Neoliberal Context Research Articles

Ugly feelings: gender, neoliberalism and the affective relations of body concerns

ABSTRACT Ugly feelings are ‘weak, nasty’ and enduring feelings which have particular socio-cultural significance and functions in neoliberal contexts. Drawing on a qualitative study of women’s everyday experiences of gender, wellbeing and the body, I develop Ngai’s ‘ugly feelings’ framework alongside a Deleuzian-Spinozan understanding of affect to understand the affective implications of gendered body concerns – extending the famous Spinozan question of ‘what can a body do?’ to ask ‘what can the ugly feelings of body concern do, and how do they affect the range of options for living available in the gendered context of neoliberalism?’ Women in the study described body concerns as generalised ‘worry’ and heightened attentiveness to the body’s physical characteristics, and having the potential to morph into ‘obsession’ and ‘disgust’, the ‘ugliest of ugly feelings’ Ngai (2004: 335). Where body concerns became ‘intolerable’, ugly feelings of worry about appearance turned to bodily ‘disgust’ and led to the more ‘damaging’, rigid affective relations which constrain a body’s capacities. The ugly feelings of body concern can be understood as a key component by which bodies are currently constituted in the context of gendered neoliberalism, and the processes by which gender is itself made and remade through everyday life.

The Ethnic Relations of Okinawans and Urban Policy: Focusing on the Contexts of Colonialism and Neoliberalism in Tsurumi, Yokohama

The Ethnic Relations of Okinawans and Urban Policy: Focusing on the Contexts of Colonialism and Neoliberalism in Tsurumi, Yokohama

The Political Matters: Exploring material feminist theories for understanding the political in health, inequalities and nursing.

The recent "turn to matter" evident in material feminist theories of the more-than-human world offers distinct posthuman understandings of the world as continuously relationally entangled, emergent or materializing. In this paper, I consider how these premises both trouble conventional understandings of matter and/or materials, but likewise potentially revise and revitalize understandings of the political for health and inequalities, and for nursing. This is both timely and much needed given contemporary contexts of austerity-driven neoliberalism in health care and the unprecedented growth in disparities of wealth and well-being. I wish to explore whether material feminisms allow us to retheorize connections between abstract theory and material concerns like health and inequalities, differently. This is not theory in opposition to practice or activism, but theory conceptualized as sets of entangled emergent practices, but also what constitutes the political, as more fully relational to and in praxis with health-related activism. I will argue these theories further justify how practitioners can visibly care for and care more about social and health inequalities. Drawing mainly on the work of material feminist, Karen Barad, and her bringing together of queer and feminist theory, as well as feminist new materialisms and understandings of posthumanism, I discuss how this turn to matter together with meaning might transform understandings of health and inequalities.

Evaluating student satisfaction - restricting lecturer professionalism: outcomes of using the UK national student survey questionnaire for internal student evaluation of teaching

In the neo-liberal context of a UK university, responding to student feedback in order to raise student satisfaction levels is important in improving National Student Survey (NSS) scores. This article focuses on the impact of a UK university’s new student feedback questionnaire - for individual modules - which used the NSS questions. The research draws on survey data (N = 101) to identify lecturers’ views and three student focus groups. The outcomes raised issues relating to performativity, professionalism and ‘provision’, the latter defined as the university’s contract with each student, including the aspects that affect the student learning experience but are beyond the lecturers’ control, for example, class sizes and timetables. The results indicate that by recognising the impact of provision university managers may be better able to develop systemic improvements to student experience and (in the UK) a corresponding uplift in NSS and Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) results. The article puts forward a model linking performativity, professionalism and provision to the relationships between university managers, academics and students. This model could enrich understandings of professionalism and performativity, extend the range of issues affecting student experience in SETs and support data analysis in future research studies.

Prejudice, military intelligence, and neoliberalism: examining the local within archaeology and heritage practices in Jordan

ABSTRACTA particular theme dominates contemporary heritage projects in the neoliberal context of Jordan: sustainable development on the basis of participatory approaches. Although these approaches are celebrated in academic and governmental circles, the history and power dynamics within which they operate remain underexplored. We aim to establish a theoretical framework that examines why and how local communities in the Arab region shifted from periphery to centre, and from background to foreground, in the field of archaeology and heritage. We situate archaeology and heritage within two seemingly different contexts, colonialism and neoliberalism, that have governed the relationship between the West and the Arab region. As we contrast colonialist exclusionary policies with the inclusivity promoted by neoliberal policies in archaeological and heritage projects in Jordan, we argue that despite the obvious differences between the two, they both managed to make substantial shifts in the perception of and attitudes toward archaeology and heritage. In spite of participatory paradigms, the shifts seem to have always come ‘from the outside’, operating on sites and peoples alike.

