Neoliberal Movement Research Articles

‘I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together’

Seeing Henry Jenkins’s digital-age concept of transmedia convergence as the late-capitalist assembly of 1960s psychedelic intermedia practices, this article adds to a discussion of pre-digital convergence through an examination of the Beatles’ countercultural media production and distribution practices. This research examines how these practices are indicative of their cultural ideologies, and how and why these seemingly countercultural beliefs were vulnerable to (and actively complicit in) the formation of neoliberal movements of the digital age. This work finds the psychedelic values held by members of the Beatles to have shaped their song lyrics, distribution, business model and branding in ways that function effectively similar to Jenkins’s notion of ‘transmedia storytelling’. The result primes audiences for the consumer practices and subjectivity of the postmodern condition. This is accomplished by dispersing narratives and iconography across Beatles’ content such that all texts contribute to an oceanic network while lacking any ‘core’ texts

Transnational Network and Information Flow in African Refugees and Undocumented Migrants’ International Migration Process

This paper analyses the role of information flow under transnational (social) networks to understand African refugees and undocumented migrants’ migration to Austria. Existing research pointed to the international refugee crisis with industrialised countries targeted border governance that has prompted the emergence of the transnational (social) network, which builds (kinship-based) connectivity and interchangeable acquaintances between migrants in host and country of origin to influence and facilitate migrants’ pre and post mobility process. However, the network often faces weak ties with exploitation and subjugation to human trafficking. Based on twenty qualitative problem-centred face-face interviews, data are collected and analysed with content analysis technique to fill in the gap. The findings indicate that pre-mobility guidance, directive, and legislative decoder regulatory tools influence transnational networks with a lack of well-managed network that may impair pre and post-mobility processes to shape African refugees and undocumented migrant international migratory pathways in an information flow setting. This study demonstrated actor-based network-driven advocacy governance. The outcome points to the strategic mobilization of collective information to resource vulnerable people and refugees or undocumented migrants to meet their needs. This is relevant to collective action in contemporary neoliberal society targeting freedom and movements that may not only constrain ethnic minority group mobility, but the universal human rights principles, public policy learning process, informal institution collaborative actions, and democratic values in times of crisis-related super-diversity societies.

What is the problem represented to be in China’s world-class university policy? A poststructural analysis

ABSTRACT Underlying current research on China’s world-class university (WCU) policy approaches are analytical foci that privilege the agency of social actors and the problem-solving approach to policy analysis. Foucauldian poststructuralists draw our attention to policy document, which is seen as a discourse that organizes and administers society. Inspired by Foucault, Carol Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to Be?’ approach (WPR) views policy document as a technology of governmentality. As proposed solutions to a problem, policy text produces the very problem that it seeks to address. Carol Bacchi draws our analytical attention to the rationalities, technologies of governing and subjectification effects created by particular problem representations in the WCU policy. Using WPR, this paper shows that WCU is represented as merely a technical, managerial and organizational problem. Such representations naturally reify WCU in material terms, such as research output, and in a temporal form of state planning. Genealogically, the root of WCU can be traced to the neoliberal movement of knowledge economy. However, Shanghai Ranking overturned this center-periphery landscape in disseminating the concept of WCU. China’s one-party state means that WCU is pursued at the expense of sacrificing social sciences and subjecting academics and students to become ‘red experts.’

미국 신자유주의의 역사 만들기 - 시카고학파와 ‘램지어 사태’의 과거와 현재

This paper examines the political and intellectual origins of “Contracting for sex in the Pacific War” by J. M. Ramseyer. The controversial article, which reduces the complex issues of colonialism and gender into a market efficiency, shares the assumption of the Law and Economics, a by-product of US neoliberalism. The movement to re-configure the relations between state and economy against the “New Deal” government introduced a dual strategy to persuade the public of its free-market ideology. First, following the idea of F. Hayek, it sought to lure intellectuals, or “secondhand dealers in idea”. The attempt resulted in the establishment of the Law and Economics, which evaluated not only economic institutions but also social ones in terms of economic efficiency. Second, led by M. Friedman, it constructed a revisionist history to validate the gospel of the free market. The campaign to capture the intellectuals and discourses on history was successful by the late 1970s. In the following decade, with the rise of the neoliberal movement, Law and Economics attracted promising graduate students to succeed in the tradition of the discipline. In this regard, Ramseyer applied the contention of the free market to Japan to challenge the traditional notion of the country’s economic growth. Then he expanded the assumption into the non-economic realm to contest the existing discourses regarding the sex slave during World War II.

