Neoliberal Aspirations Research Articles

Neoliberalism or postmodernism? Decolonizing Soviet Estonia, 1987–1991

ABSTRACT This comparative analysis of sociopolitical and cultural discourses in the Estonian SSR from 1987–1991 concentrates on the tension between postmodernism as a cultural logic of late socialism and neoliberalism as a then-emergent modern ideology. Postmodernist and neoliberal ideas both emerged from decolonial reactions to Soviet rule, albeit from different aspects of it. Postmodernism reacted to the sense that the stagnation-era Soviet regime was ‘stuck in presentness’ and to the Soviet grand narrative of building communism. Neoliberal aspirations developed in reaction to the way Soviet rule obstructed local economic initiative and local participation in the global market, finding support in Gorbachev’s call for enterprise-level economic autonomy.

K-Pop and the Creative Participatory Engagement of Thai Fans: When Cultural Hybridity Becomes Cultural Authenticity

ABSTRACT K-pop products generally avoid cultural particularity, but they speak to specific neoliberal aspirations of middle-class urban audiences in Asia, even if such dreams are a distant reality in working-class regions in Thailand. This paper features the popular “Deksorkrao” YouTube channel, produced by a group of K-pop fans in Thailand’s northeast. We provide a discourse analysis of their home-made cover of Blackpink’s “Pink Venom” that incorporates symbols particular to agricultural life. We argue that this form of creative participatory engagement is a uniquely authentic expression that speaks to a familiar discourse in Thai life, but uses K-pop as its vehicle.

Redesigning the relationship between heritage and city: Insights from the Gandhi Heritage Portal, Ahmedabad

Urban heritage is often tasked with the burden of mediating city history as well as its imagined futures. In Asian contexts, these imagined futures have often been encoded as ‘smart’ urbanity while historicity is wielded as soft power. Past studies have discussed this in the context of Ahmedabad, a significant urban centre in the region of Gujarat, India, whose urban heritage has served to promote the city’s image. This article suggests that it is the digital archive, the Gandhi Heritage Portal, that potentially offers ways of disrupting the mediation of the city through heritage. With ethnographic interviews, observations, and secondary literature on the histories of the city, this article attempts a close discursive reading of the spatial, material, and ideological implications of an Ashram ‘doing’ technology through the Gandhi Heritage Portal. The article suggests that the making of the digital archive offered opportunities to dislocate heritage from neoliberal aspirations of the city.

White Skin and the Black Mask™

White Skin and the Black Mask™

Mothers’ baking blogs: negotiating sacrificial and postfeminist neoliberal motherhood in South Korea

ABSTRACT Blogging among young, tech-savvy mothers has been a popular media outlet for discussing domestic activities since the early 2000s in South Korea. In “mommy blogs,” young mothers negotiate ideal motherhood through the meanings of the sacrificial mother and postfeminist, neoliberal values. Using the frameworks of sacrifice and self-enterprise in a neoliberal sense, I argue that mothers commodify the home space for their neoliberal aspirations while hiding their individual desires behind sacrificial motherhood. Mothers’ baking blog economy, especially the system of power blogger, reveals a sacrificial production of healthy consumable commodities that promotes neoliberal aspirations of mothers to earn social capital. The analysis of power blogging also speaks to the paradox of postfeminist, neoliberal values rooted in sacrificial motherhood. An internalized market rationality is the driving force of mothers’ work, successfully hidden behind the idea of sacrifice. South Korean mommy bloggers resist the prevailing idea of the super mom while reappropriating the relationship between domestic responsibilities and work to suit the motherly duties of sacrifice. This neoliberal aspiration arises from a mother’s sense of individualism and the blurring of the private and public, which reinforces the Confucian patriarchal system.

