Neoliberal Capitalist Society Research Articles

Cripping and queering gender-based violence prevention: bridging disability justice, queer joy, and consent education

Although frequently relegated to the periphery in conversations about gender-based violence prevention, the disabling impacts of traumatised subjectivity both affect survivors’ abilities to fully participate in sex and contribute to survivors being more than twice as likely to be sexually (re)victimised compared to peers without trauma histories. In this paper, we seek to crip and queer approaches to gender-based violence prevention, particularly consent education, by learning from 2SLGBTQ+ and disabled trauma survivors’ affective experiences of queer, crip sexual joy and the radically messy ways in which they establish their own care networks for deeply pleasurable sex through the principles of disability justice. Refusing pathologising understandings of survivors as those who need to be cured, we highlight traumatised subjectivity as emblematic of the ambiguity and ambivalence inherent in sex as well as the possibilities for caring, consensual sex that moves beyond the concept of consent employed in colonial, neoliberal capitalist societies’ binary (Yes/No) consent laws. Drawing on the work of crip and queer theorists such as Mia Mingus, Alison Kafer, Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha, and J. Logan Smilges, we reveal how disability justice principles, such as interdependence, collective access, and access intimacy, offer transformative understandings for anti-violence efforts.

Assembling the multitude: the transversal potential of categories for social work practice

This article elaborates on a theoretically informed model of action rooted in the concept of professional resistance, which approaches groups of people and social problems in an alternative way to the dominant modes of managerial practice. The aim is to create conditions for approaching groups with social needs differently and to be able to act politically for social change within contemporary society. We will do this by exploring the potential of the assembly in line with Hardt, Negri and Butler, as well as the notion of transversal politics as developed by Yuval-Davis, for creating political subjectivities and alliances across differences. The reason for this theoretical approach is based on how the effects of categorisation and its political function can sometimes be challenging to identify. This is argued to especially be the case within a neoliberal capitalist society where categories induce competition between precarious groups to maintain the political status quo.

How Work as a Category of Thought Has Been Disrupted in Neoliberal Capitalist Societies

This article summarises and presents the main findings of Marie-Anne Dujarier’s French book Troubles dans le travail (2021). It focuses on the “travail” category of thought and practice in France, where it has become a ubiquitous and moral notion. The article traces the history of its social uses, highlighting its polysemy with respect to vernacular and scientific uses, then its limited meaning when used in institutions. It examines contemporary situations in which activity requiring effort, the production of use or exchange values, and the status of employment and remuneration are disconnected. Their frequency and importance cast doubt on who is working and when. This disruption in the “work” category of thought indicates that the eponymous institutions do not adequately accommodate real practices. They are therefore questioned. This observation is also an invitation for researchers to unpick this word for a better analysis of contemporary social, psychological and ecological issues. In France, the word “travail” is ubiquitous in our day-to-day exchanges, as well as in our scientific and political discussions (“travail” is often translated as ‘work’ or ‘labour’, translations are part of the history of the category). Although regularly given only one value, it also has a moral domain. But what does it mean? This article offers Anglo-Saxon readers a summary of in-depth sociological research on this issue, published in the book called Work Troubles. Sociology of a category of thought (French original title: Troubles dans le travail. Sociologie d’une catégorie de pensée) by the author of this article.

Common space creation: can architecture help? (Towards a provisional manifesto)

Reclaiming the right to the city means reclaiming the city as commons. In such a prospect, the city becomes both the scope of urban commoning practices as well as one of the most crucial factors that shape them. In order to proceed in this direction, we need to reclaim the power of collective creativity as well as the sharing of expert knowledge. In today’s neoliberal capitalist societies, different actors as well as deviant professionals are envisaging, proposing, and performing spaces that depart from the necessities and priorities of the prevailing logic. Can we talk about dissident architectural performances? And could such performances contribute to the production of common spaces, spaces that corroborate citizen participation and forms of self-governance? Using examples from Europe and Latin America studied through extensive field research, this paper explores urban commoning as a potentially emancipatory process.

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.