Mothers behaving badly: chaotic hedonism and the crisis of neoliberal social reproduction

ABSTRACT This article focuses on the significance of the plethora of representations of mothers ‘behaving badly’ in contemporary anglophone media texts, including the films Bad Moms, Fun Mom Dinner and Bad Mom’s Christmas, the book and online cartoons Hurrah for Gin and the recent TV comedy dramas Motherland, The Let Down and Catastrophe. All these media texts include representations of, first, mothers in the midst of highly chaotic everyday spaces where any smooth routine of domesticity is conspicuous by its absence; and second, mothers behaving hedonistically, usually through drinking and partying, behaviour that is more conventionally associated with men or women without children. After identifying the social type of the mother behaving badly (MBB), the article locates and analyses it in relation to several different social and cultural contexts. These contexts are: a neoliberal crisis in social reproduction marked by inequality and overwork; the continual if contested role of women as ‘foundation parents’; and the negotiation of longer-term discourses of female hedonism. The title gestures towards a popular British sitcom of the 1990s, Men Behaving Badly, which popularized the idea of the ‘new lad’; and this article suggests that the new lad’s counterpart, the ladette, is mutating into the mother behaving badly, or the ‘lad mom’. Asking what work this figure does now, in a later neoliberal context, it argues that the mother behaving badly is simultaneously indicative of a widening and liberating range of maternal subject positions and symptomatic of a profound contemporary crisis in social reproduction. By focusing on the classed and racialised dynamics of the MBB – by examining who exactly is permitted to be hedonistic, and how – and by considering the MBB’s limited and partial imagining of progressive social change, the article concludes by emphasizing the urgency of creating more connections between such discourses and ‘parents behaving politically’.

Brain Injury Survivors: Impairment, Identity and Neoliberalism

This paper reflects on my decades of activism and scholarly work with brain injury survivors, highlighting some of the challenges that survivors experience, and exploring the power dynamics associated with the ‘survivor’ identity. It explores the ‘survivor’ discourse/identity which has been widely adopted by people who have sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) in the context of embodied cognitive changes, the dominant view of disability as a personal tragedy, and the wider political context of neoliberalism. The key argument is that the survivor identity adopted by many people with brain injuries simultaneously supports and challenges neoliberalism. The paper involves both autobiographical reflections and the results of my political involvement and research with other survivors.

Gerencialismo a la vasca: un análisis del discurso de la “Nueva Cultura de Empresa”

Las ideologías gerenciales son una de las manifestaciones más características de nuestra época. En un contexto neoliberal donde la globalización de los mercados, las nuevas tecnologías y la creciente intensificación de la competencia son vistos como importantes desafíos empresariales, la necesidad de mejorar los procesos de gestión e implicar cada vez más tanto a directivos como a empleados en la buena marcha de las empresas se ha convertido en la piedra angular del discurso empresarial contemporáneo. Esto exige nuevas políticas empresariales que se están difundiendo por todas partes, incluyendo por supuesto a Euskadi. En este territorio, la “Nueva Cultura de Empresa” impulsada por la patronal guipuzcoana ADEGI se está instalando en muchas empresas. En este artículo, el objetivo será el de analizar el discurso asociado a esta nueva cultura gerencial y sus implicaciones en el terreno de la representación de los trabajadores y la configuración del sistema de relaciones laborales.

Australian welfare workers and street-level discretion when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds

This article explores street-level discretion of Australian welfare workers when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The research is situated within the context of New Public Management (NPM) and neoliberalism in the welfare sector. Findings suggest that workers’ discretion oscillates between extra support for clients, or further scrutiny and sanction. Such contradictory patterns of discretion highlight workers’ capacity to resist neoliberalism while concurrently upholding it. The article argues that cultural understanding, recognition of the limitations in welfare-to-work policies and neoliberalism, and how those factors, together with ethnicity, may influence street-level discretion are necessary for welfare workers to support CALD clients effectively.

Borrowed Time and Solidarity: The Multi-Scalar Politics of Time and Gendered Care Work

Abstract Exploring long-term residential care (Ontario, Canada), we argue that within the context of late neoliberalism, care time is political, contested, and multi-scalar. Multi-scalar time captures the way that time commodifies, disciplines, and delimits workers’ experience of care, and fractures human relations and solidarities. Drawing on data from nonprofit nursing homes in Canada, the article explores how the larger policy context of care work shapes and hinders workers’ abilities to spend time caring and building relationships with residents, how workers negotiate care provision in austere environments, and how workers use borrowed time to de-commodify care and find spaces for solidarity.

