Neoliberal Agenda Research Articles

Financialisation of Islamic finance: a Polanyian approach on the hegemony of market logic over Islamic Logic

ABSTRACT The significant rise of finance in emerging economies evidenced that financialisation is not limited to advanced economies. While financial capitalism spreads to every corner, financialisation appears in emerging economies in the form of variegated finance capital. Despite its theoretically counter-hegemonic construct, Islamic financial markets do not stand out of this permeation. This paper, hence, aims to explore the role of Islamic finance in making inroads into financialisation in the countries where Islamic finance has reached a significant presence. Based on Krippner’s approach to financialisation, this paper examines the financialisation of Islamic finance by concluding that the strength of finance capital resulted in variegating or grafting a morally backed financial system into the neoliberal logic. The discursive analysis supported by empirical analysis suggests that due to the observed dis-embeddedness of Islamic finance away from its genuine novelty, it has become a hybrid product of the neo-liberal agenda. This is evident in its debt-encouraging financial instruments, which worsens the gap between the real and financial economy. The contribution of this paper is evident in its contractual-level analysis, which focuses on the operational and working mechanism of Islamic banking and finance and how it has been led astray by the finance capital.

Radicalising hope to resist the neoliberalisation of social work

The influence of neoliberalism is taken for granted in social work and has increasingly shaped social work practice, research and education. This article examines hope in social work and the importance of radically theorising hope to challenge the neoliberalisation of social work. Social work has a dual function that both resists and accommodates neoliberal agendas. Hope is a multidimensional concept. Hope is predominantly individualised in social work, but there are also radical and critical notions of hope that align with the broader political struggles of social work. Consistent with ethics of social justice, this article advocates for broadening the use of hope in social work to incorporate radical and critical hope in social work practice, research and education.

A plan to guide rather than to master: the urbanism of negotiation on the Île de Nantes

ABSTRACT Over the last three decades, in France as in other European countries, urban projects have given increasing importance to negotiations between public and private players, and to iterative and incremental design processes. Among the tools implemented by architects and other professionals in France, the plan-guide has progressively challenged the master plan as uncertainty about the means and the ends of projects grew. To understand the rationale of the plan-guide, it is useful to look at the way it was first deployed as the main working tool of Île de Nantes urban renewal project in the early 2000s. That case study sheds light on how urban projects relying on plan-guides became instrumental within neoliberal agendas.

Critical Pedagogy Against the Neoliberal Agenda in Education: The Stance of Critical Educators

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Selling Spectacular Spaces: Hybridized Sport and Space in the Imagination of Enclaved Residential Living in India

This article explores the (dis)connections between urban housing development, (post)colonial legacies and expressions of space, and how ideas of sport and leisure are mobilized in the imagination of gated residential living in Gurgaon, India. Focused on the building of large-scale enclaved development built around golf and polo brands and identities, I challenge common analyses of gated residential complexes as examples of the imposition of neoliberal urban development agendas, or as a manifestation of new forms of architectural colonialism. Utilizing Homi Bhabha’s theorization of hybridity, I show how constructing a hierarchical, sport-based, all-encompassing mini-city is reflective of a localized response to middle-class perceptions of the failure of the state to control and develop the city, that also architecturally references urban mega projects unfolding across Asia. In addition, reflecting on the selective referencing of polo and golf brands/identities in both their past (colonial) and contemporary expressions, I argue sport is mobilized to create new forms of urban living attached with new meanings for consumers. Considered together, I assert the lens of hybridity destabilizes understandings of both sport and gated communities as (neo)colonial and neoliberal by-products by illustrating how these institutions are taken up and remade through colonial and postcolonial transmissions.

Against Climate Aid Colonialism: The Case for Climate Reparations and South-South Solidarity

Legacies of colonial rule, continuing neocolonial extraction, and excessive carbon dumping have meant that the majority of those living in the Global South experience many of the consequences of climate change more acutely than those in the Global North. As such, several countries in the Global North have committed to providing climate aid to decarbonise and reverse the alarming climate trajectory in the Global South. Yet, climate aid by and large discounts the internal competencies and resources within the Global South and aligns climate policies with neoliberal market agendas. In arguing against what has been called climate aid colonialism, we advocate for South-South solidarity and climate reparations, wherein climate justice articulated and advanced at the grassroots level from within the Global South is attuned to the socio-political requirements of decolonisation. Together, climate reparations and South-South solidarity can address the structures of coloniality that drive both climate change and climate aid.