Reconstruire le libéralisme : Hayek, Lippmann et la conception du néolibéralisme

Neoliberalism is a contested concept. The term was coined in the late 1930s/early 1940s to describe the emergent theory shared by different thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Walter Eucken, Henry Simons, Wilhelm Röpke and many others. While the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in 1938 is often considered a crucial moment in the reconstruction of liberalism, little attention has been paid to the process that led Walter Lippmann to become one of the most important contributors to the neoliberal movement. This article argues that focusing on Lippmann’s social philosophy allows a better understanding of the basis of the construction of neoliberalism as well as enhancing understanding of Hayek’s work in the same period.

In pursuit of primary teachers’ work motivation amid increased external neoliberal pressure in education

ABSTRACT This study explored factors that were important to primary teachers’ motivation due to increased pressure caused by changes associated with a global neoliberal movement. A questionnaire (n = 243) was conducted to gain an overview of factors causing pressure on teachers. Interviews (n = 13) were conducted to reveal factors relevant to teachers’ motivation in the past, present, and future. The study indicated that teachers, regardless of type of motivation, felt the same extent of external control and experienced similar reasons for pressure. The study showed that autonomous motivation was more present than controlled motivation, and that the teachers emphasised support rather than external pressure. The study also found that a type of motivation could change due to the application of a variety of coping strategies. Therefore, when teachers experience external pressures, they benefit from consistent support.

Neoliberalism Incorporated: Early Neoliberal Involvement in the Postwar Reconstruction: The Case Study of the Netherlands (1945–1958)

Although recent studies have extensively traced the development of neoliberal ideas in international think-tanks since the late 1930s, scholars of early neoliberalism have paid far less attention to the translation of these ideas into policy. Current scholarship predominantly identifies the introduction of neoliberal policies with a paradigm shift among policymakers in the late 1970s and depicts the early neoliberal movement as an idea-centred and isolated phenomenon that was unable to put its ideas into practice. This article argues instead that early neoliberals employed an idea-centred approach to politics to establish a coalition of like-minded academics, journalists, politicians and policy officials. Focusing on the Netherlands, it demonstrates how this strategy brought neoliberals press coverage, influence within the Christian democratic parliamentary parties and acknowledgement among professional economists. On the one hand, their struggle to exert influence over policy matters contributed to the implementation of pro-market industrialization policies, which, ironically, were pursued by a coalition of social democrats and Christian democrats. On the other hand, it also compelled them to include Christian-democratic views in their political agenda, leading to a corporatist-neoliberal policy synthesis whose features exhibit remarkable similarities to German ‘ordoliberal’ ideas.

Síndrome de Burnout, teletrabalho e revolução tecnológica

A presente incursão teórica tem como escopo refletir juridicamente acerca dos impactos tecnológicos causados nas relações de trabalho pela Quarta Revolução Tecnológica ou Indústria 4.0, que facilitou a modalidade de trabalho denominada ‘Teletrabalho’ pela Reforma Trabalhista de 2017, na era da sociedade globalizada, notadamente no atual cenário de crise epidemiológica provocada pela Covid-19. Ademais, analisa-se o aumento do risco de agravamento da saúde do trabalhador, com a ocorrência da Síndrome de Burnout, como consequência direta do teletrabalho demasiadamente imposto à classe trabalhadora durante a pandemia do novo vírus, que foi ratificado pelo Estado para manutenção das atividades empresariais, sem pensar na saúde mental do obreiro. Nesse sentido, verifica-se a legislação de emergência editada para regular as relações laborais durante a crise do vírus Sars-Cov-2 e sua correlação com a retomada do movimento neoliberal de precarização do direito do trabalho, que elevou o adoecimento profissional dos que laboram remotamente. A problemática central consiste em até que ponto as inovações tecnológicas da Indústria 4.0 têm sido benéficas ao direito do trabalho, haja vista os seus impactos até mesmo na legislação trabalhista, em especial, durante a crise de Covid-19. Para tanto, é desenvolvida pesquisa bibliográfica e exploratória, por meio de revisão teórica, de cunho indutivo, a partir de obras consolidadas pela crítica nacional, bem como de textos legislativos e da Constituição Federal. Nesse sentido, espera-se tornar esse trabalho de fundamental importância para a comunidade acadêmica e social, a fim de dar concretude aos direitos trabalhistas e construir um pensamento jurídico emancipador.

