Neoliberal Era Research Articles

Dismissione e produzione

The strong processes of economic repositioning that the West experienced in the last decades of the 20th century with the transition from the industrial economy to the so-called “enrichment economy” led to the emergence of new project themes within the territorial disciplines. The decommissioning of large industrial areas is seen by the design culture as an opportunity to re-found cities through new policies and new design devices. The case of Turin is exemplary of this process in Italy. A city that symbolises Italian Fordism, from the 1980s onwards it was invested by an incremental process of large industrial areas abandonment due to the crisis of mass production. This paper aims to discuss how, after the end of the first post-Fordist cycle, decommissioned spaces accommodate not only residential or tertiary practices as in the thirty-year neoliberal era, but also new productive functions. It does so with a descriptive approach, recounting the change in Turin’s production system and describing three exemplary cases of the new productive Turin: the new Pirelli in Settimo Torinese, Lavazza and the new Manufacturing Centre in Mirafiori. In this process we seem to be able to discern a paradigm shift in the design of the contemporary city, which does not deny but welcomes productive practices. However, this new model of the productive city in the West urgently needs to redefine visions, imaginaries and practices of the contemporary project.

Divorce, American Style: Fighting for Women's Economic Citizenship in the Neoliberal Era

Divorce, American Style: Fighting for Women's Economic Citizenship in the Neoliberal Era

Looking at the production chains from the uneven and combined development perspective: the Egyptian Qualified Industrial Zones Agreement

In the neoliberal era, the export-oriented industrialisation strategy has been promoted for its potential to transform the industry into an engine of growth for the rest of the economy. For this purpose, all developing economies are encouraged to join supply chains in order to upgrade their position in the hierarchical division of labour in the world economy. On the other hand, this has always been a thorny issue for the Southern economies. This paper investigates the Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) Agreement concluded between Egypt, Israel and the United States in 2004, critically analysing the outputs of the export-oriented industrialisation model. In its analysis, the study relies on dialogues between the production chain literature and the uneven and combined development perspective. In this context, it claims that the factors endogenous to global capitalism, like low wages and massive labour reserves, play an important role in determining Egypt’s role in the Agreement. Likewise, participating in production chains does have a further polarising effect on global inequalities. Accordingly, the Agreement charges Egypt in line with its position in the global economy, and the Egyptian textile industry articulates to the world market as a source of cheap labour.

From our own voices: The meaning making of subculture among extreme metal musicians in Indonesia

In the mid-1990s, extreme metal music in Indonesia was defined as a threat to the authoritarian regime’s unquestioned values of harmony and social stability. Consequently, the music had to rely on the local communities in Yogyakarta, Jakarta and Bandung. After the downfall of the military-based authoritarian regime in 1998, the alliance between extreme metal subculture and the state changed moderately. Extreme metal is no longer considered as a ‘folk devil’, nonetheless as a marketable commodity relevant to the new agenda of creative economy policy. This article draws from stories of Indonesian extreme metal musicians to illustrate the relevance of subculture concept in extreme metal music in the contemporary neo-liberal era. Using the life biographies approach, we highlight how extreme metal musicians make and remake the actual and symbolic meanings of their involvement in music subcultures based upon the temporal and spatial situatedness of their lifeworld. We focus on the narratives of two informants who have been continuously devoted to their ways of life as metalheads, not only in relation to ‘musicking’ but also in respect to maintaining ‘subcultural values’ throughout their life biographies. Regarding this, we conducted interviews with Indonesian extreme metal musicians from two major ‘metal’ cities in Indonesia: Jakarta and Bandung. In this article, we argue that as rookies, the meaning of extreme metal subculture is as a space to embody the authenticity, autonomy and community as a manifestation of subcultural values. As aficionado, they reinterpreted the meaning of extreme metal subculture as a space to maintain the values of authenticity, autonomy and community. In short, extreme metal musicians incrementally made and remade the meaning of subculture centred on the particular temporal and spatial contexts in their life biographies.

