Neoliberal Imagination Research Articles

GEOGRAPHIES OF HOPE: READING BECKY CHAMBERS’ RECORD OF A SPACEBORN FEW AS UTOPIA

American author Becky Chambers has become well-known for her science fiction works that denounce social inequality while still enunciating kinder and more hopeful worlds. This research paper is centered around her third novel, Record of a Spaceborn Few (2018), which follows the Exodus Fleet, a group of spaceships that harbors the descendants of the last humans to leave Earth after a series of environmental catastrophes. The Fleet is presented as a somewhat literal vehicle of hope, as life inside the starships is organized according to Marxist principles of mutual support, solidarity and horizontal care. The aim of this paper is to examine Chambers’ alternative worlds as a site of hope, both physical and metaphorical, while exploring how Chambers hopeful speculation exemplifies the potential of science fiction as a genre to imagine different realities that not only question the nature of what is normal and possible, but also go beyond capitalist and neoliberal imaginaries.

Rooted Water Collectives in a Modernist and Neoliberal Imaginary: Threats and Perspectives for Rural Water Commons

Water schemes that rely on user (co-) ownership and collective action have been described in the irrigation sector for a long time. Still, interest in such forms of (co-) investment in the domestic/multiple use sector is more recent. To address the persisting issue of rural water service, (what has been coined) self-supply is proclaimed to be a (supposedly) low-cost, sustainable manner to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). User (co-) investments are to be promoted and realized through the creation of an enabling policy environment and development of, and training on, low-cost technologies through government and NGO support and private sector-steered access to such technologies. In this article, we apply the Rooted Water Collectives (RWC) framework to describe two such schemes, one in South Africa and one in Switzerland. The data collection followed an action research methodology, with the main author being involved in interventions in all three schemes. We show here that these collectives create positions of purpose within societies and that what motivates people is to help themselves and contribute to the greater good of the community. This article shows that interventions to foster and sustain such collective actions that follow a neoliberal/modernist imaginary negatively affect their viability since these collectives, through their other-than-capitalist interactions, form part of and depend on an alternative imaginary. We conclude that interventions aiming to strengthen forms of collective action can only succeed if they recognize contextuality, unequal power relationships, and grass-rooted forms of interdependence and collaboration, and actively build on and work toward such alternative, more convivial imaginaries.

Naked, authentic, classless? Reading Naked Attraction

At first glance, Naked Attraction seems to be another example of a type of reality television that is often criticised as ‘voyeuristic’, ‘tasteless’ or transgressing bourgeois boundaries of shame. In this article, however, I want to show how class differences that play a vital part in reality television, are made invisible with great effort and translated into questions of ‘authenticity’, ‘privacy’ and supposedly classless forms of ‘desire’. The argument is developed in three steps. First, I outline my theoretical approach, which combines a material and symbolic understanding of class. Building on this, I will show that the connection between seemingly ‘private’ and ‘intimate’ spheres of life and the fabrication of class, which is central to Naked Attraction, is based on a structural relationship. In the third section, I analyse Naked Attraction in more detail, suggesting that the programme can be read as the (doomed) notion of a seemingly ‘classless’ society. This is where the class politics of the show (and, more broadly, of contemporary neo-liberal imaginaries since New Labour) can be found.

On bundling: the aesthetics of exchange and growth in central Uganda

AbstractIn central Uganda, even a casual observer would notice the widespread presentation of often identical commercial services and goods – fruit vendors, street food or motorcycle taxis, for instance – in a small shared area. This article brings the dynamics of this phenomenon into view under the heuristic rubric of ‘bundling’, reflecting both on diverse examples from present-day Kampala and on some of the phenomenon’s historical and linguistic scaffolding. We take this phenomenon seriously as an alternative form of socio-economic exchange and growth, one that is distinct from liberal and neoliberal imaginaries of an unlimited flow of goods, people, things and services. Bundling, we argue, reflects an aesthetics in which both material value and social relationships are imagined to arise through thickenings of persons and things, assembled and ordered in spatial proximity and symmetry. The article suggests that bundling offers conceptual resources to imagine growth otherwise, as a process unfolding in ways that complicate and clog conventional economic imaginaries.

Emotion and imagination in English-medium instruction programs: Illuminating its dark side through Nepali students’ narratives

This article reports on students’ affective dimension in English-medium instruction (EMI) university programs in Nepal. To unpack the affective dimension of EMI students, I conducted interviews and focus group discussions with students from different disciplines (e.g., business, nursing, pharmacy, and education). The data analysis revealed that the social and cognitive process of selecting an EMI program is embedded in “neoliberal imagination,” in which they perceive EMI as a way to upward socioeconomic and symbolic mobility. Such neoliberal desire has implicitly appropriated EMI as a neoliberal endowment and created a discourse of unequal emotions. While EMI has engendered positive emotions (e.g., hope and pride) for some students, other students from non-EMI schooling backgrounds experience negative emotions (e.g., shame and anxiety). The paper, therefore, argues that the neoliberal desire for EMI can create a discourse of mixed emotions, also leading to emotional challenges and discrimination against some students.

‘Mainstreaming’ Meets ‘Choice and Control’: Unsettling Neoliberal Imaginaries of Service Choice

‘Mainstreaming’ and ‘Choice and control’ agendas have played a dominant role in shaping disability policy and advocacy in many countries since the 1970s, however scholarship is yet to critically explore the tensions and synergies between the two. ‘Mainstreaming’ is the aspiration to move people with disability out of ‘specialist’ spaces designed specifically for them, and into ‘mainstream’ spaces open to people of all abilities. ‘Choice and control’ concerns efforts to enhance autonomy and self-determination for people with disability. In this paper we interrogate the relationship between ‘choice and control’ and ‘mainstreaming’, both conceptually and through empirical examination of choices made by people with intellectual disability about use of mainstream services in four Australian cities. Our analysis shows their ability to choose is severely constrained by excessive control practiced by supporters, funding restrictions, affordability constraints, and exclusionary practices in mainstream services. We argue that the potential for both ‘choice and control’ and ‘mainstreaming’ has been constrained by neoliberal socio-spatial imaginaries in which they have been framed.