Institutions and Development From a Historical Perspective: the Case of the Brazilian Development Bank

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the role played by the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in different periods of Brazil’s development process since its founding in 1952. The bank’s history is nonlinear, varying with socio-economic and political changes over time. Four major periods in its history are: (i) from its creation to the debt crisis in the 1980s, a period known as ‘developmentalism’; (ii) the neoliberal movement of the 1990s; (iii) the reintroduction of the BNDES as a relevant tool for development in the 2000s; and (iv) a new neoliberal movement that arose beginning in mid-2016. Each of these periods is characterized by certain development conventions that shape how institutions, such as the BNDES, operate, and at the same time are shaped by them. In contrast to mainstream economics, which focuses on a one-size-fits-all institution for development, this paper evaluates the interactions between development and institutions as historical processes, with an emphasis on the prevailing development conventions. The trajectory and different roles assumed by the BNDES over time exemplify this permanent relationship, rejecting the idea that particular types of institutions are related to development.

Anti-’68ers and the Racist-Libertarian Alliance

This article shows that the incorporation of right-wing libertarians into the Alt Right coalition was the end result of a schism in the neoliberal intellectual movement in response to the egalitarian challenge of the 1960s. In a symmetry with developments on the post-Marxist Left, one group of Austrian School economists associated with F. A. Hayek took a cultural turn. Performing their own critique of “economism,” they perceived human nature as rooted primarily in culture, adaptable over time through social learning and selective evolution. The other group of Austrian economists, linked to Murray Rothbard and culminating in the racist-libertarian alliance of the Alt Right, saw difference as rooted in biology and race as an immutable hierarchy of group traits and abilities. While many observers have described the Alt Right as a backlash against the excesses of neoliberalism, this shows that an important current of the Alt Right was born within and not against the neoliberal movement.

Towards the Centre: Early Neoliberals in the Netherlands and the Rise of the Welfare State, 1945–1958

Although scholars have recently taken an increased interest in the history of neoliberalism, the ‘breakthrough’ of neoliberalism under Thatcher and Reagan still captures most of their attention. Consequently, the neoliberal project is primarily taken as Anglo-American, while its early history is mostly studied to explain the political shift of the 1980s. This article focuses on the early neoliberal movement in the Netherlands (1945–58) to highlight the continental European roots of neoliberal thought, trace the remarkably wide dissemination of neoliberal ideas in Dutch socio-economic debates and highlight the key role of these ideas in the conceptualisation of the Western European welfare state.

Globalisation, Land Alienation and its Impact on the Right to Livelihood of the Tribal Communities in Kerala

India has the second largest tribal population in the world. According to the 2011 Census, tribes constitute 2% of the total population. India has around 461 ethnic groups and they constitute India's indigenous population. India has provided the tribal communities with several protections through laws and constitutional provisions. Despite this they are suffering from many problems. Globalisation ushers in mammoth changes which influence the social, economic, political and even cultural scenario of a country. In India, the mainstream globalisation model has neglected the inclusive growth of economy and has largely concentrated on promotion of gross domestic product, thus creating unhealthy consequences. Its impact has been drastic on the tribal who have been displaced in large numbers by developmental projects which have ignored effective rehabilitation. The neo-liberal movement has not only deprived them of their identity but also their livelihood rights pushing them into abject poverty. The impact of globalisation on the tribal life is also evident in the State of Kerala. The 2011 census report records the overall tribal population in the state as 4,84,839. There are 36 tribal communities across Kerala and 'Paniya' tribes are the biggest tribes among them. The highest concentration of Scheduled Tribes in Kerala is in Wayanad followed by Idukki. The rapid technological advancement and interplay of market forces and the rising power of neo liberalism has led to eviction of the tribal from their land, denying them a right to live with human dignity. Examples of such invasions are ample in the State of Kerala. The paper discusses the impact of globalisation on the Tribal community in Kerala. It seeks to find answers and give suggestions as to how globalisation must be managed in a sustainable manner, respecting the rights of tribal people particularly their right to livelihood. The paper concludes by making suggestions as to how globalisation must be made more sustainable, keeping in view the rights of Tribal communities in Kerala. Strong steps to be taken by the Government to mobilise more assistance to these communities. Any growth model that is adopted must give due respect to the rights of subsistence and cultural identity of these communities. The impact of globalisation should be such that it makes those who already have a comfortable existence more comfortable and plunge the others into a more dilapidated state.