Markers of entanglement: Survival strategies within the neoliberal university and the promise of carceral futures

Within the neoliberal era, the university's form and function have shifted. These shifts necessitate an unraveling of the synergies of institutions of higher education with carceral institutions. Building from the scholarship of the “college-prison nexus” and the “academic-prison symbiosis,” this paper converges on the criminology department's role within these synergies. Based on an analysis of department websites and the introductory course syllabi of English-speaking criminology departments in Canada (n = 50), I interrogate the methods used to advertise to students. I identify six markers of entanglement that are part of how departments market themselves in the neoliberal era to the student–consumer. These markers include career prospects, field placements, faculty research, pracademics, job training, and dual/bridging degrees. Utilizing these markers as a departure point, I analyze these indicators of relationships that exist between the university and the carceral apparatus. In doing so, I interrogate how these relationships can (re)produce carceral logics and systems and offer the university an articulated pathway of survival through carceral intrenchment.

Socially Engaged Art’s Histories and Tactics for the Neoliberal Era. Karen van den Berg and Melissa Rachleff Burtt in conversation with Angela Dimitrakaki and Nomusa Makhubu

Socially Engaged Art’s Histories and Tactics for the Neoliberal Era. Karen van den Berg and Melissa Rachleff Burtt in conversation with Angela Dimitrakaki and Nomusa Makhubu

Rethinking Marine Resource Management and the Livelihoods of Artisanal Fishers

There are many initiatives, programs and projects based on fishing resource management and improvement of fishing communities. Indeed, all are trying to introduce new forms of fishing as way of improving the marine industry. Nonetheless, there are many things that are either missing or misrepresented in explaining marine resources, especially fishing industry management and subsequent artisanal fishermen’s livelihoods. Because such programs are incompatible and inapplicable, instead of conserving the ocean, they have implications for lives of artisanal fishers and their communities, as the activities displace them so as to access and use the ocean. The study was conducted through qualitative research approach, guided by in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, observation, and documentary review. The participants were artisanal fishers, their leaders and some government officials. The study employing the Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession as a new form of accumulation in the neoliberal era to understand implications of programs, projects, and policies of marine and/or fishing management including the way they dispose as well as provide abysmal poverty to artisanal fishermen.

Catholic Education: Reclaiming the Prophetic in an Age of Neoliberalism

The prevailing current context of neoliberalism has often been viewed as curtailing the prophetic expression of the Catholic identity of Catholic educational institutions (CEIs). This article proposes that only by reclaiming their prophetic identity can CEIs flourish authentically in the neoliberal era. A faith-based approach to addressing the challenges of neoliberalism is presented, drawing upon the principles of prophetic imagination described by Brueggemann. The neoliberal concept of strategic planning is presented using four nuanced characteristics of a Catholic strategic planning process to express the CEI’s prophetic nature.

Transformation of Art in the Neoliberal Era: A Contemporary Art Reading Through The Square and Velvet Buzzsaw Movies

Modernizmle beraber dönüşen sanat anlayışı günümüzde kendini çağdaş sanat çatısı altında göstermektedir. Modernizmle başlayan akılcılık serüveni modern sanatın kavramsal alana kaymasında etkili olmuştur. Sanatın taklit etme anlayışının yıkılmasıyla beraber Kazimir Maleviç’in Siyah Kare’si ile örneklendirebileceğimiz bir soyut sanat anlayışı gelişmiştir. Ancak 1917 yılında Marcel Duchamp’ın Çeşme adlı eserinin ortaya çıkmasıyla da soyut sanattan hazır-nesne anlayışına bir kayış olmuştur. Hazır-nesne’nin bir sanat olarak sunulması sanat dünyasında “çağdaş sanat” olarak tanımlanan yeni bir alanın gelişmesine sebep olmuştur. Estetik bir çaba gerektirmeden tamamen kavramsal anlayışla desteklenerek sunulan bu yeni sanat, çağdaş sanat tartışmalarının en önemli meselelerinden biri olmaktadır. Günümüz neoliberal politikalarının gündelik hayatın her alanını etkileyen politikaları sanat alanını da kendine dahil etmekte ve müzecilik, sanat eserleri, küratörlük gibi sanata dair temel meselelerin dönüşümünde önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Neoliberalizmin her alanı ekonomikleştirme çabaları sanat alanı üzerinde de kendine yer bulur ve sanatı şirketleşme ve yönetim olgularıyla bağdaşan bir seviyeye indirger. Ruben Östlund’ın “Kare” filmi ile Dan Gilroy’un Velvez Buzzsaw filmleri neoliberalizmle dönüşen çağdaş sanatın etkilerinin görülebildiği somut bir alan sunar. Bu bağlamda çalışmada bahsedilen film çağdaş sanat literatüründeki temel eleştiriler çerçevesinde betimsel analiz yöntemiyle incelenir ve her iki filmde de çalışmanın kuramsal çerçevesi ile uyumlu bir bütünlük sağlanır.

