Neoliberal Context Research Articles

Within and between heteronormativity and diversity: narratives of LGB teachers and coming and being out in schools

ABSTRACT Many schools are taking action to become inclusive of gender and sexual diversity, however, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer teachers (LGBTQ) continue to exist at the margins of both schools and research. This study reports on interviews with a group of self-identifying LGB teachers in England. Subsequent thematic analysis examined the subject positions that are available, particularly around being ‘out’ (or not) in school. Findings suggest that LGB teachers take on complex identity work to maintain their status both as LGB and as exemplary teachers. For many, their desire was to become ‘authentic’ LGB teachers, which for them involved being out in school. However, this is arduous work for people who can be too easily positioned as ‘failing’. There are ways to navigate this, which principally involve becoming the agent of dominant discourses rather than their subject. Overall, there is pressure on the LGB teacher to exist, not because it is a discrete identity, but because of its marked absence from dominant discourses in schools. This is particularly relevant to the neoliberal context in which teachers are caught between performances of heteronormativity and diversity, and where sexuality is intimately related to authenticity.

Discourses of Good Motherhood and the Policing of Young Parenthood

Within a neoliberal context, youth pregnancy continues to be socially recognized as an individualized mistake, influencing young mothers by shaping and constraining their actions and lifestyle choices. Utilizing a Foucauldian and poststructural feminist lens, and drawing on interviews with 11 young mothers, this research examines how, where, and why young mothers experience forms of policing. Participants conceptualized “good” motherhood through two qualities—“being there” and “taking care of herself too”—which simultaneously reproduce and resist hegemonic discourses related to normative mothering and neoliberalism. Findings also reveal how real and perceived instances of judgement resulted in young mothers’ policing and/or self-policing.

Tackling Complex Social Challenges within Neoliberal Constraints: The Context Shaping ‘Intellectual Quality of Life’ (iQoL) in a Canadian University Context

The contemporary academic environment in Canada has undergone reorganization based on neoliberal principles, and has increased attention focused on the importance of supporting interdisciplinary initiatives to address complex problems affecting global society. The purpose of our study was to examine the experience of people participating in a specific university-funded interdisciplinary research initiative. As there is a strong emphasis within this program on reporting on the outcomes of the funding that supports interdisciplinary collaboration, our aim was to explore how participation may shape one’s intellectual quality of life (iQoL) and how one’s iQoL could be conceptualized and understood. Using a pragmatic constructivist case study, focus group and individual interviews were undertaken with 30 participants involved with university-funded interdisciplinary research teams. Findings illustrate that their iQoL was shaped by their capacity to engage in and achieve what they viewed as their core work and its outcomes. Related sub-themes addressed the social and relational climate, institutional environment and structure, and expectations and resources. We argue that further development of iQoL as a unique construct is required to adequately measure the full range of people’s experiences in academia, particularly when aiming to address ‘wicked’ social and global problems within a predominantly neoliberal context.

Apuntes críticos sobre las dinámicas de institucionalización de la interseccionalidad

Esta nota pone en relación la institucionalización de la interseccionalidad y el progresivo desapego de las trayectorias activistas e intelectuales de las mujeres de color que la inspiraron. El texto sugiere que esta pérdida de radicalidad es la consecuencia lógica de cuatro dinámicas de institucionalización de la interseccionalidad, que son: 1) el olvido de la genealogía de color y el ethos de la justicia social, 2) un desplazamiento epistemológico hacia la disciplina y la estandarización, 3) la hegemonía de las producciones científicas del Norte global frente al Sur global y 4) la política de la innovación y los mercados de la diversidad en un contexto de gobernanza neoliberal.

Reconstrucciones “Resilientes” de la Identidad Profesional del Profesorado: Endoprivatización y Cultura Performativa en Andalucía (España)

The purpose of this research is to understand how the reforms performed under the neoliberal agenda could be transforming the identity of teachers together with the teaching practices. Methodologically, an inductive approach has been followed, stablished in the Grounded Theory. A theoretical sampling is defined by relevant criteria and limited to the Autonomous Community of Andalusia. An in-depth semi-structured interview is proposed; it’s been developed with twelve teachers of Compulsory Secondary Education. The results show the shape of a performative teacher, who is pedagogically limited, not considered in spaces of decision about their performance in the classroom, and whose role is delegitimized by the administration. Therefore, the neoliberal agenda calls for a new resilient reconstruction of professional identity. The aim is to put aside that feeling of weariness and intellectual blaming that teachers perceive producing new professional profiles typical of a flexible, agile and emotionally intelligent teacher. It is about narrowing critical spaces down to the individual sphere and being able to find emotional balances that will allow dissatisfied professionals to deal with the pressures of the neoliberal context.

