Neoliberal Conceptions Research Articles

The impacts of organizational culture and neoliberal ideology on the continued existence of incivility and bullying in healthcare institutions: A discussion paper

Countless research studies have demonstrated the detrimental effects of incivility and bullying in healthcare. Despite the abundance of proposed solutions to this issue, many healthcare leaders continue to fail in mitigating the existence of such negative behaviors in the workplace. Personality attributes of perpetrators and victims have received attention, but much less research has examined the organizational and neoliberal causations of incivility and bullying in healthcare. Being the largest occupational group in the health sector, nursing professionals have the greatest influence and are crucial in ending these behaviors. This discussion paper outlines the effects of incivility and bullying in healthcare and provides a critical analysis on how organizational culture and neoliberal ideology influence the pervasiveness and persistence of these negative behaviors. The analysis reveals that organizational cultures that misuse power, disregard equality, and facilitate oppression, foster the existence of incivility and bullying in the workplace. Such cultures permit perpetrators to misuse their authority to control resource allocation, ignorance to social inequalities, and the silence of victims. Furthermore, the neoliberal concept of deregulation, austerity, and individualism further these behaviors. The neoliberal reforms have led to underfunding of anti-bullying programs and policies, use of bullying behaviours as management strategies, and victim-blaming for profit maximization. Financial cutbacks have resulted in denial and acceptance of uncivil and bullying behaviours in healthcare institutions, which endangers the rights of healthcare providers to a safe workplace environment. To curtail these negative behaviors, robust anti-bullying policies and programs must be strictly enforced and sustained in practice. Further exploration on the association of organizational culture and neoliberal principles to incivility and bullying in healthcare is greatly warranted.

Organic entities, costume, human body and neo-liberalism

This visual essay presents four of the author’s artistic projects, which respond to prevailing eastern European neo-liberal conceptions of the human body and the subjects it produces. The first project is concerned with the use of human skin as an organic material donated by its ‘owner’ for the manufacture of a corset and belt, which become parts of a new costume. The second project explores the characteristic of the ‘ideal’ neo-liberal human subject by means of the costume produced by manipulating the author’s own blood. The third project highlights the cultural norm according to which one is expected to present oneself to the known and especially unknown others in line with the dominant standards of feminine beauty – erotically attractive, healthy, youthful and slim. The fourth project focuses on the almost obsessive endeavour to preserve or rather achieve ‘the perfect skin’, as evident in countless beauty advertisements and artificially ‘optimized’ selfies.

The Neoliberal University in Ireland: Institutional Bullying by Another Name?

New managerialism and the pervasive neoliberalisation of universities is by now a well-established phenomenon. Commentaries explore the political and economic drivers and effects of neoliberal ideology, and critique the impact on higher education and academic work. The impact on the health and well-being of academic staff has had less attention, and it is to that we turn in this paper. Much academic interest in neoliberalism stems from the UK, Australia and the United States. We draw particularly on studies of public Irish universities, where neoliberalism, now well entrenched, but something of a late-comer to the new public management party, is making its presence felt. This conceptual paper explores the concept of neoliberalism in higher education, arguing that the policies and practices of new public management as exercised in universities are a form of bullying; what we term institutional bullying. The authors are researchers of workplace culture, workplace bullying and incivility. Irish universities are increasingly challenged in delivering the International Labour Organisation (ILO) principles of decent work, i.e., dignity, equity, fair income and safe working conditions. They have become exposed in terms of gender imbalance in senior positions, precariat workforce, excessive workload and diminishing levels of control. Irish universities are suffering in terms of both the health and well-being of staff and organisational vibrancy. The authors conclude by cautioning against potential neoliberal intensification as universities grapple with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper reviews neoliberalism in higher education and concludes with insight as to how the current pandemic could act as a necessary catalyst to stem the tide and ‘call out’ bullying at the institutional level.