Maritime Labour Regimes in the Neoliberal Era

Maritime Labour Regimes in the Neoliberal Era

Neo-androgynous management: managing the English further education in an era of neoliberalism?

ABSTRACT The study draws on mixed methods research with further education middle managers across England in order to explore whether there are gendered differences in management. There remain debates about whether there are gender differences in management or leadership. The study adds to this debate with results that reveal that women and men are behaviourally flexible, employing a repertoire of knowledge, competencies and skills, which are not necessarily gendered, in order to manage change in an increasing neoliberal further education working environment. We therefore propose a novel theoretical contribution of neo-androgynous management, which suggests ‘undoing gender’ in management in an education sector that has seen increase in women’s employment.

Literacy assessment in the early years of schooling in an era of neoliberalism

This paper explores the literature related to literacy assessment in the early years of schooling in an era of neoliberalism and reports on a key aspect of a study which focused on the literacy assessment practices of early years teachers and literacy leaders in Australian Catholic schools within the Melbourne archdiocese. Background: The study was undertaken in a period following the Melbourne Catholic Education system’s devolution of literacy assessment responsibility to schools after a long period of mandated literacy assessment (1998–2012) but also occurred within a neoliberal high-stakes assessment environment, characterised by heightened levels of teacher accountability. Research Objectives: The intention of the research was to explore the literacy assessment beliefs and practices of teachers in early years classrooms (F–2), to explore the impacts of assessment devolution and the implications in terms of the literacy assessment practices in the early years in Australian Catholic primary schools in the Melbourne Archdiocese. Methods: A predominantly qualitative case study approach consisting of two phases was used to explore literacy assessment in the early years of schooling. Phase 1 consisted of an online questionnaire comprising both open and closed questions, which was completed by 76 literacy leaders from 76 Catholic schools in the Melbourne archdiocese. The questionnaire was designed to elicit information on schools’ literacy assessment practices in the early years and if these had changed since a Catholic Education Melbourne (CEM) policy change in 2012 allowing schools greater autonomy over literacy assessment in the early years. Phase 2 involved semistructured interviews with 23 early years teachers and seven literacy leaders from eight diverse schools to investigate their literacy assessment practices in greater detail and identify how they responded to the opportunities that came with devolved decision-making.

Classical and Keynesian models of inequality and stagnation

This paper studies two formal models of long run growth with a medium-run distributive cycle, both of which feature causal links from the rise in inequality to a deterioration of long run macroeconomic performance. Both versions feature an endogenous income-capital ratio: one through the Keynesian notion of effective demand, the other building on induced bias in technical change. A key focus of the analysis is on the assumptions necessary in both frameworks to generate policy implications consistent with the observed decline of the labor share, the income-capital ratio, and labor productivity growth during the neoliberal era. Importantly, both theories: (a) provide space for mutually reinforcing pro-labor and pro-growth policies in the long run, although they differ in the mechanisms at play in these processes; (b) imply a potential tradeoff between pro-labor policies and growth on one hand, and long-run employment on the other; (c) are consistent with the evidence on the distributive cycle at business cycle frequency.

The Parcelled State: A Political and Historical Framework for the Current Intra-State Crisis in Turkey

This article puts Turkey’s current state crisis into a historical perspective. During the transition to neo-liberalism after the hegemony crisis of the late 1970s, a critical objective for those in the high echelons of bureaucracy and ruling politicians was to ensure the security of state apparatuses. However, the policies implemented to achieve this led to fragmentation in both the state and the political spheres. Thus, during the second half of the 1990s and during the 2000s, the state became a field for open warfare between power networks that had established direct links between state apparatuses, political society, and civil society. These fragmentations – that is the parcellation of state apparatuses – triggered an intra-state crisis. Regarding the formation of the state and the political spheres in the neo-liberal era, this article shows that Turkey is a unique case in the debate on variegated forms of authoritarian statism.