The Soybean Trap: Challenges and Risks for Brazilian Producers

Since the 1970s, Brazilian soybean production has grown rapidly, driven by increasing national and international demand and rising prices. Consequently, soybean production has come to be perceived as an attractive opportunity, with the number of farms producing soybean across the country reaching around 240,000 in 2017. However, producers can become trapped by dependencies on moneylenders, traders and input supply companies, facing so-called ’agricultural treadmills’. In this study we undertook interviews with individual soybean producers and representatives of trader companies, producers’ associations, the processing industry, government and civil society, and used these data to analyze rural production operations related to the soybean supply chain and to interpret how agricultural treadmills persist in this sector. Based on literature review and fieldwork interviews, we found that producers have been able to add value to their products, but some strategies they use to cope with production costs lead them into high-risk situations. Our findings show that, sectoral (e.g., producers’ associations) and collective actions (e.g., farmers’ buying groups) are a useful strategy for producers to gain influence and bargaining power against transnational companies and input suppliers compared to acting as an individual within the soybean supply chain. Producers were emphatic that the current soybean business is now much more than just farming activities, and that education and training are highly valuable and important strategies to keep producers in the soybean business and out of traps. These findings are important given the neoliberal context in which individual producers find themselves and which presents challenges that alone they can do little to change. Policies that enable individual producers to make environmentally- and financially-sound agricultural decisions are vital to ensure a sustainable soybean system that does not trap producers in endless cycles of debt and investment.

Resisting within the neoliberalising academy: Reflections on doing transformative doctoral research

This paper reflects on the authors' experiences in doing transformative research in two countries of South East Europe - Greece and Bosnia and Herzegovina, during their doctoral studies abroad – United Kingdom and Finland. Within the neoliberal context of academia which celebrates ‘success stories’, research committed to change and action may not always be welcomed and may even be considered as a pathway to ‘failure’. Reflecting on this type of 'failure' and 'opportunity' through our personal stories, we debate how we can resist neoliberalisation in academia from within and promote an anti-oppressive and empowering place of hope and change.

La construcción de sujetos en torno a la institucionalización de políticas públicas de género en Chile.

Este artículo analiza cómo se construyen sujetos por parte del Estado en torno a la institucionalización de políticas de género en un contexto neoliberal, sustentada en mi investigación de maestría “La paradoja entre los discursos de igualdad y las prácticas desiguales. La construcción de sujetos en torno al género en Chile: El caso del Servicio Nacional de la Mujer”. Se hace revisión a los condicionamientos estructurales del neoliberalismo y las relaciones entre Estado y política pública en el contexto de institucionalización de las demandas del movimiento feminista “Concertación Nacional de Mujeres por la Democracia”[1] en la creación del Servicio Nacional de la Mujer en 1991.
 [1] A lo largo del texto se utilizará la sigla “CNMD”. This article analyzes how is the State’s subject construction on gender policies institutionalization on a neoliberal context. It’s based on my master's thesis research called “The paradox between equality discourses and unequal practices. Subject’s construction around gender in Chile: The case of the National Women's Service”. It reviews neoliberalism structural conditionings, the relationship between State and public policy on the context of institutionalization of feminist movement “Women`s National Concentration for Democracy” demands on the creation of the National Women's Service on 1991.

Urban Entrepreneurialism Vs Market Society: The Geography of China's Neoliberal Urbanism

AbstractExisting literature on China's neoliberal urbanism is preoccupied with its institutional incentives and political‐economy dynamics, which are characterized by state dominance through sponsorship and supervision of capital‐market operations that drive pro‐growth aspirations and gentrification strategies. Meanwhile, society, confronted with brutal neoliberal production of urban space, is vulnerable to dispossession and displacement. In this article, we draw upon an ethnographic study conducted at the Higher Education Mega Centre (HEMC) of Guangzhou in an attempt to revisit China's neoliberal urbanism beyond the Marxian political‐economy repertoire, and shift the theoretical focus from production to consumption. In an institutionalized neoliberal context, the state–market–society nexus is closely intertwined—a process that manifests itself as the entangling of state and market, the establishment of a market society, the reflexive effects between neoliberalization and Chinese urban entrepreneurialism, and the capital‐centric rule in urban (re)development. In particular, the socioeconomic and sociospatial contradictions in the HEMC case indicate aggressive and insatiable production of urban space, which has been led by the entrepreneurial local state, but is bounded by the market‐oriented and capital‐centric rules of institutionalized neoliberalization. The article concludes by calling for pragmatic reflection on the ‘hard’ neoliberal urbanism of the global South.