Savage Economics: Race, Futurity, and Civilizational Hierarchy in Early Austrian Neoliberalism

In this essay, I interrogate the racialized roots of the early neoliberal conception of (Western) civilization. I do so by placing that conception in a broader genealogy of early Austrian economic theory, focusing in particular on the writings of Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich von Wieser, and Ludwig von Mises. Rather than directly analyzing their understanding of civilization, however, I approach this topic by centering the way they construct the figure of the “savage.” This figure, as historians of racial discourse have shown, has long played an important role in European thought, often serving as the constitutive racial other to the “civilized” European. I proceed by asking what role the figure of the “savage” plays in the writings of the early Austrian economists. In doing so, I argue that while Menger and Böhm-Bawerk utilize deeply racialized tropes about “savage” peoples to establish the limits of their own theory of subjective valuation, Wieser not only adopts these tropes but also folds them into a broader racialized philosophy of history that sees historical development as a function of racial endowment. In the final section, I explore Mises’s writings in more detail, arguing that his understanding of race partially overlaps with Wieser’s but also departs from it in several crucial ways. In particular, Mises sees racial hierarchy as a historical rather than a natural phenomenon, prompting him to articulate a mode of “racial historicism” that sees racial hierarchy as a precarious system that could be overturned. In closing, I argue that Mises’s position on racial hierarchy anticipated several key elements of later neoliberal approaches to the question of race.

Populism, localism and democratic citizenship

This article articulates and explores a localist conception of citizenship that stands in contrast to more liberal, neoliberal and cosmopolitan conceptions. A localist orientation, and some real sympathy, is evident in specifically ethnographic accounts of voters who supported Trump, Brexit and populism more broadly, including such accounts by Arlie Hochschild, Robert Wuthnow, Kathy Cramer and Justin Gest. This localist orientation echoes the Antifederalist opponents of the American Constitution, Jacksonian Democrats, Tocqueville’s account of American democracy and the American populists. I consider both the virtues and vices of localism. The possible benefits include local practices of nested reciprocity, special obligations, specifically local ‘social bases of selfrespect’ – in the terminology of John Rawls – and feelings of belonging and home (what the Germans call Heimat). However, localism also has its downsides: its resources can empower prejudice and exclusion. I end with a reflection on localism and exclusion in Lorraine Hasberry’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Being plurilingual versus becoming a linguistically sensitive teacher: tensions in the discourse of initial teacher education students

ABSTRACT The beliefs of pre-service teachers in initial teacher education (ITE) in Catalonia about plurilingualism and teaching in diverse classrooms are analysed and tensions in their discourse are observed. Following the analysis of discourse in interaction (e.g. Heller [2005]. Discourse and interaction. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 250–264). Blackwell Publishers Ltd), we analyse data from an individual reflection task and subsequent focus group discussion in which pre-service teachers discuss their ideas about linguistically sensitive teaching. Our findings suggest that pre-service teachers have very positive ideas regarding being plurilingual speakers. However, when positioning themselves as teachers, the feelings they express about linguistic diversity in schools become negative. These ideas are linked to ideological constructions that circulate, for example, in European institutional discourses about multi/plurilingualism and in neoliberal conceptions of languages and learning. We suggest that more spaces for discussion and reflection are needed in ITE in order to promote linguistically sensitive teaching among future practitioners.

#reimagining Arab Women’s Social Media Empowerment and the Postdigital Condition

Social media intersects across physical spaces, digital infrastructures, and social subjectivities in terms of what is being called the “postdigital,” in an increasingly merging offline/online world. But what precisely does it mean to be “postdigital” if you are an Arab woman or social actor in the Global South? How does access to social networking sites, while increasing visibilities, also provide potential for increased agency? This study is concerned with the extent to which Arab women’s self-presentation practices on Instagram could be considered as empowering, or otherwise, within the postdigital condition. First, the study takes Instagram as a case to develop a theoretical framework for considering social media as a tertiary artifact, involving material, routine-symbolic, and conceptual affordances. Second, it applies the artifact framework to explore a corpus of self-presentations by five Arab women influencers. Feminist postdigital theorizing offers unique contributions to problematizing normative, ethnocentric, and neoliberal conceptions of Arab women’s empowerment. The application of the novel framework leads to an interpretative discussion of Arab women’s influencing practices across merging offline/online and transnational boundaries. Overall, the critical perspective begins to reimagine Arab women’s empowerment, not simply as individualized or material processes, but as agencies that are interwoven within the commercialized and conceptual dynamics of visual social media.