Sentidos de educação na publicidade da EaD: do paradigma do processo ao paradigma do produto

Abstract In this article, based on the theoretical-methodological framework of Discourse Analysis, we analyze advertising pieces that put distance learning (DL) on sale in the market. Such advertisements circulate socially – although not exclusively – in the online form. Our objective was to restore, by means of a discursive and materialist interpretative device, (re)interpretation conditions to the process of producing effects of meanings evocable in and through the referred advertising pieces. This restoration was carried out by focusing on how the meanings of education at stake in DL advertising shift the inscription of (distance) learning, moving it away from the process paradigm and leading it toward the product paradigm. This rendering process produces, as an effect, the projection of (distance) learning to the status of merchandise. By means of our analyses, we show that, as merchandise, DL advertising establishes discourses that aggravate the class struggle in neoliberal capitalist society by means of articulation and discursive transversality that (re)direct DL’s discursive reduction to professionalization, to effortlessness, to instantaneousness, to the digital form and to jobs, configuring DL as the “new normal” of/in education. Because of this discursive practice and its impact on society, the discursive devices operating in DL advertising produce a risk to the emancipation of the subject in and through (distance) learning.

The Logic of Dispossession

One particular focus of world-systems analysis is to examine the historical trajectory of capitalist transformation in peripheral regions. This paper investigates the capitalist transformation in a specific peripheral area—the country of Bangladesh. In particular, it examines the role of dispossession in transforming an agricultural society into a neoliberal capitalist society by looking at the transformation of Panthapath Street in Dhaka, Bangladesh, since 1947. Building on the existing literature of dispossession, this article proposes an approach that explains the contribution of dispossession in capitalist accumulation. The proposed theory consists of four logics of dispossession: transformative, exploitative, redistributive, and hegemonic. These four logics of dispossession, both individually and dialectically reinforcing one another, work to privatize the commons, proletarianize subsistence laborers, create antagonistic class relations, redistribute wealth upward, and commodify sociopolitical and cultural aspects of urban life. This paper’s central argument is that dispossession not only converted an agricultural society into a capitalist society in Bangladesh, but that dispossession continues to reproduce the country’s existing capitalist system. This research draws on a wide range of empirical and historical evidence collected from Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 2017 and 2018.

Self Help, Sunlight and a Modern Chair: Considering Auckland’s historic signage as a heritage object

Cities are an ever-changing space, filled with commerce and community. Signage plays a strong role in the visual narrative of the urban environment. It creates a constant visual hum, a street level monologue of promotion, identification and direction. Commercial signs are designed to serve and improve business. So, what role could an old, fading or non-functioning piece of signage possibly play in our neoliberal capitalist society? From a designer’s perspective, there’s a lot to like—the craftsmanship, the idiosyncrasies of a hand-generated pieceof typography, the sense of nostalgia for a time before globalisation and brand guidelines took over. Looking at historic signs from a broader context they also represent an “intricate urban history.”1 They speak of the changing face of commercial enterprise, social values and cultural expression. Even when they no longer serve their original semantic role of commercial promotion, they “accumulate rich layers of meaning. They no longer merely advertise, they are valued in and of themselves. They become icons.”2 The semiotic function of an historic sign shifts to a new role—signifying notions of survival, continuity and loss. They also feed into our complex personal narratives of place, identity and community.3 These multiple and interwoven values can form the cultural significance of historic signs. Despite this recognisable value, historic signage tends to fall through the gaps of heritage practice and legislation in New Zealand. This paper offers a set of case studies that represent a range of possible outcomes for historic signs, when they exist outside a system of heritage management. I propose six categories for framing the case studies: remain, repair, regenerate, relocate, replace and remove. These examples are combined with a broader reflection on the value of historic signage and an overview of relevant heritage practice in New Zealand. The intention is to encourage reflection on the possible heritage significance of historic signage and our current approach to assessment, scheduling and conservation.

Modos de ideologia e de colonialidade em materiais didáticos de Contabilidade

O objetivo do trabalho é identificar aspectos da ideologia neoliberal nos capítulos que tratam dos princípios contábeis, no livro Contabilidade Introdutória da FEA USP e no CPC00 (R2) - Estrutura Conceitual para Relatório Financeiro. Para atingir o objetivo, analisamos os modos linguísticos típicos através dos quais a ideologia opera, com base em Thompson (2011). Trata-se de uma pesquisa crítica e interpretativa que se propõe a discutir a educação contábil no Brasil sob a perspectiva decolonial. Nos textos analisados foram identificados os modos de ideologia que legitimam, naturalizam e universalizam uma sociedade capitalista neoliberal e contribuem para uma imagem da contabilidade voltada unicamente para o mercado financeiro, por meio de uma a abordagem monológica e normativa nos materiais didáticos. Nesse sentido, o presente estudo aponta para a necessidade de uma política educacional contábil, para além dos cálculos e técnicas tradicionais, que reconheça o papel da contabilidade como linguagem, uma vez que esta possui gramática e estrutura próprias que asseguram as condições de reprodução de textos em contextos sócio-políticos distintos.

