Neoliberal Citizens Research Articles

Bordered welfare in Australia: Income management as a bordering technology of neoliberal and colonial governance

In this article we investigate the imposition of compulsory income management on racialised categories of welfare recipient in Australia, identify the contribution made by neoliberalism and settler colonialism in shaping that policy, and characterise income management as a form of ‘bordered welfare’. We begin by acknowledging that key features of neoliberal governance include an ideological aversion to the provision of welfare and the shifting of responsibility onto individuals to promote their own financial security and wellbeing. This has been accompanied by punitive approaches to welfare provision for those perceived to be deficient neoliberal citizens and a commitment to using financial levers, including the welfare system, to shape all manner of human behaviour. We trace the contours of the income management system and report the views of Aboriginal organisations and community leaders about their differential treatment as welfare recipients, noting that restrictions on financial autonomy are a well-documented form of surveillance and control historically directed towards Aboriginal Peoples in Australia. We conclude that this system operates as a form of bordered welfare that classifies certain categories of Aboriginal people as deficient citizens, subjecting them to differential, and detrimental, treatment driven by the ideologies and technologies of both neoliberalism and settler colonialism.

Educating ideal neoliberal citizens: discourses of agency and responsibility in comprehensive sexuality education

Educating ideal neoliberal citizens: discourses of agency and responsibility in comprehensive sexuality education

Reflections on Ideologies Underpinning ELT Curriculum and Nature of Global Course Books Used in Saudi Arabia

The influence of neoliberal ideology in the educational literature has widely been discussed recently. Yet relatively little critical attention has been paid to the ways these hegemonic agendas have shaped and influenced the development of ELT curriculum and published teaching materials. This theoretical paper reviews literature on how neoliberal ideology influences ELT curriculum, namely published teaching materials. Also, it argues that ELT curriculum contents are essentially political and ideologically constructed to fulfil the politico-economic interests of ELT international publishers, located in the centre (e.g., UK and US). These neoliberal ideological constructions are preparing our students to become neoliberal citizens, consumers, or customers of English language learning, who can become apt members of callous marketization. This theoretical paper recommends that TESOL professionals need to play their role by demystifying and resisting these ideologies by redesigning the ELT curricula, such as course books. In addition, scripted curriculum and one-size-fits-all policy reflected in global course books contents do not fulfil the needs of diverse learners in various EFL/ESL contexts. Therefore, TESOL professionals, in particular teachers and academics need to be aware of current and potential educational policies and advocacies driven by western neoliberal educational ideologies. In practice, ESL/EFL teachers, academics and curriculum developers are required to consider their contextual local realities, such as students' English language learning constraints and teaching perspectives from teachers stand points in designing the EFL/ ESL curriculum contents.

A ‘good’ neoliberal citizen: A policy analysis of conceptions of young Singaporean citizens

Globalisation has driven the pursuit of more active citizenship forms. Many governments see educational policies as critical to preparing young citizens with the necessary skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours to thrive in a changing global context. However, what active citizenship education is and means varies across countries. Little is known about how active citizenship is conceptualised in educational policies in Singapore and the kinds of citizens these policies and programmes aim to nurture. This article draws on an analysis of 20 Singapore policy texts, such as political speeches, press releases, and curriculum documents, to examine the kind of Singaporean citizens the Singapore government seeks to nurture. We argue that globalisation provides a critical context for local conceptualisations of citizenship, but the active Singapore citizen is not an individualistic nor a universal neoliberal citizen subject. In line with Asian conceptions of citizenship, which posit that ‘good’ people make good citizens, active citizenship in Singapore has a prevailing focus on ‘good’ character and an active citizen who prioritises the well-being of the collective, yet caught in a paradoxical pursuit of a neoliberal citizen.

