Neoliberal Restructuring Research Articles

New Turkey, social policy, and a daytime talk show as a remedy: Müge Anlı as a modern Çalıkuşu

ABSTRACT ‘Müge Anlı ile Tatlı Sert’, which investigates unresolved criminal cases with interactive audience support, is one the most popular daytime television shows in contemporary Turkey. The neoliberal restructuring of the welfare system in New Turkey posits that providing protection and security against social risks is the sole responsibility of individuals and families. In line with this approach, the show individualizes social problems ready to be resolved by ‘Müge Abla’ (Sister Müge) and her audience. Müge Anlı's image, which conforms to the ideal modern and modest Republican woman, allows her to gain authority, trust, respect, and popularity. The show’s discourses, structure, and communicative strategies are the product of the New Turkey where ‘the sacred family’ is the central political unit and the nation is an extended, happy family reproduced through this show.

Running on Empty: Ontario Hospital Workers' Mental Health and Well-Being Deteriorating Under Austerity-Driven System.

The well-being of health care workers (HCWs) and the public in Ontario, Canada is at risk as the province's health care system is strained by neoliberal restructuring and an aging population. Deteriorating working conditions that preceded the COVID-19 pandemic further declined as the added challenges took their toll on the work force, physically and mentally. The pandemic-weary hospital staff, predominantly women, many racialized, are facing unprecedented challenges. They are experiencing stress, anxiety, and burnout from staffing shortages and the resulting increased workloads, long hours, and violence. Comprehensive telephone interviews were conducted with 26 HCWs from less highly paid occupations in a range of hospitals across the province. Thematic analysis reveals a critical need for policies and legislation ensuring increased funding, hospital capacity, and reduced wait times while providing HCWs with fair and equitable wages, increased staffing, mental health supports, greater respect and acknowledgment, and strong protections from violence and other workplace hazards.

Real estate for social purpose: varieties of entrepreneurialism in Toronto’s non-profit housing sector

Non-profit housing providers have faced ongoing pressure from neoliberal restructuring policies since the late twentieth century. In reaction to funding cuts and policies requiring them to become more business-like, housing organisations have become more hybrid, incorporating entrepreneurial logics and practices from the real estate sector. We expand on the concept of hybridity to argue that under certain institutional contexts, non-profits can apply real estate entrepreneurialism towards their social housing missions. Analysing development and acquisition practices of 13 non-profit housing providers in the Greater Toronto Area, we explore how non-profits balance entrepreneurial practices with their commitment to de-commodified housing. Three types of hybrid organisations are identified: large economy-of-scale organisations that prioritise growth and real estate professionalisation; service-focused organisations whose mission statement limits their growth aspirations; and newcomers, whose forays into housing development face both internal capacity limits and criticism from veteran organisations. The variances in hybridisation processes across and within institutional contexts, we find, require a more nuanced theorisation of the longer-term implications of neoliberalisation on social housing. Learning from Toronto’s budding social purpose real estate sector, we identify key resources for entrepreneurial housing non-profits: building sectoral assets, knowledge sharing, risk management, and a balance between organisational diversity and scale.

The Entangled Emergencies of COVID-19

City of Chicago officials adopted a “racial equity” approach to mitigate the disproportionate racial impact of COVID-19, yet according to interviews with racially and socioeconomically marginalized Chicagoans, this approach failed to address core vulnerabilities associated with health, housing, mental health, and welfare. This article argues that COVID-19 represents and reifies the convergence of three sets of emergencies. First, federal and local governments governed through emergency, enacting temporally bounded governmental strategies that presumed scarcity, triaged care, and naturalized structural inequality by delinking the effects of racism from its causes. This response was spectacular and anticipatory—designed to safeguard the status quo until “normalcy” could be restored. This approach exacerbated two existing endemic emergencies: (1) the slow emergencies racially marginalized populations have faced for decades due to neoliberal restructuring and fragmented care infrastructure and (2) the sacrifice of lower-income frontline workers to premature death to safeguard the economy and protect the middle class.