Securitizing Energy Cooperation: Israel's Regional Shift in the East-Mediterranean

AbstractDoes energy securitization promote or hinder regional cooperation over energy resources? This paper argues that policymakers frame energy issues as existential threats to facilitate both outcomes, depending on how they perceive the reliability of their country's energy supply. When countries are confident in their supply, they begin to seek regional cooperation opportunities that they had previously rejected. Rather than abandon existential rhetoric that served to prevent cooperation when supply was vulnerable, policymakers adopt opposing constructs of security and direct them toward different audiences to gain their support. When addressing the international community, policymakers employ neoliberal concepts of security as a mutually beneficial result of trade and cooperation. When addressing domestic audiences, policymakers employ realist paradigms of security as competition toward self-preservation and dominance. Israel serves as a case study to test this argument. This paper examines how major natural gas discoveries in 2009 shifted longstanding Israeli isolationism and encouraged it to seek deeper economic ties with its neighbors. To promote its new policy, the Israeli government argued before its domestic audience that gas exports are essential for creating leverage against the EU and preventing terrorism on its borders, while simultaneously arguing toward foreign audiences that the exports serve to promote regional unity.

Feminist Institutionalism and Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is an ideology that requires the public/private split in human affairs to exist and to be perceived as normal and natural. This paper begins by looking at the feminist critique of dualisms, as developed by the feminist institutional economist Ann Jennings and feminist economists Paula England and Julie Nelson and then applies their critique of the public/private dualisms to neoliberal conceptions of agency and care. The paper argues that once dualism is exposed as an incorrect representation of existential reality, it becomes impossible to use for justifying the characterization of behavior, invidious distinctions, and the social valuations of human behavior it supports, thereby making neoliberal assumptions about normal behavior that support its policy prescriptions untenable. Finally, it explores the consequences of this critique of neoliberalism on the conceptualization of agency and the economics of care. HIGHLIGHTS Feminist economists and original institutionalists share aspects of their inquiry. Both approaches understand economics as the study of social provisioning. The public/private dualism is necessary to sustain neoliberal ideology. Discrediting the public/private dualism leads to rejecting neoliberal agency. Caring is inconsistent with neoliberal ideology.

Policing cities: Incivility, disorder, and societal transformations

AbstractOver the past 30 years, we have been witnessing a rise in incivility policing across western but also non‐western cities. The term “incivility policing” refers to bans and exclusion aimed at drinking alcohol, begging, loitering, sitting in public, and many other kinds of subcriminal conduct. Scholars have observed an increasing readiness to demand legal “solutions” aimed against these kinds of conduct. In this paper, I review two major strands of scholarship dealing with the origins of these calls: First, a rising punitiveness and a “law and order” mentality, inspired by the Broken windows theory and Zero tolerance policies. Second, privatization of space and the rising influence of private actors over public spaces are discussed with references to the concepts of neoliberalism, revanchism, and the right to the city. The effect of incivility policing on vulnerable groups is examined using the example of homeless people in public space. In the final part, I suggest new factors which could help us understand the rise in incivility policing: These include general trust, everyday trust, and the imaginaries of community.

From the tyranny of the neoliberal individual to neoliberal populism

ABSTRACT Neoliberalism relies on a libertarian conception of both the individual and liberty. It is grounded in a conservative understanding of the extra-social source of political order and a tendency to situate individuals in concrete groups. Crucially, it views public restrictions on individual liberty – issuing from a collective, homogeneous person (‘the people’) – as inherently despotic. Neoliberalism thus excludes the concept of ‘the people’ from its ideological corpus and prioritizes individual personal interests. In this article, I argue that individual liberty does not prevent the political tyranny of the individual and is in fact compatible with the concept of the people. As I show, neoliberal populism retains ‘the people’ as a core concept while cloaking its members in the neoliberal conception of the individual, while liberalism understands the people as a collection of individuals who associate their personal well-being with that of others, pursued under freely willed public laws.