"The Prostitution Problem": Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes.

Prostitution, payment for the exchange of sexual services, is deemed a major social problem in most countries around the world today, with little to no consensus on how to address it. In this Target Article, we unpack what we discern as the two primary positions that undergird academic thinking about the relationship between inequality and prostitution: (1) prostitution is principally an institution of hierarchal gender relations that legitimizes the sexual exploitation of women by men, and (2) prostitution is a form of exploited labor where multiple forms of social inequality (including class, gender, and race) intersect in neoliberal capitalist societies. Our main aims are to: (a) examine the key claims and empirical evidence available to support or refute each perspective; (b) outline the policy responses associated with each perspective; and (c) evaluate which responses have been the most effective in reducing social exclusion of sex workers in societal institutions and everyday practices. While the overall trend globally has been to accept the first perspective on the "prostitution problem" and enact repressive policies that aim to protect prostituted women, punish male buyers, and marginalize the sex sector, we argue that the strongest empirical evidence is for adoption of the second perspective that aims to develop integrative policies that reduce the intersecting social inequalities sex workers face in their struggle to make a living and be included as equals. We conclude with a call for more robust empirical studies that use strategic comparisons of the sex sector within and across regions and between sex work and other precarious occupations.

The Effect of Changing Capital-Labour Relations on the Universities: Some Interpretations of the 2008 Financial Crisis

Neoliberal capitalism has faced severe criticism both in principle and in practice since the Lehman Shock in 2008. The purpose of the paper is to identify and explain how the current mode of neoliberal capitalism redefines and reshapes the societal roles of the university sector in neoliberal capitalist societies, notably the UK and the US in the post-credit crunch period. The paper examines capital-labour relations in relation to the concept of capitalism, which is then interpreted in the context of the socio-economic roles of the universities. This paper argues that the 2008 financial crisis per se has not removed government expectation of the economic role of the universities, which has been shaped in government neoliberal policy and practice over three decades and lately developed in relation to the discourse of the knowledge economy. The effect of 2008 was rather the rise of ontological insecurity, the loss of credibility in degrees and awareness on problematic graduates’ transition from university to work in a secure, managerial or professional occupation, as new dominant political discourses such as ‘lost generation’, ‘youth unemployment’ and ‘living wage’ suggest. This paper clarifies the differences between higher education access and graduate employment opportunities.

A Gramscian Approach to Studying the Judicial Decision-Making Process

This paper applies a Gramscian analytical framework to scrutinise the judicial decision-making process. Based on two distinct research projects, the article explores how, on one hand judges in criminal courts can be identified as part of the bureaucratic machinery of the state, as ‘technicians of repression’; whereas, on the other hand, human rights judges can be distinguished as providing ‘moral and intellectual leadership’ in their production and reproduction of certain values. Some of the key questions this article seeks to answer are: What is the role of hegemony in the judicial decision-making process? To what extent are legal actors both ‘technicians of repression’ and ‘moral and intellectual leaders’? This paper uses examples from empirical research conducted at courts in Argentina and at the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights to identify and explore this dual role of judges as both repressive technicians and moral and intellectual leaders in neo-liberal capitalist societies.

Was (is) taking place a Nomadic Practice?

Rosi Baidotti argues that in late neo-liberal capitalist society the nomadic subject is too easily equated with the "hyper-individualism" traits of advanced capitalism and conflated with "quantitative multiplications," rather than "qualitative differences and multiplicities." During the events and projects implemented by the feminist group taking place between 2000 and 2012, the nomadic subject was a key figuration that inspired discursive and material interventions into architectural and public institutions. Taking these interventions as starting point this paper is adapted from a transcript of a conversation presented at Architecture and Feminisms and focuses on a critical examination of a strand of feminist practice, spanning three decades, including Matrix, WAFER and taking place. In dialogue with these practices, the paper explores the demands on practice and subjectivities a nomadic mode of thinking and acting produces while questioning if these are still radical positions within feminist spatial practice today.