LANDSCAPES OF UNREST: HERBERT GIERSCH AND THE ORIGINS OF NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This article bridges the gap between the intellectual history and critical geography of neoliberalism through a study of the overlooked figure of the German economist Herbert Giersch. As a public economist and director of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from 1969 to 1989, Giersch blended German traditions of location theory with liberal globalism to lay the foundation of a neoliberal economic geography. We show the origins of globalism at Kiel through the work of the institute's founder, Bernhard Harms, and Giersch's influences, including Johann Heinrich von Thünen, August Lösch, and Alfred Weber. We argue that Giersch's neoliberal economic geography emerged out of two perceived necessities in the 1970s. On the one hand, he saw a need to reorient German industry through import competition with the global South. On the other hand, he felt the need for an ethically defensible global imaginary to pose against both traditional German social democracy and the promise of the global South's New International Economic Order. In his metaphor of a landscape of so-called Schumpeterian volcanoes in which regions were locked in perpetual struggle for temporary monopoly positions against competitors, Giersch provided a powerful distillation of the geographic imaginary at the heart of the neoliberal movement since the 1970s.

A study of Swedish preschool directors’ perspectives on leadership and organization

ABSTRACTIn the last decade, neo-liberal movements have entered parts of the Swedish society, bringing increased accountability and public management to preschool (catering for children aged 1–5 years). While early childhood education research has generally focused on preschool, children and teachers, few studies have explored the perspectives of preschool directors in contemporary times. This study helps fill this void by exploring the perspectives of eleven preschool directors about leadership and associated organization within Swedish preschools. Using content analysis, key findings suggest preschool directors take on many leadership roles within a preschool as they work with teachers, parents and upper administration leaders. The roles are sometimes conflicting and create unintended tension with teachers and parents as neo-liberal perspectives emerge.

“That’s Not Very Deleuzian”: Thoughts on interrupting the exclusionary nature of “High Theory”

In the following essay, I discuss my own uneasy and nonlinear journey from the classroom to Deleuze, describing the concepts and lines of thought that have been productive in thinking differently about teaching and teacher education. I also detail my encounters with the surprising orthodoxies of using Deleuzian/Deleuzoguattarian thought. From these, I suggest that ‘being Deleuzian’ is itself a molar line that serves as an exclusionary mechanism, working to preserve high theory for the use of only a select few. Instead, I argue for the potential of making such nonlinear thinking accessible to mainstream audiences to interrupt the linear, status quo thinking undergirding a global educational neoliberal movement.

Neoliberal globalization, unions and labour movement strategies

Neoliberal globalization, unions and labour movement strategies

Kokoro Confidential

As a graduate student at the University of Chicago in the mid-1950s, Edwin McClellan (1925–2009) translated into English the most famous novel of modern Japan, Kokoro (1914), by Natsume Sōseki. This essay tells the story of how the translation emerged from and appealed to a nascent neoliberal movement that was led by Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992), the Austrian economist who had been McClellan’s dissertation advisor.

The impact of neoliberalism on Latinos

The neoliberal movement and its policies of the past four decades have negatively impacted the entire nation. This essay provides an overview of American neoliberalism and its elements, with particular emphasis on how it is imbued with and frames powerful racist currents, and how it has impacted Latinos. An examination of the impact of neoliberalism on Latinos shows persistently high levels of poverty, declining household income and declining levels of wealth. Neoliberal policies that reduce funding for education lead to program cuts that negatively impact Latinos. In K-12, bilingual education programs and other multicultural education programs continue to be under attack. Undocumented immigrants are increasingly incarcerated in private prisons and civil and human rights generally continue to be diminished by practices allowed under the Patriot Act. The essay concludes with a critical discussion of neoliberalism and the public good in American democracy.

Book review - Finance for Housing: An introduction

Published in 2013 Finance for Housing is a product of Davis’ view of the preceding social, economic and political context, a historic narrative of housing finance policies. Its great contribution is to describe, in an accessible style, the neoliberal movement and momentum of housing finance policy across successive governments. Its failure is that it omits key issues (e.g. land values, development finance and gain) and therefore fails to provide a comprehensive theoretical approach for students to analyse the impact of housing finance policies themselves.

Finding Common Language around Educational Equity in a Neoliberal Context

Since 2005, New Orleans has proved fertile ground for the most extensive education reform movement in the United States. As such, the educational landscape in New Orleans is a highly contested space. Yet stakeholders across the pro/anti-charter divide lack a fully developed language that accommodates the multi-vocality of participants contributing to dialogue(s) around neoliberal reform and grappling with the fundamental ways in which public education connects to the democratic ideal. In light of this imbalance, participants in conversations have reified adversarial positions rather than engaged with the substantive issues that ultimately will determine the success of the neoliberal reform movement.