Neoliberal Society Research Articles

Drifting in China’s porcelain capital: self-realization and alternative-seeking of the self-employed craft workers in Jingdezhen

Following the decline and closure of government factories in Jingdezhen, the Chinese capital of porcelain, a recent wave of migrant self-employed craft workers known as “Jing drifters” (jingpiao 景漂) has faced a dilemma: whether to follow independent craft practices and remain vulnerable, or hire workers, automate some steps, and cut corners to make more money. Recent government-led redevelopment plans in Jingdezhen are introducing spatial reconfigurations and a new regulation of the manufacturing process. Residents have diverse opinions on these government-led plans and show that these changes have exacerbated the instability in the work of the self-employed craft workers. Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and diaries, I also report a changing social dynamic in response to these transformations, which takes place where the individual craft workers, the local craft community, the state-endorsed enterprise capitalists, and the state meet. By contextualizing the individual craft workers in such a changing context as well as in their craft communities where a self-reliant and carefree lifestyle narrative is prevalent, I find that the self-employed craft workers can be self-reliant, self-organized, and mutually supportive despite the vulnerability and instability in their work and in the industry and city. This suggests the possibility of a self-sufficient alternative lifestyle that parallels that of the Chinese neo-liberal consumerist society and of the state-led renaissance narrative about Jingdezhen.

Beyond burnout culture? Artistic imaginations of care (crisis) in Barbara Raes' Zon dag kind and Els Dietvorst's Field Guide

Recent studies of contemporary burnout culture, as I will argue, have much to gain from recent feminist critical theorisations and artistic imaginations of care (crisis). The suggestion is indeed to re-think burnout culture in relation to capitalism’s care crisis in order to bring into view the valuable perspectives offered by feminist theorizations and artistic imaginations, which have thus far been largely side-lined, or not properly been considered in the discussion.Closereading Zon dag kind by Barbara Raes and Field Guide by Els Dietvorst, I show that both works challenge conventional artistic boundaries so as to carry out experiments in sociability which help us imagine caring subjects and a sense of community, which can be seen as an important part of the answer to the self-sufficient entrepreneurial individual in our neoliberal society, in particular, to his or her total exhaustion and other related mental and affective states.

Re-imagining care in comics: an interview with Susan MacLeod, Simon Grennan, Ernesto Priego and Peter Wilkins

ABSTRACT As an existential practice, predicated on human interdependencies and labour, care attains remarkable significance in sustaining the life of the ill/disabled and is an indelible part of families and healthcare. Families, medicine, and institutional caring centres (such as old age homes, hospices among others) justify their commitment to care through emotional and practical/ technical approaches towards illness/disability. COVID-19 pandemic has just made human interdependency and significance of care exceptionally visible through laying bare the inevitable physical and social vulnerabilities. However, in the contemporary neoliberal society that favour autonomy and efficiency, care is overlooked, undermined, undervalued, and often linked with vulnerability and precarity. Graphic caregiving memoirs drawn by caregivers themselves are ideal sites for re-imagining, validating, depicting and reconceptualising experiences of care. In this email interview graphic artists Susan MacLeod, Simon Grennan, Ernesto Priego and Peter Wilkins reflect on care, the wide range of issues concerning its practice and suggest an alternative perspective towards caregiving. In Part A titled Of Comics and Care the authors respond to generic questions about their interest in comics, works, life, among others. In Part B titled What was I expecting? Compassion? Validation? The authors respond to questions related to their respective graphic narratives.

Revisiting the sense of education from a critical perspective to contribute to social justice

This discussion article offers a revision of the meaning of educating in times of neoliberalism when we care about social justice, proposing that more than a speech about it, a critical education would consist in putting efforts into developing democratic human interactions.The Western neoliberal societies in which we live nowadays, have given education an important place as an engine of development, but paradoxically, have acquired instrumental rationality as common sense, making decisions in educational processes driven by an interest of control. Thus, these societies have developed educational systems obsessed with instrumental criteria to improve quality, such as effectiveness, efficiency, and performance. Therefore, the micro educational level, the human interaction, has impregnated with this instrumental logic, dehumanizing the people involved, mainly teachers and students, turning them into objects that must be able to achieve predetermined results.Considering this concern and following the thinking of Iris Young and Hanna Arendt, this work seeks to shed light to orient educational processes to strengthen social justice. In order to reach such aim, this article defends that any attempt to educate should start from the micro educational level, trying to confront dehumanizing logics of control and rejecting domination by interacting in a democratic way that strengthen the capacity of action of others.

