old concepts have changed meaning. It is a crucial task for working-class literature to explain, interpret and examine old concepts that have changed meaning in a new political era, when the labor movement has lost contact with previous ideals and social democratic governments pursue rightwing politics, thus making it difficult to distinguish between left and right.

Freedom and Law

The notion of “freedom” in the age of neoliberalism is under the strong influence of technology and in a great measure it is different from the concept of freedom in the age of liberalism. In neoliberalism man’s freedom is projected and defined within the frameworks that are shaped by technology while in an earlier period man was called to shaping the laws of freedom. We always hear about knowledge being one of the basic human rights, but nobody says that which man should know. It seems to be that what is meant by that are the topics which are spoken of on a daily basis, and which presents the basic preoccupation of some people, and that is the relativization and suppression of moral norms. The sentence “knowledge is the right of all people” has become a catchphrase according to which everyone has the right to do as they will and everybody has the right to usurp the private life and intimacy of every individual. It must be said that pure acquaintance with raw information does not represent knowledge. The piling of information is the greatest enemy of common human sense and reasoning. In case freedom has to be connected to the very spirit of one community, the question is posed; whether a general call for freedom comes out of the spirit and need of that community or whether it is the result of the manipulation of others who have tendentious and wicked intentions. In any case, even though democracy presents the manifestation of collective human gravity and will, it is not possible to implement it everywhere or at the very least not until it comes to certain changes in society. The following question is posed: what is freedom’s treatment of the individual and collective rights like and what bears greater meaning in a free society? The possessing of human qualities is a condition for the establishment of the freedom of thought, however in society and in politics personal and collective interests go hand-in-hand. Is political development the precondition for economic growth or is it in reverse? There are arguments which give advantage to the first and the second claim. However, it is visible that the development of any dimension of society influences the development of other dimensions and there are no special rules there. There are certain preconditions which are necessary for the development of society and they are interconnected. Every country that thinks of development must ponder upon the freedoms and civil rights of its inhabitants. Although the claims that humanity is going to the direction of freedom and peace are not correct it should be said that freedom is the question of human honor and that everybody is obliged to fight for it in his own way. Key words: Freedom, development, liberalism, neoliberalism, technology, individual interest and collective interest.

Catholic Education: Reclaiming the Prophetic in an Age of Neoliberalism

The prevailing current context of neoliberalism has often been viewed as curtailing the prophetic expression of the Catholic identity of Catholic educational institutions (CEIs). This article proposes that only by reclaiming their prophetic identity can CEIs flourish authentically in the neoliberal era. A faith-based approach to addressing the challenges of neoliberalism is presented, drawing upon the principles of prophetic imagination described by Brueggemann. The neoliberal concept of strategic planning is presented using four nuanced characteristics of a Catholic strategic planning process to express the CEI’s prophetic nature.

The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism. David Aitchison

<i>The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism.</i> David Aitchison

Across the Pacific: the strategic citizenship of Chinese musicians

ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, the world has seen an incredible surge of Chinese performers in Western classical music. Unknown to most outside of Chinese musical networks, these musicians often began their training as young children, learning from parents who lost musical ambitions during the Cultural Revolution and who hoped to realise them through their only child. However, as children rapidly developed musical skills and entered conservatories, other career paths became eliminated. Drawing from anthropologist Aihwa Ong’s work on ‘flexible citizenship’ and ethnographic fieldwork in Mainland China, Canada, and the United States, I theorise the ‘strategic citizenship’ of these students and their families. I do so to argue that the strong presence of Chinese instrumentalists in Western classical music has resulted from a desire, even a desperation, amongst many families to negotiate intergenerational traumas and acquire socio-economic stability in the neoliberal age. In this process, transnational Chinese musicians must also contend with issues of precarity and Orientalisms abroad.