Eats me alive!: social workers reflect on practice in neoliberal contexts

ABSTRACT Social workers regularly engage with people who have experienced traumatic events—such as domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, persecution, or armed conflict—but our understanding of how this work affects social workers themselves is still developing. Theories of burnout, vicarious trauma, and secondary traumatic stress illuminate the difficulty of trauma work, yet these approaches generally assign accountability for self-care to individual social workers, neglecting the contexts in which they operate—a response that reflects the neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility. In this article, we argue social workers charged with supporting those who experience trauma are themselves jeopardized by the organizational manifestations of neoliberalism. This article presents the reflections of social workers doing difficult work in neoliberal contexts. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven American social workers serving trauma-affected clients in non-clinical roles to better understand how they experienced their work. In their responses, participants underscored the centrality of organizational and systemic contexts. As one of our participants commented, 'The organizational stuff eats me alive!’ It calls on social work educators to prepare students to recognize, critically engage, and resist neoliberal elements of their practice contexts.

To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question: A Journey Through Performance Autoethnography

Across significant moments in my training in performative autoethnography in the United States, I share through performative writing my ideas, experiences, and reflections between the different moments of qualitative research, among which I am in a process of transition that stresses my biography, over cultures and paradigms. In this process, a feminine voice emerges with force silenced by data and traditions. The process makes visible doubts and contradictions of my own, mixed with subjective reflections on the self-construction of the professional identity of becoming a researcher in the academy. The importance of “raising the voice” in a globalized neoliberal context, characterized by capitalism in scientific production and the power that has an impact on research and methods is revealed. This highway traveled serves to stimulate reflection and debate among the academic community of qualitative researchers. Everyday practices are not insensitive to the people who make up academic institutions and spaces, nor do such practices have no impact on the lives of the researchers. I also write to annoy and disturb, to mobilize and question these practices and the relationships between researchers and research, confronting their inter-and-intra spaces with the neoliberal times that we live in the academy. This allows awareness and position with coherence and ethics before qualitative research as responsible social commitment and moral act.

Variegated Europeanization and urban policy: Dynamics of policy transfer in France, Italy, Spain and the UK

This paper explores the dynamics of urban policy transfer in the European Union (EU), critically examining the process of Europeanization in relation to urban issues. The paper takes a comparative approach, analysing the evolution of urban policy and Europeanization in four member states: France, Italy, Spain and the UK from the 1990s up to the current Cohesion Policy period (2014–2020). Using an analytical framework based on three dimensions of Europeanization (direction, object and impact), we examine the extent to which urban policies are moving towards an integrated approach to sustainable urban development, as supported by the EU. The paper highlights the contradictions between processes of convergence through Europeanization, and path-dependent systems and trajectories that forge alternative paths. In doing so, it advances wider debates on the impact of Europeanization in a neo-liberal context by arguing that member states more likely to be affected by Europeanization are those most impacted by national austerity measures. A process of ‘variegated Europeanization’ is proposed to capture the differential practices taking place within the EU with regard to the circulation of the EU’s approach to urban policy.

Behind the digital curtain: a study of academic identities, liminalities and labour market adaptations for the ‘Uber-isation’ of HE

ABSTRACT This paper explores sensemaking narratives from teaching academics undertaking identity work in the context of a rapidly expanding digital education sphere. It considers the implications for emotional labour and status of digitised higher education teaching academics from the imposition of a rejuvenated New Public Management. We discuss possible tainting from fractured and short-term contractual arrangements alongside growth in managerialism, metrics and accountability. This study combines photographic ethnography and interviews to gain insight into uncertainties, anxieties, identity legitimations and participant responses to imposed changes within digitally evolving workspaces. The paper explores teaching cultures within two higher education institutions, on different points of a digital continuum, finding discourses of alienation, liminality and validation. Resultant ‘sticky’ or resistant behaviours in rapid adaptations to digital teaching life were heard as we aimed to understand what it means to teach in a digitised, neoliberal context.