Elite Communities and Polarization in Neoliberal Society: Consecration in Australia’s and Sweden’s Wealthy Neighbourhoods

‘Elite communities’ are the areas where the wealthy, and even ‘superrich’, live, socialize and raise their children as future economic and financial elites; they are the places where a few lead socially and economically privileged lives. Earlier studies have concentrated on the inner dynamics of these settings, focusing on the way residents are constructed and socialized as elites through their social, communicative and aesthetic abilities that are perceived as exemplary in contemporary neoliberal society. In this paper, we broaden the perspective, by exploring how these areas contribute to polarization, that is, how they generate distinctions based on money, morals and manners that are peculiar to neoliberalism’s idealization of ‘entrepreneurship’, ‘self-management’, ‘leadership’ and the pursuit of an ‘active lifestyle’. Our data come from two major ethnographic studies: one conducted between 2010 and 2015 of Sweden’s wealthiest community, Djursholm, that is populated by the country’s business and financial elites; the other conducted between 2016 and 2019 of three of Australia’s most prestigious and economically privileged suburbs, Toorak (Melbourne), Mosman (Sydney) and Cottesloe (Perth).

Exotic Universalism & The New Petite Bourgeoisie: An Analysis of Yoga Marketing on Instagram

This paper works towards an understanding of how modern postural yoga is promoted in new media and the role of class therein. The paper analyzes the content of four yoga Instagram profiles to discern how the contemporary postural practice is marketed on social media. In doing so, it demonstrates how yoga practitioners and organizations position their practice as both exotic and universal. This twofold movement establishes their product (yoga classes and studios) as unique yet accessible in the marketplace of spirituality and fitness. While these two processes of exoticisation and universalisation seem contradictory, this paper argues that this dissonance is emblematic of the values of the new petite bourgeoisie, a socio-economic class which serves as the main source of cultural capital in contemporary neoliberal societies.

Boredom at the end of history: ‘empty temporalities’ in Rousseau’s Corsica and Fukuyama’s liberal democracy

In this paper, I consider what it might mean to approach boredom as a problem of post-history, rather than of modernity as such. Post-history, or ‘end of history’, in this sense, is linked with the impossibility or unlikelihood of political-systemic change, and thus with the disappearance of the contingency or temporal flux that had been understood as the context or prerequisite of political action and political freedom. I will, argue, firstly, that both Rousseau and Fukuyama depict societies that are ‘post-historical’, in this sense, and which are marked by ‘boredom’ of this specifically post-historical kind. Secondly, I will argue that both thinkers link post-historical boredom with the disappearance or diminution of the ‘drive for recognition’ that both understood as both an agent and effect of ‘history’. Thirdly, I will argue that while Fukuyama understands post-historical boredom as an ‘irritant’ that threatens to restart history without quite succeeding in doing so, Rousseau understands it as an essentially stabilising (and happy) condition that maintains post-historical man in an equilibrium modelled on the order of nature itself. And fourthly, I consider certain ways in which this ‘post-historical’ boredom might coexist and overlap with the ‘promise of intensity’ experienced in post-Fordist neoliberal society.

The evolving moral economy of indebtedness in Chile: resignifying credit and debt in the oldest neoliberal society

Credit is ubiquitous in the life of Chilean households, the oldest neoliberal society. It is a key feature in the budgeting, shopping, and consuming practices of families. Consequently, to be indebted is a normal expectation in Chile. Families engage with the ‘necessary evil’ of credit in different ways, representing a massive, regular use of credit as short, medium and long-term leverage tools, with store cards being the main source of credit for lower and moderate income families in general. Moral obligations together with conventional and unconventional financial knowledge accompany the everyday situated economic practices of families. Addressing both the normalisation and the moralisation of credit, I attempt to make the case for the ongoing resignification of credit and debt and the evolving moral assessments of indebtedness, focusing on moderate and low-income households, namely those who embrace credit during recent decades. This article contributes to the discussion about the meaning of debt, to understand the financialisation of everyday life by looking at situated economic practices, and to recognise the social, moral and relational foundations of the economic practices. From the coming of the expansion of credit, households have learnt to deal with economic rationalities and internal and external moral judgements in order to justify their use of credit. Together with structural factors, this develops indebtedness assessments from detachment to naturalisation, placing credit and debt in the centre of ‘decent life’ expectations.