Against the Death of Feminist Utopia – Reflections on the Utopian Potential of Feminist Approaches in Times of an Authoritarian Backlash in the context of Neoliberalism

Der autoritär gesonnene Antifeminismus hat in der neoliberalen Postdemokratie Konjunktur und führt zu einer antiutopisch ausgerichteten Passivierung politischer Subjektivität, jener Subjektivität, die gerade in der Vielzahl feministischer Auseinandersetzungen hart erkämpft wurde und wird. Doch warum ist der Rechtspopulismus mit dieser Strategie – die einem Frontalangriff auf demokratische Geschlechterverhältnisse und damit auf die Demokratie insgesamt gleicht – so erfolgreich? Die Beantwortung der Frage soll zunächst im Rekurs auf psychoanalytische Überlegungen beantwortet werden. Dabei wird in ideologiekritischer Absicht insbesondere die Rolle des gesellschaftlichen Unbewussten und der symbolischen Kastration hervorgehoben. Die These ist, dass wir es in der neoliberalen Postdemokratie mit ideologischen Anrufungen zu tun haben, die auf phantasmatische Weise Anerkennung suggerieren, zugleich aber feministische Anerkennungskämpfe mit konkret-utopischer Ausrichtung desavouieren. Vor dem Hintergrund dieser These sollen theoretische Überlegungen angestellt werden, unter welchen Voraussetzungen das Unbewusste und die Utopie als Kategorien der feministischen Ideologiekritik verstanden werden können, die gleichsam zur Erneuerung der in die autoritäre Krise geratenen, neoliberalen Postdemokratie beitragen könnte.

Innovative Arrangements between Public and Private Actors in Affordable Housing Provision: Examples from Austria, England and Italy

Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of state, third-sector, market and community actors. This has led to the emergence of various hybrid governance and finance arrangements. This development can be seen as part of a general long-term neoliberal trend in government policies, and social, cultural and economic developments. It is therefore likely that the hybridity and variety of governance and finance of affordable housing will continue to grow. This article discusses innovative hybrid arrangements from Austria, England and Italy, in which governments, private and non-profit actors collaborate to increase the supply of affordable housing. These cases illustrate how the provision of affordable housing in a neoliberal context can benefit from the involvement of market actors and communities. Nevertheless, they also show that governments continue to play a crucial role in initiating and facilitating these arrangements.

Public space and citizenship in Mumbai

Over the last few decades in Mumbai, incessant urbanization stimulated by flows of property capital has pushed government to privilege private development over public space. In this neoliberal context, citizens’ groups have pressured government to act in the public interest and led the charge to conserve public spaces in the city. This article examines the relationship between citizenship and city building in Mumbai by presenting two case studies of citizen action: the struggle over Land’s End and the making of the Bandra Bandstand promenade. It critically engages the expansive and divergent literature about the politics of the middle class in urban India and resists the tendency of characterizing this group as merely consumerist and anti-poor. The article argues that the roots of middle class involvement in Mumbai’s urban transformation goes back to the 1970s and beyond and posits that the politics and activism of numerous citizens’ groups builds on historical struggles for environmental and social justice in the city.

Precariedade e interdisciplinaridade no trabalho da Assistente Social na esfera pública

Resumo Este artigo resulta de uma pesquisa com gestoras assistentes sociais nas esferas jurídicas, da assistência social e da saúde no Distrito Federal no contexto das políticas de proteção social. Objetivou-se analisar as percepções sociais dessas gestoras sobre a questão da precariedade e da interdisciplinaridade do trabalho de assistentes sociais em sua interação com psicólogos(as). A metodologia do estudo é qualitativa por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas. Os resultados apontam para a precarização do trabalho social no contexto de neoliberalização, com consequências de sobrecarga e de estresse no cotidiano das profissionais.

Brands that ‘sell their soul’: offshoring, brand liquidification and the excluded consumer

ABSTRACTFuelled by open markets and globalisation, offshoring has become a common business practice for firms in industrialised countries. However, consumer research investigating offshoring in a larger macroeconomic and political context is scant. Using a naturalistic, contextualised approach, the current research investigates how a predominantly working/middle-class consumer segment perceives production offshoring for durable goods. The findings show how consumers can develop a sentiment of being excluded or left behind, even when they do not belong to traditionally disadvantaged segments in society defined by income, gender, education, appearance or sexual preference. Perceived brand liquidification, discussed through the marketplace mythologies of corporate greed and the opportunistic consumer, perceived brand de-contagion and patriotism/nationalism, leads to sentiments of exclusion and a longing for re-solidification. Exploring these relationships helps to understand current consumer sentiment towards offshoring in the larger context of neoliberalism and labour arbitrage.