Living like a hetero: Southern homonormativity in Istanbul

Research on homonormativity in the Global North has burgeoned in the last 20 years as there have been developments to include sexual minorities as equal members of society. However, little is known about the emergent forms of homonormativity in the Global South where in most cases the improvements in terms of sexual rights and citizenship in the Global North did not echo. Despite the lack of the legal, economic, and cultural infrastructure, an inchoate Southern homonormativity unfolds among gay men through their gender performances, bodily presentations, class positions, and neoliberal aspirations. Southern homonormativity is a cultural formation that takes place in settings where there is no institutional change and legal reforms to define, recognize, and embrace the gay citizens (and families) as equal, legitimate, and respected members of society. By using interviews and ethnographic home visits in Istanbul, Turkey, this article explores how homonormativity is contextually driven and flexible, and how privileged gay men understand and navigate homonormative precepts in a context within the Global South.

Nirmala and Sonia: the city through embodiment

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the duality and performativity of bodies as they move through multiple social, sexual and fiscal economies of Kolkata. We offer the story of Sonia, a middle-aged feminine man, who despite a number of obstacles within his family, experiments with a range of sexual identities, and in the process challenges the notion of conformist heteronormative trajectories in the city. Our second character, Nirmala, works as a commercial surrogate in Kolkata. Nirmala's story shows how the cultural script of the pregnant body, associated with heterosexual intercourse and motherhood, is defied by the renting of wombs for profit within the assisted reproductive sector in the city. The personal accounts of Sonia and Nirmala eventually tell a story of Kolkata itself. They underline its transition from older post/colonial economies towards neoliberal aspirations and gendered freedoms. These processes of change remain imprinted in the rebellious, unorthodox bodies of ordinary citizens.

Transition of Collective Land in Modernistic Residential Settings in New Belgrade, Serbia

Turbulent periods of transition from socialism to neoliberal capitalism, which have affected the relationships between holders of power and governing structures in Serbia, have left a lasting impact on the urban spaces of Belgrade’s cityscape. The typical assumption is that the transformation of the urban form in the post-socialist transition is induced by planning interventions which serve to legitimize these neoliberal aspirations. The methodological approach of this paper is broadly structured as a chronological case analysis at three levels: the identification of three basic periods of institutional change, historical analysis of the urban policies that permitted transformation of the subject area, and morphogenesis of the selected site alongside the Sava River in New Belgrade. Neoliberal aspirations are traced through the moments of destruction and moments of creation as locally specific manifestations of neoliberal mechanisms observable through the urban form. Comparison of all three levels of the study traces how planning and political decisions have affected strategic directions of development and, consequently, the dynamics and spatial logic of how new structures have invaded the street frontage. The paper demonstrates that planning interventions in the post-socialist transition period, guided by the neoliberal mechanisms, has had a profound impact on the super-block morphology.

Disrobed and dissenting bodies of the Meira Paibi: Postcolonial counterpublic activism

In this essay, I explore Manipur-based women’s group called Meira Paibi as a postcolonial counterpublic. I suggest that when we use the lens offered by counterpublic studies and postcolonial studies, we can trace activism that delivers a sharp critique on the politics of a democracy. The current research on Meira Paibi’s activism has specifically focused on their naked protest of 2004 and their peacebuilding activities in the northeast region in India. While scholarship on the Meira Paibi offers critiques on their activism in the face of human rights violations and the postcolonial condition of the state, their impact in relation to the Indian democracy is lacking. Therefore, in this essay, I focus on the creation of the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic that not only seeks to maintain order in the midst of chaos but also challenges the Indian democracy and poses a threat to its neoliberal aspirations in Southeast Asia.

The imperative to be seen: The moral economy of celebrity video game streaming on Twitch.tv

In this paper we examine the pursuit of celebrity through the live broadcast (‘streaming’) of video games as an expression of an emerging moral economy of contemporary digital capitalism. Live streaming is a novel form overwhelmingly found amongst young people disproportionately harmed by the economic crisis, and we propose that the contraction of employment opportunities is giving rise to a strong imperative to be seen, which finds an outlet in the practices of self-presentation, self-promotion and entrepreneurial enterprise that are central to financially-successful live streaming. We first outline relevant contemporary economic conditions, the disproportionately high prizes at the top of career paths, the attendant lures of fame and fortune, and how the politics of play have been affected by these changes. We then explore Twitch.tv (the leading game live streaming platform) as our case study, covering how streamers make themselves appealing, market themselves, profit, and how the platform’s affordances are interwoven into these questions. In doing so, we present Twitch as illustrative of the broader phenomenon of ‘digital celebrity’ and argue its practices reflect changes in work opportunities and social identity. In particular, we show that Twitch is a platform that allows neoliberal aspirations to play out through competitive performance.