What’s in a name? Political antagonism and critiquing ‘neoliberalism’

ABSTRACT The concept of neoliberalism has been central to critiques of the dominant social order over the last 20 years. The use of the term itself is often a focus of repetitive debates, between those who affirm its conceptual validity and those who highlight its vagueness. Informed by Laclau’s concepts of antagonism and heterogeneity, this article offers a theoretical account of how the term is articulated, especially in left-wing discourses (including scholarly discourses) that prioritize neoliberalism as an object of critique. I affirm the use of neoliberalism as a critical shorthand for naming an oppressive social order, but also highlight the potential political and strategic problems with catch-all critiques of neoliberalism from within a radical left imaginary. I suggest another mode of critiquing neoliberalism that is cultivated through an ability to talk about how different social phenomena that might be one-dimensionally named as ‘neoliberal’ could be reconstituted in a coherent anti-neoliberal programme.

Growth and/or development: specificity of the Russian economic model

The article provides a systematic description of the main features of the post-Soviet economy. The methodology and categorical apparatus of classical political economy, classical institutionalism, as well as of other directions of heterodox economic theory are the basis for identifying the content, the structure and the peculiarities of Russian economy. The authors demonstrate the influence of climatic, spatial, and historical characteristics of Russia on the formation of these characteristic features. The main stages of the evolution of Russian economy are highlighted, as well as the particularities of their growth / decline as shown by macroeconomic quantitative indicators. Special attention is paid to qualitative indicators characterizing social results and contradictions in the development of the main sectors of the economy. On this basis, conclusions are formulated that reveal the reasons for the deep recession in the 1990s, extensive development in the 2000s and stagnation in the 2010s. The author comes to the conclusion that nonrandom the presence of two main concepts for the further development of Russia - a neoliberal concept and a concept focused on enhancing social regulation and social orientation of development (and not just economic growth) – is not accidental.

ПРОБЛЕМА СОЦИАЛЬНО-ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКОЙ ДИФФЕРЕНЦИАЦИИ ПРОСТРАНСТВА В АСПЕКТЕ РЕГИОНАЛЬНОЙ НЕОЛИБЕРАЛЬНОЙ ПОЛИТИКИ

Based on the methods of qualitative retrospective and cause-and-effect analysis of the texts of scientific articles on the research topic published in the abstract databases of domestic and foreign researchers’ publications, the author infers that by now the neoliberal concept has become a global paradigm of the universal (economic, socio-demographic, cultural, ecological, etc.) development of most states of the world. The author determines that one of the key provisions of this concept is the deregulation of the resource allocation process (state noninterference in the economy), which in practice, in the process of implementing the state regional policy, led to a widespread increase in the socioeconomic differentiation of territories. The latter, in turn, contradicts the declared goals of global (in the documents of the UN, the World Bank, and other international organizations) and regional development: these goals imply a reduction in the level of inequality between countries and within them. Based on the results of the analysis, the author of the study suggests that today, within the framework of the dominant neoliberal paradigm, the decision on the priorities of the leveling of the socioeconomic space is controversial. The theoretical significance of the results of the research lies in the expansion of theoretical and methodological ideas about the process of socioeconomic differentiation of territories considered in the aspect of the implemented neoliberal policy.