Towards a Sustainable Metamorphosis of a Small Island Tourism: Dynamizing Capacity Building, Alternating Governance Arrangements, and Emerging Political Bargaining Power

This study examines how local agents (non-profit-seeking actors and residents of Pahawang Island) developed empowering methods to address ecological problems during the island’s transformation from a small, secluded island to a tourist destination. Building capacity through grassroots initiatives, bottom-linked collaboration, and improved political bargaining power were critical components, constituting the conceptual framework to analyse the data. The socio-spatial shift in Pahawang Island reflects the nature, degree of involvement, and participation of multiple stakeholders. Slowly and gradually, bottom-up and later bottom-linked institutional efforts were implemented to lay the groundwork for a more sustainable ecology, social economy, and political transformation. Capacity building was dynamized by including it in a social innovation process, bottom-linked governance, and stimulated empowerment, which altered the governance, political bargaining power and policymaking power balance. Under these conditions, collaborative grassroots learning and action efforts can be a virtuous panacea for improving the sustainable governance of small islands, which is frequently disregarded in a neoliberal society.

Critical Darlings, Critical Dogs: Joseph O’Neill and What Contemporary Criticism Doesn’t Want

AbstractThis essay argues that the drive within literary studies to name new paradigms obscures key historical continuities in contemporary fiction. To explore this problem, I turn to Joseph O’Neill’s The Dog (2014), a novel mostly panned or ignored by critics. The Dog courts its status as an outcast by confounding readers’ expectations of novelty. It refuses to showcase supposed aesthetic progress made in the wake of postmodernism. It also forces readers to revisit the Reagan-Thatcher years, bearing us backward on an economic tide when we hoped that culture, technology, and literature might be hurtling us forward. O’Neill’s satire bites heralds of experimental fiction by challenging the belief that new novelistic techniques could alter neoliberal market societies. The Dog attends to new forms of global transit and digital media, but insists that its own aesthetic horizons are still shaped by economic formations and literary forms that coalesced during the 1980s. Its failure to gain academic adherents reveals two underlying urges on the part of the critical establishment: the urge to transcend the stale horizons of the postmodern through novel periodization and the urge to exit the neoliberal order through art.

급진적 돌봄과 흑인 모성시학: 그웬돌린 브룩스와 오드리 로드의 경우

The presidency of Donald Trump, pandemics, and wars have triggered a widespread discussion of care theory. In the era when care has reentered “the zeitgeist,” radical care, “a set of vital but underappreciated strategies for enduring precarious worlds” has focused on constituting a feeling with, rather than a feeling for, others. This article, rereading the poems of Gwendolyn Brooks and Audre Lorde, explores the poetic praxis of these two poets as the form of radical care embodying othermothering in the community. In poems about Till and Glover, both Brooks and Lorde reflect the brutal realities of black people, which are narrated by mothering figures. Their mother-centered voices, whether they were of the actual mothers of victims or not, demonstrate how the poets confronted the violence of black community and how they sifted the importance of their collective identity-based care mostly fulfilled by women. This article goes on proposing that their poems show the responsibilities and potentialities of poetic practices that remind readers of the importance of radical care in contradiction to the self-care, or self-management, of neoliberal society. Revisiting the underexamined poetic praxis of these two African American poets, this article lastly aims at expanding the discourse of care as the driving force of new collective movements in today’s world, especially along with the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement as well as the StopAsianHate movement.

Transperipheral Educational Mobility: Less Privileged South Korean Young Adults Pursuing English Language Study in a Peripheral City in the Philippines

Abstract The pursuit of overseas English language education by South Korean youth has resulted in a hierarchy of educational destinations, with migrants studying English in the Global North attaining higher cultural capital compared to those learning English in the Global South. This article examines the experiences of South Korean youth who pursue education in English language schools in the provincial Philippines. Using in-depth interviews and participant observation with South Korean educational migrants in the Philippines and South Korea, it outlines class and regional dynamics in a pattern of youth mobility the author calls “transperipheral educational mobility.” This type of mobility refers to the transnational movement of less-privileged, that is low-resourced, South Korean youth from peripheral regions in South Korea to peripheral cities in the Philippines for the purpose of pursuing English language education in a budget program. Despite being considered “less legitimate” than the credentials earned by their counterparts in destinations in the Global North, the pursuit of English language education in the Global South, as this article shows, provides forms of precultural capital, compensatory middle-class consumption, and entrepreneurial inspiration that strategically and creatively seeks to challenge working-class migrants’ marginal positions within South Korea's highly stratified and increasingly neoliberal society.