Spatialising university reform

This article investigates contemporary attempts to reform the institution of the university according to neoliberal ideological influences and oppositions to them. It employs Doreen Massey’s concept of space to focus on relations and separations made in the process. My ethnography of the University of Helsinki’s 375th anniversary celebration, which turned into a public spectacle of various visions of higher education, constitutes the main empirical material. Finland’s ambivalent position in the world renders the spatial work of forging connections and disconnections particularly conspicuous. It enables specific neoliberal aspirations (such as to be among ‘the world’s best universities’ amidst global competition) to become very strong but also allows additional trajectories, like the one about higher education as public goods, to present themselves as legitimate alternatives. The centre-periphery relations are therefore critical sites for analysing the contemporary university transformation, since they appear to be key drivers of the reform but also the primary source of resistance to it.

From “research in management” to “management of research”: changing nature of doctoral programme at Indian management schools

This essay explores the changing nature of doctoral programmes at premier Indian management institutions. We share a reflexive account of the lived experiences of Indian doctoral students as they navigate widespread changes that arise from new Indian neoliberal aspirations to emerge as global thought leaders. The resulting emphasis on global performance metrics as well as our position as disadvantaged subjects seeking entry into the Eurocentric knowledge economy creates particular vulnerabilities for the doctoral student. We outline coping strategies and their implications and conclude with an alternative agenda for scholars.

China as a ‘new frontier’: Neo-liberal aspirations, imaginaries and (dis-) enchantments of Swiss migrant professionals in mainland China

Mainland China has emerged as a migration destination for foreign professionals in the post-Mao era. This ethnographic article investigates the aspirations of one group among them – self-initiated Swiss migrant professionals – and the imaginative geographies of China that they develop and renegotiate throughout their journeys. The analysis reveals their aspirations and imaginaries signifying a quest to push limits for the sake of neo-liberal self-development. Swiss professionals encounter a China in transformation as a ‘country of extremes’ and approach it as a ‘new frontier’. Rich in challenges and opportunities, it both enables and limits interviewees’ projects for self-realization, further fuelling the strong sense of transience that permeates their migration trajectories.

When disaster strikes: Under-insurance in Australian households

In undertaking what we believe is the first national-scale study of its kind, we provide methodologically transparent, statistically robust insights into associations and potential unfolding effects of house and contents under-insurance. We identify new dimensions in the complex relationship between householders and insurance, including the salience of interpersonal – and likely institutional – trust. Under-insurance is (re)produced along socio-economic and geographical lines, with those of lower socio-economic status or living in cities more likely to be under-insured. Should a disaster strike, such communities are likely to suffer further disadvantage, especially if governments continue to shift the responsibility for risk onto households. Our findings support the observation that insurance can contribute to increasing socio-economic urban polarisation in light of natural disasters. We conclude by considering how under-insurance may contribute to growing urban social stratification, as well as how it may produce situated ethical and political responses that exceed neoliberal aspirations.