Resisting ‘Universal Nursery Policy Project’ in Chile: Early Childhood Education Professional Associations and Unions reconceptualizing neoliberal professionalism

ABSTRACT This article unpacks ECE professional associations and unions (ECEPAUs) pathways of resistance to a ‘Universal Nursery Policy Project’ (UNPP) and how ECEPAUs have reconceptualized the professionalism of the nursery within the Chilean neoliberal agenda. Drawing on a post-qualitative methodology, with three datasets of participant observations, in-depth interviews, discussion groups, and inductive thematic content analysis, findings show three resistance pathways building professionalism: 1) Working mother critique and lobbyist creations rebuilding technical professionalism; 2) Babies’ forgotten right to education critique and walkouts for ground-up professionalism; and 3) Nursery marketization critique and dialogic creations for democratic and social justice professionalism. Finally, we discuss how pathways of resistance to UNPP entangle critique and creation to build coexistant technical and alternative professionalisms. Though ECEPAUs’ resistance to UNPP does not transform neoliberal professionalism, it envisions the professionalism of the nursery as a common good, reconceptualizing it in the public dialogue for greater justice from the cradle.

The quest for continuous improvement in light of power disciplinary, sovereign and pastoral power in a state-initiated school improvement programme

ABSTRACT There is a global movement of education reform, informed by a neoliberal agenda, emphasising continuous improvement and accountability through performance measurements, surveillance and monitoring. This puts local school actors under constant gaze and endless pressure to perform. This article uses a Swedish state-initiated school improvement programme, Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS), to investigate how power is exercised within the programme and to discuss possible implications for the local actors. A theoretical model based on Foucault’s power modes of sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral power as well as governmentality is used. Empirically, the article builds on a case study from a municipality participating in CBS. The analysis takes impression of Jackson and Mazzei’s “thinking with theory”. The CBS programme illustrates the widespread and multifaceted nature of power in educational governance, prompting local actors to internalise norms, self-regulate, and continuously evaluate their practices. This study highlights the importance of understanding the interplay of different power modes in shaping educational practices and the professional lives of local school actors. This article has contributed to questioning the common sensical, and it has made the exercises of power recognisable through the use of Foucault’s concepts.

Far-right actors and education: The global circulation of their ideas, agendas, and policies

The rise of far-right political actors globally may trigger notable changes within education systems, marked by the promotion of authoritarian, nativist, and economically neoliberal agendas. Far-right parties, including those in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey, increasingly shape curricula and educational structures, frequently challenging inclusive, egalitarian principles. This issue of On Education examines how far-right actors worldwide leverage educational policy to propagate ideological agendas, from enforcing traditional religious values and gender norms to restructuring school systems. Most articles adopt a country-specific focus, exploring the varied and complex ways far-right agendas infiltrate educational domains across Europe, Latin America, and Asia. By analysing these trends, this issue sheds light on the ideological entanglements shaping contemporary education and highlights the implications for democratic values, human rights, and global educational equity.

Logics of competition: the forming of opinion in the bid for a green mega investment

ABSTRACT This article utilizes news media representations to scrutinize the symbolic construction and legitimizing support for green megaprojects, with a particular focus on Northvolt’s battery factory in Skellefteå, Sweden. The study reveals that the media portrayed the project as crucial for local development, driven by Northvolt’s explicit competition, Sweden’s national ambition to lead in green technology, and a neoliberal agenda for regional economic growth. These narratives, deeply rooted in ideological fantasies about the implications of such a megaproject for a small, struggling community, effectively suppressed concerns about colonialism, environmental risks, and indigenous rights. The media’s emphasis on perceived benefits overshadowed potential risks, prompting questions about the long-term impact of such projects on local communities and the environment. The article argues that while these investments are framed as opportunities for progress, they may perpetuate historical patterns of exploitation and overlook critical socio-environmental issues.