White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights by Justin Gomer

Reviewed by: White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights by Justin Gomer Megan Hunt White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights. By Justin Gomer. Studies in United States Culture. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. xvi, 252. $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5580-2.) Neoliberal concepts of color blindness have hindered meaningful engagement with race since the 1970s. But amid ambiguous race-neutral discourse, white Americans found a conceptual space to visualize the racial conflict they [End Page 546] could no longer articulate. That space, according to Justin Gomer's White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, was the cinema. Gomer's analysis begins with Dirty Harry (1971) and Claudine (1974), which communicated divergent voices of color blindness and antistatism in the early 1970s. Color-blind marketing undermined Claudine's "black nationalist critique of the welfare state," while Dirty Harry's frequent implications of overblown state protections for criminals reflected white America's lurch to the Right (p. 47). Gomer highlights the latter film's explicit references to the Miranda and Escobedo Supreme Court decisions, the constitutional rights to counsel secured in the 1960s, as evidence of the film's concern with a bureaucratic "coddling of the accused" (p. 29). However, Cape Fear (1962) had offered a similarly cathartic engagement with white racial anxieties and increased civil rights protections for the obviously criminal almost a decade earlier. By the mid-1970s, continued battles over integration produced a coherent color-blind ideology, which Gomer convincingly argues is at the heart of individualist narratives like Rocky (1976). White northerners, celebrating Jim Crow's demise in the South while upholding exclusionary practices closer to home, strategically reframed white supremacy. They resented busing and affirmative action, and those who could adopted an increased identification with their immigrant ancestry, like Rocky Balboa, the Italian Stallion, himself, sponsored by his friends at Shamrock Meats. Narrative and aesthetic choices in Rocky make it clear that its protagonist has not benefited from America's racist past. Rather, he is the hardworking, self-reliant descendant of immigrants, pitted against the entitled Apollo Creed, the African American champion Rocky is plucked from obscurity to fight, repositioning the spectacle of interracial boxing for the color-blind era. It is, Gomer writes, "one giant Bakke metaphor on the silver screen" (p. 81). Rocky and Apollo reunited in Rocky III (1982) to face a mutual threat from the urban ghetto. Apollo Creed, now the image of bourgeois respectability, provides color-blind credibility to Rocky's resentment of Clubber Lang's young Black upstart. As Gomer shows in an accessible and convincing account of 1980s political culture, Ronald Reagan was simultaneously providing White House credibility to previously localized white resentments. By the time he left office, Reagan had cemented color blindness as national creed, prompting Hollywood to reconstitute Black history through the white savior, a trope that readers are perhaps more familiar with than the neoliberal, color-blind individualist Gomer's book foregrounds. By the advent of the 1990s, color blindness was more than Hollywood's preferred lens. It became its approach to both the past and the present, shaping films as diverse as Glory (1989) and Dangerous Minds (1995). Here, Gomer expands existing explorations of the civil rights melodramas of the late twentieth century. But his book offers more than filmic analysis alone, providing a sociopolitical exploration of color blindness from contested idea to neoliberal ideology that would be useful regardless of whether it was applied to films. That Gomer provides such potent cinematic examples is a testament to the central premise of the book: that the conditions and consequences of the color-blind ideology warrant our attention in a multitude of fields. [End Page 547] Megan Hunt University of Edinburgh Copyright © 2021 Southern Historical Association

The role of the OECD in the development of global policies for migrant education

ABSTRACT This paper reports the results of a document analysis study examining the policies, trends, and conceptions developed by the OECD in the last 15 years regarding the development and mainstreaming of globalised policies of migrant education. From the process of the analysis, three thematic categories emerged: (i) Socio-economic aspects of education: International testing and the performance gap; (ii) OECD’s recommendations on Migrant Education; and (iii) Influence mechanisms: Standardisation, benchmarking, and dissemination of suggestions. Findings are discussed in the light of the concepts of neoliberalism, standardisation and soft governance. It is argued that, despite the philology pertaining the promotion of neoliberalism and standardisation through the OECD’s policy suggestions, OECD’s soft governance champions for alternative models, philosophies and practices that may challenge dominant modus operandi towards more just educational policies for migrants.