Graced Human Bodies and the Enterprising Subject: Contending Neoliberal Assumptions of the Human Person

The particular vision of human, bodily life that has been adopted and developed in the neoliberal era since the 1970s is turning humans into a new kind of creature. Both our behavioral and conceptual notions of what it means to be human have been re-oriented to a vision of the “enterprising self,” the social and political actor who negotiates the world through competition, self-regulation, and rational choice. The concern of this paper is to demonstrate how this framework is theologically unsound and has a destabilizing effect on what constitutes human nature as a particular embodied existence. Attending to the rationale and theological response to the neoliberal logics, this paper seeks to promote a vision of human life and activity that is ordered and oriented to human flourishing and provide examples of resistance to the person-forming capacity of neoliberal social formations.

Biculturalism and Historiography in the Era of Neoliberalism: A View from Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract The making of the bicultural state of Aotearoa New Zealand is the product of a distinctive postcolonial and neoliberal late twentieth-century history. In this context, a predominantly anglophone settler state finally responded to decades-long claims about Indigenous dispossession by creating the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal in 1975, an institution that a decade later took a wide-ranging approach to the investigation of historical grievances. The tribunal produced an alternative historiography that imagined a partnership between Māori and the Crown, not only in the service of evaluating past actions but also with the aim of creating better relations for the future. This article offers a brief account of biculturalism and “treaty partnership” in three overlapping modes: as an emergent and then hegemonic political discourse; as generating a new historiography; and in terms of the reframing and bureaucratization of research practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. In this milieu, research ethics is not simply a matter of interpersonal politics but, in fact, has become a matter of governmentality—that is, of regulating the conduct of researchers as subjects of particular forms of state power.

The Second World and Settler History: Settler Collectives, Land Fulfillment, and Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo

In the Cold War-era "three worlds" model, the Second World was the socialist world, particularly the Soviet Bloc, that stood opposed to the capitalist West but—unlike the postcolonial Third World—was largely white. However, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, postcolonial critics briefly redeployed the term Second World to denote peripheral settler colonies like Australia. This essay examines the juxtaposition of these two uses of the term "Second World" through a discussion of Katharine Susannah Prichard's 1929 novel Coonardoo and the history of its misrepresentation of Australian Indigenous people. Though Prichard sought to be sympathetic to the Indigenous woman at the center of the novel's plot, Coonardoo, the teleological perspective of her authorial attitude towards the land precludes this sympathy. This essay examines how Prichard's teleological view is connected to socialist-realist attitudes and settler collectives; how Prichard's novel both continues and inflects settler ideology now in the neoliberal era; and how teleological settler histories of the land can no longer presume the continued solidity of the land in the wake of the Anthropocene.

Representation and Displacement: Labor Disembedding and Contested Neoliberalism in France

This article analyzes changing patterns of worker protest and mobilization in France, with particular emphasis on the post-1970s era of neoliberalism. It argues that processes of state-led disembedding of labor have underpinned major changes in the leadership, content, and class bases of worker contestation. Drawing on more than forty original interviews as well as extensive secondary sources, it highlights a long-term shift in the dynamics of labor's political engagement, in which unions' role has been increasingly displaced by broad-based, anti-systemic social movements. Protests have called into question the legitimacy of French capitalism and the state, revealing the dysfunctions of political representation with troubling implications for the stability of French democracy and the governability of advanced capitalist economies.

The Evil of Authoritarian Education: Banality and Compliance in the Neoliberal Era

Education is widely seen as a force for good, associated with hope and optimism about better individual and social futures. By contrast, and controversially, this paper argues that education and education policy in recent decades has been far from benign, as evidenced in the growing alienation of significant numbers of teachers and students and, crucially for our paper, in the growth of authoritarian models of schooling, involving 'zero-tolerance', 'no excuses' disciplinary approaches. Against this background, and drawing on Hannah Arendt and the work of contemporary moral philosophers Elizabeth Minnich and Simona Forti, this paper diagnoses the nature and effects of school discipline policies in the neoliberal era, and in particular practices such as isolation, as a contemporary form of banal, or everyday, evil.

Universal and Targeted Policy for Health Equity in the Neoliberal Era; A Response to the Recent Commentaries.

Universal and Targeted Policy for Health Equity in the Neoliberal Era; A Response to the Recent Commentaries.