“Arrest the dance!”: rethinking Tejumola Olaniyan’s “postcolonial antinomy” and the politics of art activism

Drawing on fieldwork on the emerging radical street performance culture in Nigeria, I reflect on the implications of Tejumola Olaniyan’s approach to popular culture and political activism, with a particular focus on his profound and provocative analysis of Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s Afrobeat. In Arrest the Music!, Olaniyan adopts a cultural-materialist approach to locate Fela’s Afrobeat in the postcolonial conditions that generated its aesthetics and politics. Rather than concentrating exclusively on the oppositional messages in Fela’s lyrics, Olaniyan excavates the “antinomies” structuring Fela’s music practices and reads these antinomies as embodiments of an oppressive yet “enchanting” postcolonial modernity. In the context of Olaniyan’s readings, I interpret the production of a radical street performance culture in Lagos in relation to the extensive processes of neoliberal restructuring taking place in urban Nigeria, and I examine in which ways postcolonial antinomies continue to structure contemporary artistic practices. This paper calls for a more nuanced reading of the politics of activist art in contemporary Africa, and especially the agonistic entanglements of local artistic activism and the neoliberal agendas forced upon it.

Responding to ‘land grabs' in rural Eastern Germany: emancipatory agrarian politics in the context of authoritarian populism

ABSTRACT Large-scale land acquisitions harm small-scale farmers in rural Eastern Germany, increasingly prompting political attention and denunciation of the phenomenon as ‘land grabbing'. However, counter-framings are not necessarily progressive and may inadvertently fuel right-wing populist narratives, complicating the fight against neo-liberal restructuring of the countryside. This article explores progressive agrarian collectives' alternative framings in Eastern Germany, examining their interpretations of ‘land grabbing’. Amid growing authoritarian populist sentiments in rural areas, a comparative analysis of Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bäuerliche Landwirtschaft and Bündnis Junge Landwirtschaft shows different approaches to framing the problem and highlights the importance of holistic, inclusive narratives in countering these challenges.

The Decline of Turkey as a Subimperialist Power: Political Economy of the Turkish Foreign Policy under AKP Rule

ABSTRACT Turkish foreign policy during the AKP era has been under academic scrutiny for a long time, but the outcome of the analyses has often varied considerably. Yet most of this research agrees upon one thing, which is that Turkey under the AKP has become more active and more influential, both in its region and in the international arena. While accepting Turkey’s continuing relevancy, this paper argues that, although Turkey still could be considered as a regional power, its capacity for influencing regional and global politics had been eroded considerably in the last decade. At first glance, Turkey’s recent U-turns and failures in foreign policy under Erdoğan’s personalized style could be identified as the main reason for this erosion. However, building on Ruy Mauro Marini’s conceptualization of subimperialism, this paper contends that it is actually conditioned by the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy in the last four decades, which has transformed Turkey’s economic structure in a very profound manner.

Historicizing Black Educational “Choice”: Toward Black Educational Self-Determination

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education to advance neoliberal restructurings of the state. In this paper, I posit there exists a conceptual and political distinction between school choice and efforts of Black educational self-determination, an approach to challenge white dominance and supremacy. The paper engages in a historical analysis exploring the history of school choice and Black educational self-determination.

Popular Modernism, Neoliberalism and Nationalism in the Australian New Wave: The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and Gallipoli (1981)

ABSTRACT Dominant narratives of the Australian New Wave tend to frame the efflorescence of national filmmaking in the 1970s through the lens of Gough Whitlam’s brand of cultural nationalism. The narrative usually runs as follows: state-funded films tended to favour a conservative, genteel and respectable aesthetic that came to be known as the “Australian Film Commission genre”. This article uses Mark Fisher’s concept of “popular modernism” to challenge this dominant account of the Australian New Wave first put forth by Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, outlining the ways in which social democracy and state funding provided the conditions that allowed filmmakers to produce radical films that were anti-nationalist in character. As we will argue, when national film production deviated from this configuration and became circumscribed by neoliberal restructuring and economic rationalism in the 1980s, the New Wave took on an increasingly nationalist impulse. The article will trace this trajectory through a narrative analysis of two films from lauded Australian director Peter Weir: The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and Gallipoli (1981).