Positioning Indigenous knowledge systems within the Australian mathematics curriculum: investigating transformative paradigms with Foucault

ABSTRACT This paper is intended to provide a source of critical and theoretical reflection on the current mathematics educational objectives for Indigenous students in Australia, which are premised on acceptance of underlying concepts of ‘equity’. It is not the intention of this paper to identify ‘how’ Indigenous knowledge can be positioned within mathematics curricula, as this would entail a philosophical inquiry much deeper than has been afforded thus far. The intent here is a consideration, facilitated through the lens of key concepts of Foucault, of some of the boundaries currently shaping the ways in which this positioning is being influenced in the mathematics, albeit neoliberal education context. Acknowledging the interplay between the social, and unconsciously shaped adoptions of what can be considered truth; knowledge; and therefore power, is a first step toward developing the openness of heart and mind needed to make real and transformative changes to education for future societies.

Queering the southern border: challenges to Italian homonationalism in Emma Dante'sVia Castellana Bandiera(2013)

Set in contemporary Palermo, Emma Dante'sVia Castellana Bandiera(2013) offers a powerful exploration of the South as a site of cultural contact, interaction and confrontation by focusing on a western-like showdown between two women whose lives are differently marked by mobility and migration. In Dante's film, the simultaneous articulation of queerness and southernness is a way to queer the traditional image of the frontier and to offer an evocative elaboration on how identities are constructed, mobilised and played off against each other in the neoliberal context.

Queering kinship, overcoming heteronorms

Abstract Although same-sex couples and their offspring have been legitimised in many European countries, heteronormativity is still embedded in institutions and practices, thereby continuing to affect the daily lives of LGBT individuals. Italy represents a clear example of the hegemonic power of heteronormativity because of the fierce opposition to recognising lesbian and gay parenthood among many parts of society. This paper focuses on the peculiarities of the Italian scenario with the aim of highlighting how heteronormativity works in contemporary neoliberal contexts. By drawing on queer and feminist perspectives, the article also analyses how LGBT equal rights demands can contribute, to some extent, to reinforcing heteronormativity. Implications concerning strategies for challenging the regime of normality and queering kinship are discussed.

Neoliberal Pedagogies and Indian American Youth: Constructing Academic Identities in Central Texas

Centering the voices of Indian American high school students, this investigation utilizes postcolonial theory, Orientalism and cultural identity in diaspora to engage the ways five Indian American students form academic identities. Participants formed academic identities in relation to neoliberal pedagogic contexts and interactions with curricula and educators, demonstrating the fluid, antagonistic, and culturally related nature of their academic identities mired in mimicry, mockery and ambivalence. Participants’ insights highlight the negotiations of prescribed ways of knowing/being particular to their high school space, and their own agentic decisions within these dynamics construction notions of self-efficacy related to hard work and resiliency in the contemporary neoliberal moment.

State participation in the criminal procedure: from “equality of arms” to realistic theories

What is the role of the state in criminal procedure? From one hand, the state representatives should realize the accusation function because of the public nature of offence. On the other - the criminal justice is a state function as well. Face of this situation, the adversarial principle, very trendy in the contemporary neoliberal context (in particular, in Russia), does not look very adequate - neither legally, nor factually, nor morally. The theory of “equality of arms”, actively developed by the European Court of Human Rights, does not be considered as a correct conceptualization of the state obligation in criminal procedure either. The author proposes his realistic view on the state role in criminal procedure and adversarial principle.

Derechos humanos, desarrollo local y educación en contextos de exclusión social

Education is an essential element to generate processes of struggle for human dignity in the territories, if it is understood as a cultural and liberation process, as explained by authors such as Paulo Freire and Herrera Flores. In areas of social exclusion, education presents different approaches and aspects, whereas the educational system is configured in a hegemonic way, within a neoliberal context based on homogeneous and universal educational models. However, as Freire points out, education as a practice of freedom is a dynamic and contextual construction that must start from the heterogeneity of the territories in order to generate processes that prevent social and human exclusion. In this sense, development and education could be defined as human rights, as emancipatory cultural processes towards human dignity.

Changing Contexts of Practice: Challenges for Social Work and Community Development

ABSTRACTIn a rapidly changing global environment, there have been renewed calls to position community development more centrally in social work, particularly in the face of contemporary practice challenges. This paper analyses the broad policy contexts of neoliberalism, globalisation, and governance change and discusses how these forces interact with social work and community development, drawing on examples from Australia and Ireland. The paper argues that sociopolitical forces both restrict and present opportunities for social work and community development practice and we seek to reactivate debate about the position of community development within changing and challenging contexts.IMPLICATIONSContextualises community development practice, policy, and research within contemporary environments of neoliberalism, globalisation, and governance change.Critically evaluates implications and new opportunities for social work and community development, drawing on examples from Australia and Ireland.Reactivates debate and analysis on the position of community development in contemporary social work as we move forward into the new decade, and the next global agenda for social work and social development.