University leadership within the neoliberal agenda: Reframing the landscape through a principled leadership approach

This article emerged from a doctoral study that explored Nova Scotia university leaders’ leadership beliefs and values, and change agency approaches. “Principled leadership” was conceptualized as an expansion of authentic leadership theory and involved – authenticity (identity), spirituality, and love (an ethic of care). Principled leadership was examined as a possible approach which could facilitate successful change agency. The leader-participants included university presidents, vice-presidents, directors, and deans. A key finding was that leaders were operating within a conceptualization of authenticity. They held honesty, integrity, and trust as critical to their change agency. Another finding was that principled leadership offered an antidote to the depredations on positive leadership resulting from neoliberalism that has seriously impacted Canadian higher education. This study raised questions surrounding the nature of authentic leadership and identity; that is, the core of authenticity is knowing oneself and being true to one’s own values, but what if a leader has “drunk the Kool-Aid of neoliberalism” thereby truly believes that their top-down, autocratic (or destructive leadership) approach was ‘efficient’ (a neoliberal tenet) and crucial to organizational effectiveness and change agency. Can they still be considered authentic leaders? Thus, this study indicated that principled leadership was a useful expansion of Avolio and his colleagues’ authentic leadership theory.

ESTADO COMO SOLUÇÃO

After the 1990s, the neoliberal agenda was disseminated to the countries on the global periphery as the path to achieving economic prosperity, suggesting that national states were no longer important in the face of "inevitable" globalization. The aim of this essay is to consider the relevance of the role of the state in the development process and to answer the question: in the context of neoliberal globalization, what role still "belongs" to national states in promoting development? Additionally, what challenge does the Brazilian state face in this new context? We draw on authors who address the issue of economic development and the role of the state in this process from a broad perspective. It was found that countries, especially those on the periphery, that "chose" the market as the primary mechanism for regulating economic activity failed copiously, given that private capital is unable to structure the economy and support a development process in the manner of Developmentalist States. It is concluded that, understood as a long-term process, and in light of the challenges of the global economy, the effectiveness of the state in the development process is central to any realistic agenda for economic development.

The interface between authoritarian innovations and labour: Implications for the Indian workforce

On assuming office in 2014, India's BJP-led government initiated an ambitious plan to facilitate the ease of doing business, aiming to make India an attractive investment destination. Interview data from 20 trade union leaders and an expert and published data from ILO, government and trade union documents and newspaper archives reveal that, to advance this neoliberal agenda, the government did not use direct and obvious repressive tactics as was the case during the 1976 Emergency, but rather, a combination of discourse, manipulation of democratic institutions like the Parliament and a strategy for disengaging and disempowering the unions that oppose reforms. The new Labour Codes provide a facade for tackling the perennial problem of union recognition and collective bargaining that has plagued Indian industrial relations, but in their implementation, these Codes are likely to weaken unions and erode working conditions. The government's practices attempt to obscure precariousness and silence civil society organisations by imposing unprecedented restrictions on them and disengaging with them. Today, more than ever before, employment in India tends towards informality. Rather than strengthening unions, the government has created fissures in the labour movement by using the unions affiliated with it to manufacture a democratic debate on various pertinent issues, like the Labour Codes.

Online sex workers’ absence from gig economy discourse: The politics of seeing in the neoliberal sexual agenda

Online sex workers’ absence from gig economy discourse: The politics of seeing in the neoliberal sexual agenda

Realising systemic justice-oriented reform in education in postcolonial contexts

Drawing on and responding to the articles in this special collection, this provocation makes the case that realising justice in education requires a focus on the processes and politics of justice-oriented reform in postcolonial, low- and middle-income counties (LMICs). In implementing reform, it is argued that it is crucial to take account of similarities and differences in context between LMICs. At the heart of reform must be a holistic, coherent and systemic approach at the level of the education system of the institution. Key priorities include reforming the curriculum, investing in educators as agents of change and developing endogenous system leadership that can drive justice-oriented reform. Here, however, it is necessary to engage with the politics of justice-oriented reform, including challenging global, neoliberal agendas, democratising the governance of education and engaging with popular struggles for social, epistemic, transitional and environmental justice.

Defining faces, defying borders: authority conflicts between medical specialties through cosmetic interventions

At first glance, medical specializations seem to be delineated according to well-defined scientific criteria; the apparently-functional division of labor generates a general hierarchy of specialized knowledge and practice. However, this unequal apportionment of professional power and authority also depends on capitalistic organization. While the medical rationale has always been market-related, starting in the 1980s—with the initiation of its neoliberal agenda—Turkey has enacted progressively aggressive policies, privatizing healthcare service and reconceptualizing it as a dynamic market, thereby forming a medical ethos entangled with neoliberal motifs. In this article, we analyzed how unregulated market conditions give rise to a chaotic scientific field, and how this apparent disorder serves to reproduce an underlying capitalistic logic. Of the multitude of human body parts, we choose the face, because it has become a hot zone in medicine as cosmetic demands from patients have skyrocketed, and because it is an area generating conflict between medical specialties seeking more authority and power. To this end, we interviewed thirty-three specialists from dermatology, otorhinolaryngology, and plastic surgery about their experiences on authority conflicts and their motivations for entering into an unregulated market. Our research highlights how actors in the medical field constitute a relational social context within which boundaries are fiercely negotiated through a market logic. Thereafter, we argue how the ambiguities of pathology, aesthetics, body, and norms that underlie cosmetic procedures are fluidized and become instruments of power, such that this ambiguity has become the very defining characteristic of the scientific field.