A union's and university's responses to violence against a woman professor: Neoliberal restructuring, hypermasculinity, male privilege and hegemonic inequality

AbstractAlthough Eastern Canadian liberal arts universities are portrayed as progressive work environments that cultivate inclusivity and diversity, the corporatisation of these public spaces has transformed them from institutions that once encouraged pluralism and acceptance among all social groups to spaces that unevenly distribute privileges among faculty and students based on ascribed characteristics, social class, and adherence to cisnormative and heteronormative expectations. Under neoliberal reforms, universities and unions adopt their own policies and procedures that legitimate institutional power abuse over marginalised women Contract Limited Term (CLT) assistant professors. Using material evidence from complaints filed with a province's Human Rights Commission and Labour Board, this critical autoethnographic case study explores the institutionalised responses to a disenfranchised woman CLT's discrimination and harassment by a student, departmental chair, faculty and university staff. A theory of genocidal mobbing is developed to conceptualise the organisational processes and practices that maintain the status quo of white heteropatriarchy and disentitle women CLTs to safety, equality and fair representation by their unions. Genocidal mobbing is efficient, because misogynistic administrators only require weaponising one disgruntled student, and effective, because administrators utilise the most fatal and insidious of gendered narcissistic abuse: gaslighting. The current neoliberal climate within academia puts marginalised women faculty at increased risk of genocidal mobbing from those with institutional power and from students with ethnic/racial and/or economic privilege. This article illuminates the union's culpability in the genocidal mobbing of women CLTs disenfranchised by multiple marginalised intersectional identities. Implications for future research and on policy are presented.

Neoliberal restructuring in central areas in Latin American port cities: the case of Valparaíso (Chile)

Neoliberal restructuring in central areas in Latin American port cities: the case of Valparaíso (Chile)

Cruel optimism of waiting: precarity experiences of young adults in Turkey

ABSTRACT This paper examines young adults’ everyday experiences of precarity. Defining precarity as a socioeconomic and affective condition, it offers waiting as an analytical tool to explore the intersection of precarity and the family as a locus of social security and dependency. Based on the in-depth interviews with young adults (N = 52), it investigates the affective and temporal dimensions of precarity that play out in the waiting practices of young adults in Turkey. Focusing on these practices, we show how conditions of precarity foster an entrepreneurial mindset and never-ending self-enterprise while establishing forms of cruel attachments and dependencies. Following Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, we demonstrate how young adults become paradoxically dependent on their familial bonds and temporary job market to become independent individuals. We conclude that the family as an agent of individualization and normalization of precarity (re-)emerges as the backbone of neoliberal restructuring. However, such familial bonds within the context of fragmented biographies reinforce cruel attachments in which sustaining the aspirations for independence makes precarious young adults more dependent on their families.

Welfare in Crisis: Labor and Social Protection in the Global South

Abstract Welfare expansion in the global South is partly in response to the social crises caused by neoliberal restructuring since the 1980s, with the 2008 global financial crisis escalating them, and the covid-19 pandemic further exposing the impact on the most precarious working populations. What are the new dynamics of labor struggles against these structural, industrial, and health crises under the expansion of social protection or the lack thereof? How do the state and non-state actors manage recurring and new capitalist crises by reconfiguring labor and social policies? The contributions in this special issue address these questions by engaging with workers’ lived experiences across the global South and post-communist states. They show that current labor and social policies fail the test under various crises. We argue that the neoliberalization of labor and welfare reconfigurations and the recurring crises of global capitalism have reproduced each other in these global South countries.

Beyond Neoliberalism and Capital Accumulation Theory: Evidence Learning from Turkey’s Economy

Neoliberalism is both a body of economic theory and a policy stance. The neoliberal theory claims that a largely unregulated capitalist system (“a free market economy”) embodies the ideal of free individual choice and achieves optimum economic performance.
 The phase of “embedded liberalism” was succeeded by an era of embedded neoliberalism in which the contradictions of global capitalism were veiled by the hegemonic ideology of individual freedom and prosperity in the nineteenth century.
 The conditions for a capitalist economy in Turkey were established in the 1920s within the republican political system, which supported the development of national economic capability for capitalist accumulation—albeit with strict government planning of the budget and control over the private sector and foreign trade and investment. After 1980, neoliberal economic reform weakened the statist system and, particularly since 2001, transformed Turkey into a transnational state better suited to the demands of a global economy.
 This paper tries to identify and find the link between neoliberalism and capital accumulation theory based on learning about Turkey’s economy before and after the crisis. We found that the outcome of neoliberal restructuring experiments depends crucially on pre-existing and changing power structures and relations in the course of state transformations. Thus, Turkey shifted to a neo-liberal model through voluntary choice but as an inevitable and forced outcome of a major balance of payments crisis associated with the exhaustion of the import-substitution model of industrialization.