Comment from the Field

Hosted on 25 and 26 July 2016 by Katherine Runswick-Cole the Research Centre Social Change at Manchester Metropolitan University, Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane brought together academics, activists, practitioners, and students. Organized in association the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, and the University of Chester, Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane invited critical debate around the concept of being human, and opened sites of discussion to resist and redefine this concept.Chaired by Cassandra Ogden (University of Chester), Jonathan Harvey (University of Southampton) presented his keynote entitled (Re)claiming a Sociological Understanding of Acquired Brain Injury: Towards a (Re) Imagining of the Identity of Brain Injury Survivors. Drawing upon findings from his own research, he questioned the ability of diagnostic labels to capture the multifaceted nature of what it means to be human, and discussed the lives of acquired brain injury (ABI) survivors as a means of reconsidering this category. He suggested that the (re)construction of identity is both unpredictable and long-term, evolving far beyond the timing expectations of rehabilitation. In addition, he explored the way in which ABI survivors reported a new normal, and questioned whether this learning journey occurs within the confinements of rehabilitation or upon (re)entering the familiar, intimate space of the home. To conclude, he argued a sociological theorization of disability.In the opening panel Deconstructing Normal, Elizabeth Tilley (Open University) revealed how the forced sterilization of women labelled learning difficulties continues in the present day. She argued that decisions made for rather than with women impede their reproductive rights and perpetuate methods of professional power. She also discussed the navigation of ethical tensions that arose due to the risky nature of researching the experience of contraceptive choice women labelled a learning difficulty. Next, Grainne O'Connor (Open University) explored the relationship between an owner and their assistance dog, particular attention to how this relationship plays out in social encounters. For her, social encounters alter depending on whether the owner is present through the assistive dog, or through their own body. She argued that these encounters result in a feeling of social invisibility, as the owner is perceived through the filter of the assistance dog. Finally, Lindsay O'Dell (Open University) deconstructed the normative nature of developmental tasks. With the aim to re-frame understandings of autism in positive ways, the paper critiqued developmental trajectories as inherently harmful, perpetuating a practice that positions autistic children against measures of ideal childhood.In the panel, The Human, Sumaira Naseem and Rebecca Lawthom (Manchester Metropolitan University) proposed the academy as a site considering and contesting this taken-for-granted category. They discussed assessment as a practice contaminated by technological quantification, and shared possible ways that we can (re)humanize academic practices. They suggested that by starting disability, the practice of assessment opens up different ways of learning and sharing knowledge that can transform the academy. Following this, Suanne Gibson and Melanie Parker (Plymouth University) reflected on their kaleidoscopic approach to disability that emerges from their entangled identities. That is, by positioning their distinct lenses and perspectives together, they are able to obtain a unique refraction of the world. This diffractive methodology is, as they argued, vital to reflect on what disability reveals about education, social justice, and the self in a neoliberal capitalist society, and is crucial to enable practice that can make a difference in the world. Finally, Louise Hickman (University of California) engaged the audience in her presentation through vocal participation. …

Precarious Irregular Migrants and Their Sharing Economies: A Spectrum of Transactional Laboring Experiences

There is growing interest in the sharing economy as a different way of living in neoliberal capitalist societies, but this discussion is frequently heavily classed and the ethos generally rests on excess capacity of goods and services. This article intervenes in this emerging body of writing to argue that it is equally important to explore the types of sharing and exchange that are survival-compelled among those with precarious livelihoods. Precarious migrants are a group facing significant livelihood pressures, and we are concerned here with a particular category of insecure migrants: irregular migrants including refused asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. Such migrants are especially shaped by their sociolegal status, and without rights to work or welfare they are susceptible to exploitation in their survival-oriented laboring. Existing literature from labor geographies and the subdisciplinary area of unfree and forced labor has not generally focused on the experiences of these migrants as house guests in domestic realms, nor has it thoroughly explored their transactional labor. As such, this article argues that the moral economies of gifting and sharing within such labor create and reproduce particular social structures, cultural norms, and relationships that position people along a spectrum of freedom and exploitation.

The Rise of Citizenship and Rights Post the Advent of Enlightenment

Capitalism is essentially an unequal system dividing the society into the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'. It is today seen as the greatest challenge to realizing the basic human right of equality. However if we trace the history of capitalism, it emerged as a result of a revolt against the feudal system and the inequality perpetuated by that system. Further, simultaneous to the development of capitalism was the development of modern citizenship and democratic rights - at least in the country where capitalism first originated i.e. England. The aim of the paper is to analyse how a system which itself was a mark of revolt against oppression and which led to the development of rights has become the greatest perpetrator of oppression and greatest threat to human rights. The paper begins with a brief history of the rise of citizenship followed by that of capitalism as a response to feudalism. Through T H Marshall's Citizenship and Social Class the paper tries to analyse the contradiction between the rise of citizenship and capitalism and then goes on to discuss the future of citizenship in the current neo-liberal capitalist society.