The World Bank’s neoliberal agenda and inclusive education in post-apartheid South African schools

Globally, the World Bank’s neoliberal agenda has reframed inclusive education through its investment projects and inclusive policies, thus begetting unevenness and social inequalities. Accordingly, in South Africa, the World Bank’s neoliberal investment projects and inclusive policies exacerbate the exclusion of learners in schools. The critical theory framework is adopted as a lens to explore the extent to which the World Bank’s neoliberal education agenda meets the end goals of democracy and social justice in post-apartheid South Africa. A critical analysis of the World Bank’s inclusive education policies points to a neoliberal agenda that fosters liberalisation instead of human rights; a policy that propagates privatisation instead of universal education; learners’ emancipation barricaded by investment projects that favour deregulation instead of regulation; and illusive social change due to neoliberal public policies in post-apartheid South African schools. Ultimately, the authors argue that the World Bank’s incoherent, inconsistent and ambiguous neoliberal education agenda does not speak to its intended recipients, namely the poor, unprivileged and excluded learners in post-apartheid South African schools. A recommendation thus put forward is that the World Bank should redirect its investment projects and revise its inclusive policies in the quest to spearhead universal and free public education.

Image-based sexual violence and imperfect victims: the case for platform cooperativism in the online sex industry

ABSTRACT There is growing need for greater empirical understanding of the data violence experienced by online sex workers. Popular discourse about image-based sexual violence (IBSV), or ‘revenge porn’, often fails to identify the widespread proliferation of this practice within sexual services. This occurs as both consumers and adult-services platforms surreptitiously record and post performances on porn sites without consent, which can have severe implications for workers’ mental and social well-being. First, I apply a workerist lens to the neoliberal sexual agenda, which governs the (in)visibility and (un)freedom of online performers (OPs) across a variety of institutional settings. This exposes how top-down ideological power relations disappears OPs from legislative approaches to IBSV. Second, I show how IBSV emulates the tendencies of the platform business model, such as data appropriation and surveillance. I conclude with solutions including protections based in technology and human rights law, alongside platform cooperative development within a wider decriminalization framework.

A Social Europe without a Social Conscience

Abstract Founded on the underlying principles of equality, solidarity and cohesion, with economic growth envisioned as a vehicle to social well-being, Europe has emerged as a significant competitor in the global economy. Despite the subsidiarity principle, member states’ social protection systems are increasingly being driven by the European neoliberal agenda. Malta is no exception: its socialist welfare regime, based on strong government interventions and universal provision, has progressively given way to a more regulated, privatised and means-tested model. The globalisation–inequality–social protection nexus suggests that Malta’s high GDP growth and widening inequalities are not reflected in a reciprocal outlay in social protection expenditure. In a context where the social well-being of all is increasingly becoming subordinated to the economic well-being of the few, one questions to what extent the social model has remained a fundamental pillar of the EU and whether, through Europeanisation, Malta is concomitantly losing its social conscience.

Re-positionings and reductions: A case of curriculum evolution in senior secondary music in Victoria, Australia

The impact of neoliberal and postmodern agendas on teaching and learning is explored in this paper through a systematic document analysis of the case of current and recent curricula for the Victorian Certificate of Education Study Designs for Music spanning accreditation periods 2011 to 2027. Careful reading and analysis were conducted to develop emerging themes that revealed patterns of reinvention. It was found that changing language and expectations are intended to be broadly inclusive and focused on student wellbeing. Despite this seemingly noble shift in focus driven by curriculum reform, there is an undercurrent of curriculum reduction and marginalisation that glosses over musically specific terminology, difficult knowledge, understanding and practice. The situation in Victoria, Australia is not unique, but a careful analysis and consideration of this serious issue will reassure school music educators that they are experiencing considerable challenge driven by neoliberal and postmodern agendas. This paper is intended to offer insight and possibly raise caution to those in positions of authority and influence concerning curriculum design and expectations about senior music education.