What factors guide the recent Spanish model for the disposal of military land in the neoliberal era?

This work drafts a general framework about the disposal policies fostered by the Spanish Ministry of Defence since the 1980 s, which is apparently understudied in comparison with emerging international research. The research seeks two main goals. The first is to demonstrate that these policies have followed the general trend of neoliberal restructuring of the public sector, as it happened in countries like France, Italy, and the UK. In the face of austerity and deep state cuts in military spending, the MoD sells (off) its estate to reduce the real estate management and maintenance costs and generate financial gains from sales. The second goal is to highlight the primarily financial approach of the MoD disposal policies. Although military land may catalyse significant urban transformation, the disposal policies have sought direct economic revenue for the central government and the MoD.

Agrarian change in neoliberal Turkey: Insights from privatization of the sugar industry

AbstractThis paper investigates the dynamics of neoliberal agrarian restructuring within the Turkish sugar industry, focusing on the 2018 privatization of the Alpullu Sugar Factory. The analysis examines the transformative impact of market dependence and land commodification on relationship of farmers with the agricultural sector. Specifically, it focuses on two significant neoliberal shifts that have altered the dynamics of farming. First, the withdrawal of state support in agricultural markets prompted farmers to diversify their income streams, leading to a transition from sugar beet cultivation to alternative crops and contemplation of urban migration. Second, in the 2000s, farmers, grappling with declining agricultural revenues, increasingly relied on private bank credits as a means of financial security. This shift was propelled by changes in agricultural policy regulations and the dissolution of state‐sponsored credit systems. Employing a blend of qualitative and quantitative research methods, this study elucidated these complex transformations and their profound impact on agrarian livelihoods, land ownership shifts, production strategies and market relationships. The research revealed the complex interplay of social, economic and historical dynamics steering the trajectory of the Turkish sugar industry, providing valuable insights into neoliberal restructuring.

BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND HOPE: Affective Mediations of Urban Restructuring in Leipzig, East Germany

AbstractIn this article, which is based on an empirical analysis of neoliberal restructuring in Leipzig, East Germany, I describe how the study of affective atmospheres adds to our understanding of urban restructuring, showing how collective moods affect (de)mobilization, contestation and the regulation of urban political economy to shed light on the relation between institutional, political and social processes. I demonstrate the relevance of affect for power relations, political interactions beyond rationality, and the rhythms and temporalities of urban restructuring, as exemplified by two prominent atmospheres that characterize Leipzig—post shrinkage depression (PSD) and anticipatory hope (AH).

Universities, imperialism and the collective work ahead.

Universities, imperialism and the collective work ahead.

The Deadly Intersections of COVID‐19: Race, States, Inequalities and Global Society edited by SuneraThobani, Bristol University Press, 2022, 176 pp., $83.95 (hardback).

The Deadly Intersections of COVID‐19: Race, States, Inequalities and Global Society edited by SuneraThobani, Bristol University Press, 2022, 176 pp., $83.95 (hardback).

Migration and peripheral urbanization: the case of the metropolitan zone of the valley of Mexico

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the relationship between migration and peripheral urbanization under neoliberalism, focusing on the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico (MZVM), the most populated urban area in the Americas and fifth in the world. Our analysis is divided into three sections. First, we analyze the implications of neoliberal restructuring in Mexico, highlighting the configuration of what we conceive as the labour-led export model. Second, we explore the characteristics of the urbanization process in the MZVM, starting with a brief reference to the main stages of its historical development from pre-Hispanic times to the present day. Third, we examine the relationship between internal and international migration and urbanization, including intra-metropolitan mobility. One of the main results of our inquiry is to unveil the important role played by international migration, through remittances, as a support for social reproduction of the informal sector in the metropolitan area.