Protest in Mpofana, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: narratives and strategies

ABSTRACT Mpofana protests are characteristic of local protest actions occurring across South Africa. In 2014 Mpofana Municipality was placed under administration by the provincial authority and one of the reasons cited for this were high levels of protest. This paper focuses on Mpofana protests to examine demands for ‘service delivery’ and citizenship as well as political strategy with regards local level leadership. The paper also considers the narratives and strategies around protest in the context of the ‘neoliberal citizen’ and ‘market’ approaches to citizenship. It draws on a qualitative study comprising focus groups conducted across three Mpofana wards. The paper suggests that in Mpofana there are clear struggles for the attainment of social citizenship in the context of a divide between those who have no access to work and wages and those who have access to income and assets. Citizenship attainment struggles are interwoven with failed patronage networks, and processes of piercing the ‘common sense’ appear through protesters questioning local leadership and proposing solutions for change. There is also evidence in Mpofana though of the ‘depoliticised subject’ fostered by the neoliberal doctrine where the language of protest is cast in market terms.

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

Authorship and individualization in the digital public sphere

‘You probably have a parasite’: Neoliberal risk and the discursive construction of the body in the wellness industry

AbstractIn this article, I ask how the body is discursively constructed within the wellness industry. I analyze a corpus of articles from the Goop franchise, examining how bodies are constructed, and how subjects are impelled to act within contemporary neoliberal risk culture. Corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis reveals that the body is ultimately constructed as unwell and at risk, by virtue of its presence in the environment. Faced with this inescapable risk, the neoliberal citizen is responsible for managing the self in ever-increasing domains. I link the particularities of this discursive embodiment to larger cultural imperatives of self-surveillance, discipline, and control, and argue that it is particularly a white female subject who is interpellated within this discourse. Throughout, the wellness industry is revealed as propelling the interminable cycle of the project of the self, and as a contemporary mechanism for the reproduction of docile white female bodies. (Discursive embodiment, neoliberal ideology, risk society, corpus analysis, critical discourse analysis, feminist critique)*

"It Just Kind of Cascades": A critical ethnography of methamphetamine-related pleasure among people in recovery.

Despite its well documented risks and harms, methamphetamine use can also be experienced as a pleasurable, purposeful, and productive activity. Drug use discourse has historically deemphasised the pleasures of drug use, as they can contradict the expectations of neoliberalism that individuals be moderate, rational consumers. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of people trying to reduce or control their methamphetamine use, utilising a critical interactionist approach to excavate the subjugated knowledge of methamphetamine-related pleasure, and construct an understanding of methamphetamine use that incorporated these positive experiences. Qualitative interviews and ethnographic observation were conducted over an eight-month period with a group of twelve people using methamphetamine and accessing recovery services. Transcripts and fieldnotes were analysed thematically with a critical interactionist lens. The pleasures of methamphetamine use were differentiated into pursuing the rush, exploring sociality, self-medication, and desiring productivity. The interwoven nature of these themes presents a multidimensional understanding of methamphetamine use resulting from a cascade of interacting causes and effects, rather than a linear product of individual choice or structural forces. These findings also highlight the complex symbiotic relationship between pleasure, productivity, and risk for people using methamphetamine which can be traced to the broader cultural and economic context in which use occurs. Interventions and policies responding to harmful methamphetamine use must address the content and nature of the methamphetamine use cascade, acknowledging the diverse needs methamphetamine can meet for contemporary neoliberal citizens, and the sometimes complex and sophisticated purposes for which people may utilise its effects.

Migration and the neoliberal state: accounting ethics in the Italian response to the refugee crisis

ABSTRACT This research adds to sparse accounting literature on immigration by problematizing the intertwined relationship between accounting and ethics in the neoliberal era. It explains ethical paradoxes inherent in the neoliberal project and how these unfold in the accounting practices deployed by the Italian state to handle the ongoing refugee crisis. Our analysis shows how the State’s proclaimed conviction to the human right cause turned out to be neoliberal in nature. On the one hand, the use of accounting was indeed partially dictated by the State’s mission of constructing the neoliberal citizen. On the other hand, accounting practices mainly prioritized efficiency over care and reflected the unwillingness of the State to enact responsibility for immigrants' human rights. We conclude that the use of accounting epitomizes complementary rather than opposing forms of neoliberalism and ultimately unveils the inability of the State to offer a humanitarian response to the immigration crisis.