Neoliberalism, COVID-19 and conspiracy: pandemic management strategies and the far-right social turn

Neoliberal pandemic management strategies during the 2019–2022 COVID-19 virus pandemic rendered vulnerable to the disease, people in precarious work, with underlying health issues, and experiencing other forms of social discrimination and disadvantage. Herd immunity strategies designed to address the economic growth imperatives of neoliberal societies were often contrary to scientific advice, leading to high infection rates and the mass death of, in particular, essential workers in manufacturing, healthcare, and service provision. At times, health policies and political rhetoric scapegoated marginalised communities for the spread of the disease, subjecting them to the pandemic’s more harmful social and economic effects. These ideological-political environments also provided context for accelerationist and conspiratorial narratives about COVID-19 communicated among wider political networks, within economically-driven environments of counterfactual mass news and social media. Responding to this situation, this paper examines how certain pandemic responses from government and non-government actors collectively contributed toward racialised, classist social discrimination in responses to COVID-19, such that they might be said to constitute an intra-pandemic far-right ‘social turn’.

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.

Effects of the Great Recession on suicide mortality in Chile and contributing factors

Between 2008 and 2009 suicide rates in Chile were higher than those observed before and after, increasing more than in other countries in Latin America. The Great Recession has been suggested as an important factor behind this increase. This study assesses the excess of suicide attributable to the crisis in Chile, a “mature” neoliberal society with a precarious social security system, low salaries, and high levels of indebtedness, and identifies the most relevant economic variables that may contribute to this excess. We pooled data since 2000 on monthly suicide rates, unemployment, economic activity and perception of problematic indebtedness for different sex and age groups. We adopted an interrupted time series design with Poisson regressions models adjusted for monthly variations and non-linear pre-crisis trajectories via restricted cubic splines. We then further controlled for economic variables to evaluate their possible contributions to suicide increase attributable to the economic crisis. Suicide mortality during the crisis period was higher than in the previous period in all sex and age groups. Overall, we estimated that 301 suicides (95% CI: 181 to 422) were attributable to the crisis in Chile. This excess was concentrated among men younger than 65 and women 65 and older. Including unemployment and indebtedness perception in the models reduced the excess of suicides. The increase was concentrated in the first half of the crisis and an early pre-crisis effect could be observed when anticipating the crisis beginning by three months. Results suggest that the Great Recession had an impact on suicide mortality in Chile and that increase in unemployment and indebtedness could be related to this increase. Results by sex and age are consistent with the most vulnerable groups in the context of Chilean neoliberalism. For future crises, improving unemployment insurance, and reinforcing suicide prevention attending to the economic context should be a priority.

The online activism of mock translanguaging: Language style, celebrity persona, and social class in China

This paper examines a viral language style that emerged during online activism against a Chinese celebrity after she was announced the winner of an architecture award. Drawing upon insights from celebrity studies, online activism, and social semiotics, I examine how netizens creatively appropriate and mock celebrity language, focusing on the semiotic work netizens engage in to mobilize emotions, form solidarity networks, and perform collective action as they reveal the moral failures, injustice, and falsehood of celebrity culture. Three semiotic strategies are found to be key in enabling netizens to formulate their critique: entextualization, stylization, and typification. In this process, language serves multiple functions: it is the target of critique, a proxy for discussing social issues, a tool for building solidarity through mutual learning, and a creative way of pursuing fun. I argue that these semiotic moves turn language into power, allowing netizens to articulate discontent against the rich amid increasing disparity and lack of trust in a neoliberal society.