Moral Distinctions and Structural Inequality: Homeless Youth Salvaging the Self

This paper explores the construction and contestation of moral distinctions as a dimension of contemporary structural inequality through a focus on the subjectivities constructed by young people who have experienced homelessness. Empirical material from two research projects shows that in young people's narratives of homelessness, material insecurity intertwines with the moral economies at work in neoliberal capitalist societies to construct homelessness as a state of moral disgrace, in which an ungovernable experience is experienced as a moral failure. When young people gain access to secure housing, the increasing stability and security of their lives is narrated in terms of a moral adherence to personal responsibility and disciplined conduct. Overall the paper describes an economy of worth organized around distinctions between order and chaos, self-governance and unruliness, morality and disgrace, which structures the experience of homelessness. As young people's position in relation to these moral ideals reflects the material conditions of their lives, their experiences demonstrate the way that moral hierarchies contribute to the existence and experience of structural inequalities in neoliberal capitalist societies.

Kolektivizam kao otpor i kao egzodus / Collectivism as Resistance and as Exodus

Contrary to traditional liberal thought that perceives the idea of multitude as a negative category which implies private sphere deprived of public presence or public voice and which designates singularized individuals as mute or invisible to/in community and alienated or expelled from otherwise united nation/state, the contemporary notion of multitude balances between binary oppositions private-public, individual-collective. This contemporary notion is not opposed to the idea of nation as a unified community/collective, but is itself determined by a different form of unity that precedes it – the general thinking ability or, as Paolo Virno calls it, the general intellect. This paper explores possibilities of contemporary collectives (as temporary unification forms of the multitude) to oppose and resist exploitation of the general intellect in neoliberal capitalist societies.

On the Present and (Dark) Future of Academia and Humanities

I have a pessimistic view on the present and future of high education in general, and humanities in particular. As I see things, we face three main related problems. The first is what I would characterize as corporate control; the second, what I perceive as a class-divide enterprise; and the third as an attempt to limit the freedom of expression. I should add that my general impressions are mainly based on what I perceived within the North American higher educational system and in Europe, especially in England. Furthermore, I do not claim to be discovering something sociologically novel. What’s happening in higher education is a mere reflection of what’s going on in our neo-liberal capitalist society. My aim is modest. It mainly consists in highlighting how the neo-liberal and globalization (marketing) processes are affecting higher education and research. The conclusion doesn’t look rosy. Intellectuals, philosophers in particular, should take time to reflect on the current corruption of academia, and take a stance against the attack on the integrity of higher education.

Renewing an academic interest in structural inequalities

Class and class divisions remain central forces in shaping the ways we live. Indeed, arguably, in neo-liberal capitalist societies, class remains the primary division of structured social inequality. Official reports still speak of the vast inequalities in access to wealth, power and resources that characterise Western developed countries (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2007; Institute for Public Policy Research, 2004; UNICEF, 2000). Massive sections of our populations experience inadequate access to employment, housing, education, nutrition and healthcare. These inequalities cut across ethnic, ‘racial’ and gender groups and seem, on one level, to create a shared set of life experiences and responses. In many of our cities we find whole areas where those formerly engaged in industrial production, including those who once arrived from overseas to offer cheaper labour, now find themselves marginalised from the current needs of neo-capitalism, creating new kinds of social classes. A Joseph Rowntree Foundation report (2005) on (in)equality in Britain recently described the continuing correlations between wealth and educational success, between wealth and access to good healthcare. It also commented on the fact that the areas where many second homes remain vacant most of the year are also areas where local people struggle to find accommodation. About 3 million homes in the UK have more than three cars and the same number have none. It also showed that in families where there were no adults in employment children were more likely to be found as full-time carers. The report concludes that perversely it is the poorest people who have the most need but also least access to resources. However, to many, the study of social class, or ‘social stratification’ as it became known in sociology, has been long out of date. Once it formed the heart of sociology, but as the traditional working classes seemed to disappear with the demise of manufacturing, academics that had wanted to champion class in the Marxist tradition drifted to other causes. Yet, meanwhile, it is clear that we live in societies where who you are, who you can become, are to a significant extent shaped by your socio-economic – or class – position in society.