Critical Representation of Neoliberal Capitalism and Uneven Development in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s This Mournable Body

This article focuses on Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel This Mournable Body (2018), which completes her trilogy on Tambudzai Sigauke’s life story in relation to the neoliberal political order in contemporary Zimbabwe. The country has been recently referred to as cultivating ultra-neoliberal policies, and, in such a framework, state repression becomes replaced by state negligence towards citizens’ economic survival. In This Mournable Body, neoliberalism and the uneven accumulation of wealth are portrayed through the tourism industry. The novel shows deepening forms of injustice and economic discrepancies in neoliberal Zimbabwe, where impoverished groups of people, living in the cities as well as outside them, are compelled to commodify their lives for the needs of the tourism industry in order to get by. In the novel, Tambudzai emerges as an egoistic character, as she epitomises a new type of neoliberal citizen–subject who is ready to maximise her own benefits at the expense of others and whose ambitions remain only in her own career. I analyse her character with regard to the so-called sell-out mentality; however, Dangarembga depicts Tambudzai’s unpatriotic behaviour as a defence mechanism, which finally gives way to full mourning at the end of the novel. Dangarembga’s critical characterisation of the neoliberal forms of capitalism is juxtaposed with her representation of an alternative unhu/ubuntu business model at the end of the novel. However, even if Dangarembga proposes unhu/ubuntu business as a Zimbabwean form of balanced capitalist enterprise, I argue that neoliberal markets are taking advantage of these African forms of capitalism as well. The romanticised ending of the novel slightly undermines its otherwise astute illustration of uneven development in neoliberal Zimbabwe, which contributes to rural and urban poverty, communal rupture and drastic forms of citizen competition.

Islamophobia, Neoliberalism and the Muslim ‘Other’

Muslim communities have been racialized as ‘Other’ for over 1,400 years.1 The manner in which the figure of the Muslim has been invoked as a threat across the centuries demonstrates the importance of recognizing the ideological context if we are to fully understand the nuances of Islamophobic ‘thinking.’ The aim of this paper is to situate the Islamophobia of today within neoliberalism as the globally dominant, hegemonic ideology of our time.2 As is discussed below, Muslim communities are today racialized as the uncivilized ‘Other,’ embodying dispositions of how not to be neoliberal. Constructing Muslim communities as such serves to legitimize the neoliberal, neo-colonial project ‘over there’ and at home in the metropole. This paper details the manner in which contemporary neoliberal civilizing missions operate from above, akin to a form of hard-power, and below, winning hearts and minds, through ‘a full-blown social program’3 to create neoliberal citizens, while penalizing those that refuse to participate.4

You've Got to Be Real: Authenticity, Performativity and Micro-Celebrity in South Africa.

For many young black South African women, the competitive arena of social media offers access to significant social and cultural capital, which can be invaluable in the unequal context in which they live. In order to succeed in this high stakes environment young women carefully construct the identities and idealised selves that they present on platforms like Instagram. They display a lifestyle of glamorous consumption, showcasing exclusive brands and fashionable items and modifying and modelling themselves to fit a beauty ideal that emphasises youth, light skin, slender bodies and straight hair. As well as these physical features, young women on Instagram are also hyper-aware of the need to appear “authentic”: to have their online lives and selves appear natural, easy and free of artifice in order to further enhance their status as role models to other women. This article draws from in-depth interviews with 10 black South African “micro-celebrities.” It reveals the central role of authenticity in these young women's online performances of self, and considers the contradictory impulses that require them to both “feel” and “appear” real. Within the framework of existing hegemonic structures, these women appear to be exercising their freedom as neoliberal citizens within a post-feminist setting. Despite the promises of freedom, however, this article reveals the way in which their performances of selfhood are powerfully constrained by normative ideas about aspiration and success.

Parent involvement in education? A Foucauldian discourse analysis of school newsletters

The Ontario Ministry of Education ( 2010 ) puts forth parent involvement as a solution for underachievement and as a resource for building better schools. A Foucauldian discourse analysis of school newsletters reveals that efforts to engage parents also function as a neoliberal strategy designed to govern parents. Using Foucault’s theory of governmentality, I show how the newsletters compel parents to invest in their children’s schooling and judge their value as parents in relation to their ability to produce good neoliberal citizens. I discuss how the newsletters depict ‘good’ parents as those who: (1) do not offer input into schooling; (2) make education a parenting priority and (3) raise good neoliberal citizens. The newsletters represent a strategy for cultivating neoliberal parents who do not ask more from schools and instead demand more of themselves in terms of preparing their children for school and for life. Problems with this approach are that: it asks parents to take up their children’s schooling in ways that push out other family priorities and it shuts down potential collaborations between parents and schools that could challenge neoliberal subjecthood. I call for reformulating discourses of ‘good’ involvement in ways that allow for more equal parent–school partnerships.