Racial capitalism and STEM education in Chicago Public Schools

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the role of STEM initiatives designed by city and corporate elites in a large urban district and outlines an alternative, grassroots vision for (STEM) education and city schools. Within a neoliberal context of gentrification, displacement, disinvestment, and privatization, STEM schools have become strategic components of Chicago’s ‘portfolio district’ that serve the interests of racial capitalism in three ways. First, STEM schools provide a claim to fairness in the midst of racist school closures. Second, STEM high schools are a corporate strategy for racially stratified labor force preparation that restricts curriculum and reifies tracking. Third, curriculum restriction prioritizes corporate interests over students’ capacity to shape their communities and the world. The authors draw on the wisdom of Chicago communities who have led resistance against corporate education reform to critique Chicago STEM policy and point to critical mathematics and science education as part of a model for sustainable community schools.

El análisis crítico de discurso en textos de políticas públicas: lineamientos para una praxis investigativa

Este trabajo busca sistematizar la experiencia del análisis crítico de discurso (ACD) de textos que son parte del campo político, a partir de los principios propuestos por el lingüista británico Norman Fairclough, con algunos ejemplos empíricos, agregando algunos elementos de la teoría feminista. Se indaga en presupuestos funcionales como la necesidad de este tipo de análisis en el contexto neoliberal latinoamericano, epistemológicos como la imposibilidad del análisis, y ontológicos, en la relación entre discurso y materialidad y se hace una propuesta metodológica que incluye intertextualidades y textualidades. Se finaliza con una propuesta de pensar el ACD y otras formas de investigación crítica asumiendo un programa de investigación que incluya el posicionamiento político del investigador junto con aspectos que aseguren validez y viabilidad a las investigaciones.

RESTRUCTURING SOCIAL WORK FIELD EDUCATION IN 21ST CENTURY CANADA

Social work field education in Canada is in a state of crisis. For over two decades field education has faced increasing challenges and barriers within neoliberal contexts in higher education and the health and social services sector. These challenges have been magnified by an unprecedented growth in social work education programs and student enrolments, which has increased demand for field placements to an unsustainable level. Although some strategies for restructuring social work field education have been developed, to date little work has been done to formally identify, evaluate, and share information about these strategies across Canadian social work education programs. This article explores the current state of crisis from a solution-focused lens and describes three inter-related strategies to address critical problems with current models, practices, and processes. The strategies are presented as a Sustainability Model for Field Education. The results of a two-year study that sought to identify alternative delivery mechanisms for social work field education and promote sharing of information across social work education programs are discussed. A key recommendation is to restructure and move away from a crisis management approach by implementing strategies for enhancing the sustainability of field education.

How To “Talk Left and Walk Right” in South Africa: Access to Medicines in the Neoliberal Era

One of the modalities of access to medicines in South Africa consists in the paradoxical delegation of regulatory functions to non-state actors — namely, but not only, industry. Drug policies in neoliberal globalized states are characterized by their insertion into a global trade system which promotes a growing commodification of medicines. At the same time, calls for the reform of national drug policies rise significantly. State formation in South Africa has been characterized by continuous negotiations and compromises with business, which at first sight questions the possibility of access policies. Opening the black box of the South African state amounts to demonstrating the state’s ability to roll out a political project which endeavours to have the pharmaceutical industry adopt the notion of universal access in a neoliberal context. This article attempts to shed a light on access mechanisms through the analytical deconstruction of the public market of antiretroviral medicines as a set of intertwined social relations. In South Africa, the role of industry, as heterogeneous as it is, has been deeply ambiguous and often denounced by civil society. Still, its role has been critical to ensure the supply of medicines. As a result, the Department of Health has been broadly dependent on industry, regarding the innovation agenda, the security of supply and industrial policy.

Political Economy of Development: A Study of CPEC

Development' is a political project which is based on a principle of reducing inequalities and poverty. It is a centuries-old concept that is deeply rooted in the history of economic thoughts. From the age of mercantilism to the liberal and neoliberal context, the nature of development has changed drastically. From 1945 to the 1970s, there was a popular liberal model of development under the slogans of 'right to development. The liberal nature of development tuned into conservatively camouflaged neoliberal development in the 1980s protected by the world bank structural adjustment program. In neoliberal development facade, the development process is emptied from welfarist. Development without welfare and development for underdevelopment are the main characteristics of neoliberal development. This paper is an exploration of the political economy of development, which means development to whom? Through a qualitative approach, it is found that neoliberal forces benefited from CPEC developmental project. The political economy of CPEC is a complex phenomenon that is linked with development, investment, technology, and human resources.