‘Fitting In’ and ‘Giving Back’: Constructions of Australia’s ‘Ideal’ Refugee Through Discourses of Assimilation and Market Citizenship

AbstractThis paper examines how the ‘ideal’ refugee is conceptualized in discussions about Australia’s humanitarian policies. Critical Discourse Analysis of semi-structured interviews with 24 Western Australians revealed strong themes of assimilation alongside the neoliberal concept of ‘market citizenship’, where the ‘ideal’ refugee is positioned as achieving economic success through contributions to Australia’s labour market. These discourses served competing ends—they were voiced both in support of, and opposition to, Australia’s acceptance of refugees. I argue that by constructing refugees’ deservingness of protection along market citizenship lines, their belonging becomes contingent upon their adherence to a narrowly defined ideal. Consequently, refugees who do not fit within this ideal face continued exclusion, with their ‘human capital’ prioritized over their safety and human rights. This article calls for a reconsideration of arguments that focus on refugees’ capacity to ‘fit in’ and ‘give back’ as these narratives may exacerbate their experiences of exclusion and stigmatization.

Privately protected areas in increasingly turbulent social contexts: strategic roles, extent, and governance

This paper considers increasing global reliance on privately protected areas (PPAs) and associated nature-based tourism (NBT). A targeted literature review was guided by three research questions, which sought to understand how neoliberal concepts and dynamics manifest in private forms of conservation; how private forms of conservation have manifested in Chile; and, how Chileans’ attitudes towards their government’s neoliberal policies might affect their expectations of PPAs. The search strategy resulted in 284 resources. Three dimensions of neoliberal approaches to PPAs emerged from the data each highlighting specific vulnerabilities: a loss of the social embeddedness of nature; an imposition of global, capital dynamics; and conflicting discourses and assumptions. Results suggest that, in order to improve long-term support and integration of PPAs and NBT, greater attention needs to be given to social well-being outcomes (including equity and justice concerns), building of social capital, and the preservation of local identities and histories. Additionally, regional and PPA-specific land-use planning needs to incorporate greater public engagement, cross-jurisdictional coordination, and transparent and inclusive decision-making.

Coining Neoliberalism: Interwar Germany and the Neglected Origins of a Pejorative Moniker

Widespread academic use of the term neoliberalism is of surprisingly recent origin, dating to only the late 20th century. The vast and growing literature on this subject has nonetheless settled on an earlier origin story that depicts the term as self-selected moniker from the Walter Lippmann Colloquium, a 1938 Paris gathering of free-market academics that foreshadowed the post-war founding of the Mont Pelerin Society. This origin story, however, is a myth that likely derives from a misreading of French philosopher Michel Foucault, who first directed modern scholarly attention to the Paris gathering. By turning to neglected German-language sources, this study shows that the term and modern concept of neoliberalism predate the 1938 conference. Rather, neo/neu-liberalismus was first popularized by a succession of Marxist and Fascist political theorists in the early 1920s, who employed it as a term of disparagement against the Marginal Utility School of economic thought anchored at the University of Vienna. These critics of marginalism diverged sharply on the political far-left and far-right of interwar Austrian and German politics, but shared a common disdain for the theory of subjective value promoted by the Viennese circle around economist Ludwig von Mises. This earlier origin story of the term links it conceptually to modern-day uses, which often display a similar pejorative character to its interwar uses on the political left. It further helps to explain why several attendees of the 1938 conference, Mises among them, rejected the proposed term.

Spatializing authoritarian neoliberalism by way of cultural politics: City, nation and the European Union in Gdańsk’s politics of cultural policy formation

This paper develops perspectives which seek to spatialize authoritarian neoliberalism through arguing for greater engagement with the politics of urban cultural policy formation in the neglected context of post-socialist East and Central Europe. Through analyzing the politics of urban cultural policy-making in Gdańsk, Poland, the paper spatializes authoritarian neoliberalism by exploring how relations between the urban and the national, and between the urban and the supranational, shape urban cultural policy, drawing upon literatures on political economy, policy mobilities, cultural policy research, and the concepts of authoritarian neoliberalism and the relational-territorial nexus. Gdańsk is a liberally run city, strongly aligned with the European Union (EU), opposed to the authoritarian neoliberal national level politics in Poland. The paper analyses urban-national tensions and relationships between Gdańsk and the EU to unpack the contested spatial nature of authoritarian neoliberalism.