Citizenship under COVID-19: An analysis of UK political rhetoric during the first wave of the 2020 pandemic.

The paper presents an analysis of the UK government discourse on citizenship during the first 9 months of the COVID‐19 pandemic (March–November 2020). We adopted a socio‐cultural approach to citizenship drawing on the scholarly tradition of ideological dilemmas and rhetorical psychology as well as interdisciplinary work on neoliberalism. In our analysis of over one hundred briefings and other material by the Prime Minister and members of the Cabinet, we identified five interrelated constructions of the ‘good citizen’: the confined, the heroic, the sacrificial, the unfree and the responsible citizen. The paper maps these constructions onto the ideological dilemmas of freedom/control, passive/active citizenship and individualism/collectivism. We show that, through the rhetorical use of notions of gratefulness for citizens' sacrifice and shared responsibility, the UK government's discourse appears to challenge the dominant model of the neoliberal citizen. However, it solidifies this very same model by responsibilizing individual citizens whilst abdicating itself from responsibility. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Groomed for capitalism: biopower and the self-care, self-improvement rituals of adolescence in Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade and Donald Glover’s Atlanta

ABSTRACT Self-care, self-improvement and biopower, as they relate to the commodification of adolescence and the grooming of young people as neoliberal citizens, are the central concerns of this article. Foregrounding new perspectives on the effects such trends have on the body [Cusset, F. (2018). How the world swung to the right: Fifty years of counterrevolutions. MIT Press], it analyzes two texts, the film Eighth Grade and the Atlanta episode entitled ‘Fubu’ (season 2, episode 10), to consider how neoliberal capitalist values manifest in the lives of protagonists, Kayla and Earn, whose young bodies have been colonized by the self-care, self-improvement ethos of our current cultural spirit.

The Two Subalterns: Perceived Status and Violent Punitiveness

From the mid-twentieth century, state and public conceptions of deviance and crime control have turned increasingly punitive (Hallett 115; Hutchinson 138). In a Western context, criminal justice has long been retributive, prioritising punishment over rehabilitation (Wenzel et al. 26). Within that context, there has been an increase in punitiveness—understood here as a measure of a punishment’s severity—the intention of which has been to help restore the moral imbalance created by offending while also deterring future crime (Wenzel et al. 26). Entangled with the global spread of neoliberal capitalism, punitiveness has become internationally pervasive to a near-hegemonic degree (Sparks qtd. in Jennings et al. 463; Unnever and Cullen 100). The punitive turn has troubling characteristics. Punitive policies can be expensive, and increased incarceration stresses the criminal justice system and leads to prison overcrowding (Hutchinson 135). Further, punitiveness is not only applied unequally across categories such as class, race, and age (Unnever and Cullen 105-06; Wacquant 212) but the effectiveness of punitive policy relative to its costs is contested (Bouffard et al. 466, 477; Hutchinson 139). Despite this, evidence suggests public demand is driving punitive policymaking, but that demand is only weakly related to crime rates (Jennings et al. 463). While discussion of punitiveness in the public sphere often focuses on measures such as boot camps for young offenders, increased incarceration, and longer prison sentences, punitiveness also has a darker side. Our research analysing discussion taking place on a large, regional, crime-focused online forum reveals a startling degree and intensity of violence directed at offenders and related groups. Members of the discussion forum do propose unsurprising measures such as incarceration and boot camps, but also an array of violent alternatives, including beating, shooting, dismemberment, and conversion into animal food. This article draws on our research to explore why discussion of punitiveness can be so intensely violent.