Waking up from Delusion: Mindfulness (Sati) and Right Mind-and-Heart (Bodhicitta) for Educating Activists

In the face of current turbulent times including climate emergencies, species extinction, the erosion of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism—in short, a suffering world—the authors of this paper propose that education needs to be centrally an activist effort dedicated to healing and repairing the increasingly wounded and damaged world. To this end, this paper explores Buddhism as an educational program that centralizes a healing curriculum based on the understanding that healing comes from waking up from the delusion of possessive individualism (ego-selves) that gives rise to neoliberal capitalist societies. This delusion is the existential home of suffering. Waking up requires the disciplined effort of seeing through and past individualism to the workings of mutual causality within a universe of interconnection (Interbeing), such as ours. The mindfulness (sati) practice that the historical Buddha taught is such a form of mental discipline. Through the agentic cultivation of sati and subsequent remembrance of our inherent Interbeing, we can rediscover and rekindle the inherently enlightened mind of bodhicitta. This paper explores various psychological, sociocultural, ideological, and relational conditionings that act as barriers to seriously practicing mindfulness, including the currently popular conceptions of mindfulness in North America. While acknowledging that successful practice takes setting up the right conditions, our paper also delves into helpful and supportive conditions for mindfulness practice for activists, namely, ethical motivation and contemplative/healing emotions such as the Four Immeasurables.

Trans-Tactical Performance Actions as an Antagonistic Form in Dealing with the Hegemonic Forms of Neoliberal Policies of Power

Public space is where the interests of the community and its individuals as entities are articulated. It is fundamental to democratic governments. And as such, there should be reconciliation between the interests and actions of governmental policies and those of the citizen’s public interests as healthy democratic procedures. Unfortunately, this is not the case, since the neo-liberal and quasi-democratic societies still use hegemonic methodologies to implement their policies and ideologies, bypassing harsh criticism of public opinion and critical thought, even in the realm of public space. Such approaches are initiatives for actions in the field of cultural and artistic interventions performed in the spirit of trans-tactics (such as transmediality, transdisciplinarity, transhistoricism, transmemory, transnationalism), opposing the norms of social constraints and distorted values of the domination of capital, as opposed to history, collective memory, quality, and identity as paths to contemporaneity. This paper deals with the artistic actions carried out by a young group of individuals – Filip Jovanovski (artist), Ivana Vaseva (curator) and Kristina Lelovac (actor). It’s about a trilogy of performative actions: “If Buildings Would Talk”; “The Universal Hall in Flame” and “Dear Republic” which took place between 2015 and 2021. These are contemporary forms of cultural and artistic actions of an interactive character, which can be defined as trans-tactical performance essays. These participatory forms also point to the distorted boundaries of contemporary art in the public space of today where the loss of the boundaries of mediality, discipline, nationality, historicism become the main matrix for action against the policies of power. Article received: December 23, 2021; Article accepted: February 1, 2022; Published online: April 15, 2022; Original scholarly article

Nature-based solutions: democratising the outdoors to be a vaccine and a salve for a neoliberal and COVID-19 impacted society

ABSTRACT Extant research reveals time in nature is causally associated with children’s health and well-being, including a child’s intra and interpersonal skills, socioemotional growth, physiological function, and cognitive development. In today’s neoliberal and COVID-19 era, nature-based solutions, alongside a broader outdoor and experiential learning ‘suite’ may be well placed as both a vaccine and a salve for our current societal challenges. However, contemporary school education is underpinned by an audit or performative culture evidenced by standardised national testing that may diminish access to outdoor or nature-immersive experiences. Looking forward, the authors contend that contemporary education, and more broadly society, requires nature-rich experiences for a flourishing sustainable future. Drawing upon Foucault, this paper highlights the need to critique education and society’s dominant ideologies and practices. These counter-narratives advocate for emancipatory change in contemporary education—especially infusing different voices such as Indigenous knowledges—offered in and through a democratised access to the outdoors.

La Reina de la Fusión

Abstract Afro-Dominican singer-songwriter Xiomara Fortuna has enjoyed a career that spanned more than four decades and shaped the work of a new generation of Dominican musicians. In March 2017 she was bestowed a presidential award of honor and she accepted it barefoot, making a clear statement about her values and where she sees herself fitting in Dominican society. Drawn from three separate interviews conducted with Fortuna in Santo Domingo in July 2016, augmented by her extensive internet archive, this article frames a transcribed and translated testimonio that captures some of Fortuna’s experiences while coming of age in the Dominican Republic in the late twentieth century. While much of Dominican society’s African cultural history has been actively obscured by the ruling class, Fortuna has long celebrated Afro-Dominican culture through her life’s work and her identity has shaped how she has navigated a neoliberal society as a black artist. Her insights provide an essential piece of Dominican historiography that includes Dominican youth organizing on the Left in the 1980s and 1990s, feminist activism, and cultural production.