‘The sound of Thatcherism on vinyl’: New pop, early neo-right aspirations and Spandau Ballet

Abstract Since the heyday of mass culture criticism, capitalism has been linked to a certain music. Whether it be Hollywood musicals, disco or Theodor Adorno’s idea of atonal music as an antidote to the logic of capitalism, the evaluation of certain kinds of (popular) musical culture as an epitome of capitalist ideology has arisen from time to time. The early Thatcher era created the pop world in which the glorification of style, consumerism and marketing philosophy sent the message that capitalist values (in the style of 1980s’ anti-Thatcher rhetoric: consumer desire, materialism and stylistic excesses) were becoming an increasingly integral part of the new pop culture, first aspirationally, but later inadvertently intertwined with the economic values of the New Right. Some British music and artists coming from the 1980s – because of the theorizing of the market economy in their image and work – were connected to the cultural ethos of Thatcherism. In particular, the white soul boy band Spandau Ballet was one of them. This article will ask in which ways Spandau Ballet embodied these neo-liberal aspirations, and how ambiguously the Thatcherism of their times defined the idea of the band and their music.

Conflict Analysis in ‘World Class’ Cities: Urban Renewal, Informal Transport Workers, and Legal Disputes in Lagos

This paper focuses on the disconnect between, on the one hand, the neoliberal aspirations to make Lagos a model megacity for the twenty-first century and, on the other hand, the precarious temporality of the present in which many informal workers weave their routine existence. In particular, the paper examines the corrupt and violent manner in which the Lagos State Road Traffic Law of 2012 has been adapted by the government to restrict the space and mobility of informal workers as a function of making Lagos a ‘world class’ megacity and ‘Africa’s big apple.’ Focusing on commercial motorbike-taxi (okada) riders and their association, the analysis extends to how one group of informal workers in Lagos are responding to neoliberal urban planning that impinge on their opportunities in, and rights to, the city. In this way, the paper illuminates our rather tenuous understanding of how informal workers exercise agency as they attempt to intervene in the unequal processes of urban renewal projects.

Personalisation of adult social care: self‐directed support and the choice and control agenda

Accessible summary This study explores the impact differing ideas about personalisation has on the way in which self‐directed support operates, particularly in the light of cuts to social service budgets. Six participants from a local authority social care transformation team, five from a user‐led organisation and two national experts were interviewed. The findings suggest that whilst generally a positive process, in some cases, self‐directed support has become confusing, and personal budget holders have had less say over how their outcomes are met. The research is useful for people with learning disabilities as it provides an insight into what is happening in local authorities and the impact of the cuts on self‐directed support. SummaryIn 2007, ‘self‐directed support’ was introduced in adult social care in England to establish choice and control – in the assessment process itself and over service provision – for all service users. The personalisation agenda is underpinned by a range of ideologies, particularly a civil rights empowerment approach and neoliberal market discourses. This research sought to explore how tensions between these discourses are reflected in the operation of self‐directed support, particularly in the light of the changing political and economic climate. The small‐scale study involved semi‐structured interviews with 13 participants: six professionals from a local authority social care transformation team, five from a user‐led organisation and two national experts. The findings suggest that whilst the choice and control agenda may be consistent with market discourses, it is not compatible with neoliberal aspirations of cost‐cutting. To maintain trust and provide as much opportunity for choice and control as possible, the adjustments being made to the personalisation agenda in the light of the current budgetary pressures need to be made explicit to service users.

‘Le Sénégal Qui Gagne’: Soccer and the Stakes of Neoliberalism in a Postcolonial Port

This essay reveals how Senegal’s effort to promote itself as an anti‐terrorist Islamic nation while aggressively pursuing privatization is linked to the way soccer is promoted internally, to cohere the population around neoliberal aspirations, and externally, as evidence of Senegalese potential. This essay also explores the politics of ‘gagnism’, or the sense that economic development takes place most effectively by strict adherence to a set of rules subjects must follow, like an athlete who presumes a direct correlation between energy expended in conditioning and athletic contests. Crucial to the idea of ‘gagnism’ as well, is the fact that such competition takes place in a context that is ‘refereed’ by more authoritative agents. By drawing from discourses surrounding Senegal’s performance in the 2002 World Cup, the author shows how national enthusiasm for soccer parallels the political strategies developed by a state apparatus concerned with maintaining a ‘democratic’ public image in order to guarantee investments from more powerful nations interested in Senegal’s cultural resources.