“But how could anyone rationalize policies that discriminate?: Understanding Canada’s Failure to Implement Jordan’s Principle

This article seeks to understand Canada’s failure to implement Jordan’s Principle, a child-first policy ensuring First Nations have access to the same level and quality of services available to other children. Policy-making in Canada rests firmly within a neoliberal political framework that extends market-based thinking to all aspects of social life. Neoliberal thought interlocks with stories of Other to inform notions of deservingness as well as one’s potential as a valuable citizen with something to contribute. Social policy decisions, including the decision to implement a particular policy or not, offer a means through which to disseminate neoliberal values and norms. As self-determining peoples with distinct rights, lands, and governance structures, First Nations transgress the image of the “good” neoliberal citizen in a variety of ways. Neoliberalism holds that punitive measures are sometimes needed to encourage citizens to adopt particular norms, and this allows policy makers to rationalize and justify policies that discriminate against First Nations children. Stereotypes about Indigenous peoples are also used to manipulate public sentiment in favour of government policy. Canada’s failure to implement Jordan’s Principle can be understood as part of a broader strategy to encourage First Nations to rescind their distinct rights and assimilate as good neoliberal citizens.

Digital Ecosystems of Ideology: Linked Media as Rhetoric in Spanish Political Tweets

That Twitter is a major form of political mobilization and influence has been well documented. But what is the role of linked media—references to newspapers, photos, videos, and other external sources via URLs—in political Twitter messaging? How are linked references employed as campaign tools and rhetorical devices in messages published by political parties on Twitter? Is there a quantifiable relationship between a party’s ideology and linked media in tweets? With the spread of fake news, threats to a free press, and questioning of the legitimacy of political messaging on the rise globally, the sources on which parties draw to convince voters of their online messaging deserve critical attention. To explore the above questions, this article examines uses of linked media in tweets generated by the official accounts of Spain’s top five political parties during, in the lead-up, and in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish General Elections held on April 28, 2019. Grounded in a corpus of 10,038 tweets collected between March 1 and May 15, 2019, this study quantifies, compares, and critiques how linked media are integrated and remixed into tweets published by the left-leaning Spanish Workers’ Socialist Party (@PSOE), right-wing Popular Party (@populares), left-wing Podemos (@ahorapodemos), neoliberal Citizens (@CiudadanosCs), and far-right Vox (@vox_es) parties. Evidence reveals that each party links to media from somewhat homophilic groups of news outlets, journalists, and public figures, an analysis of which can shed light on how parties construct their digital self-representations, ideological networks of information, and attempt to sway voters.

The enactment of the neoliberal citizen: evidence from a case study in Bogota, Colombia

ABSTRACT This article looks comparatively at the enactments of citizenship in two schools in Bogota, Colombia: a private elite institution and a public-private partnership school from the outskirts of the city. Data was collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews Enactments of students were conceptualised so as to identify the discourses of citizenship that were at play. I argue that both schools are under the influence of a strong neoliberal project that places emphasis on educating productive citizens. However, this conceptualisation of citizenship might not work for contemporary Colombia as it continues to reproduce a highly stratified society that carries within itself colonialities that do not allow for the interaction and collaboration of peoples. The article concludes that a thick cosmopolitanism that emphasises causal responsibility might be a more adequate lens for citizenship education in Colombia.

Constructing the (Healthy) Neoliberal Citizen: Using the Walkthrough Method “Do” Critical Health Communication Research

Introduction. Since the launch of Web 2.0, we have witnessed a trend towards digitizing healthcare tools for use by both patients and providers. Clinical trials focus on the ways that digital health technologies result in better outcomes for patients, increase access to healthcare and reduce costs. Critical approaches which explore how these technologies result in changes in patient embodiment, power relations and the patient-provider relationship are badly needed. Objective. To provide an instruction case example of how Light, Burgess and Duguay’s (2018) walkthrough method can be mobilized to study apps to address critical health communication (CHC) research questions. Methods. We apply the walkthrough method to the BEACON Rx Platform. In doing, we conduct a detailed technical walkthrough and evaluate the environment of expected use to answer the following questions: How does the platform shape (and how is it shaped by) understandings of what it means to be healthy? Who are its ideal users? How does this impact its environment of expected use? Conclusions. This paper demonstrates the potential contributions of the walkthrough method to critical health communication research, namely how it enables a detailed consideration of how an app’s technical architecture and environment of expected use are embedded with symbolic representations on what it means to be healthy and what practices should be engaged in to maintain “good” health. It also demonstrated that, despite the rhetoric that digital health technologies democratize healthcare, the BEACON Rx platform is a risk monitoring tool by its very design.