CARICOM Caribbean’s HRD 2030 strategy: inscribing the neoliberal imaginary through social planning?

ABSTRACT The globalisation’s ‘knowledge economy’ has created a new set of human capital requirements. The guiding policy and planning document, The CARICOM Human Resource Development 2030 Strategy: Unlocking Caribbean Human Potential document, ‘serves as a roadmap for the CARICOM Caribbean’s responses to these human capital demands. I conduct a critical analysis of this document’s policy discourses to ascertain their core values and strategies, as well as their implications for the education and development of the CARICOM Caribbean. I find that the emergent discourses and ideas – neoliberal education reform and state-led social planning – provide a cautionary tale of the potential impact of educational change driven by the neoliberal imaginary of globalisation. A chief concern is that as the discourse of education as a tool for social planning is utilised according to a neoliberal logic of the education system operational reform discourse, the deep social development problems already characterising Caribbean education and other development challenges, may very well be exacerbated.

Youth Entrepreneurship in South Africa: Neoliberal imagination and township realities

Youth Entrepreneurship in South Africa: Neoliberal imagination and township realities

The Indus Delta Between Past and Future: Precarious Livelihoods and Neoliberal Imaginaries in a Parched Coastal Belt

The Indus delta, at the terminus of the Indus river system, is presently home to 300,000 residents. Over the last century, upriver hydrology has reduced the flow of water through the river. The result is salination and seawater incursion that has led to the loss of arable land and with it, agriculture as a sustainable livelihood. This has created precarious livelihoods, as people are forced either into the informal fishing sector, or to migrate; this is a departure from earlier times when agriculture was the primary vocation, and forests covered large swathes of the region. I also discuss future plans for port development in the delta that is constitutive of a neoliberal developmentalist imaginary. This vision, in which a future Pakistan will be connected to markets in Asia through its ports, has been propagated for decades, and most recently as a consequence of China’s ongoing investment regime in Pakistan. In the conclusion, I reflect on the paradox of fixation on fantastical futures while the population is caught up in an uncertain present.

“With Friends Like These”: Unpacking Panicked Metaphors for Population Ageing

Age studies scholars have long noted problems with using a tsunami metaphor to describe population ageing. Age-friendly offers a new way to respond to an increase in older adults. Though critical gerontologists identify the related movement’s limits, “age-friendly” itself is rarely recognized as a metaphor. This paper proposes that, while the metaphor of age-friendly is more benign than that of the tsunami, it still portrays an ageing population as a homogenous problem to be solved through morally obligatory individual actions, thereby participating in a form of age panic. The analysis draws on a humanities-based close reading of the World Health Organization’s 2007 “Global Age-Friendly Cities: A Guide.” The method uncovers attitudes that anchor the metaphor and hamper the movement’s effectiveness, particularly when trying to reach people who have not already been well served all their lives. The emphasis on a narrow version of active ageing feeds a neoliberal imagination that affects how value is assigned to an ageing population. That underlying emphasis needs to shift before new metaphors, policies and practices for population ageing—that allow for the variability and uniqueness of late-life experience—can take hold. How might we reconceptualize the ageing population if we focus on contributions and meaning instead?

Performing a neoliberal city-regional imaginary: the case of Tampere tramway project

ABSTRACT Sub-national statecraft and scalecraft is touted as consequential antidote to the crisis of uneven development and democratic deficit. Interrogating this supposition with reference to city-regionalization in Finland, this paper explores how a neoliberal imaginary of city-regions has been institutionalized through entanglement of discursive practices of contractual planning and materiality of tramway construction in Tampere. We argue that Finland’s ‘city regionalism’ is best understood in terms of rescaling of power from local municipalities to upper tiers of governance, lubricating of entrepreneurial development projects, and shrinking of democratic spaces of political contestations. We conclude by calling for geographically sensitive theorisations of city-regionalization.

Re-imagining society and childhood: An analysis of cultural politics of childhood in Turkey

Neoliberalism along with other sites of cultural, social and political life has created deep impacts on childhood. With the rise of neoliberalisation of policies, childhood has come to be defined in terms of economic utility and wellbeing of society. In this paper, we examine the process of neoliberalisation through the changing role and meaning of childhood. We inquire the role of childhood in re-imagining of the Turkish society based on the data from the document of the strategic vision of the Turkish government. We seek to track the evolving notion of childhood and roles ascribed to it. By applying a critical discourse lens to the document of 8th Five Year Development Plan and Strategic Vision of 2023, we explain how the cultural politics of childhood work as tools of creating present and future workers. We examine the shifting place of childhood and instrumentalisation of childhood in neoliberal imagination of policy.

Review: Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, by Paul Dobraszczyk

Review: <i>Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination</i>, by Paul Dobraszczyk

Student voice in higher education: Opening the loop

UK national policy and the practices of university course boards tend to reduce understandings of ‘student voice’ to a feedback loop. In this loop, students express feedback, the university takes this on board, then they tell the students how they have responded to their feedback. The feedback loop is a significant element of the neoliberal imaginary of higher education globally. This qualitative research study drew on interviews with course representatives in three universities in England, and on policy analysis, to explore the discursive construction and enactment of student voice. It uses the feedback loop as an analytical frame. Drawing on Foucault’s later work, the article aims to open up the feedback loop by exploring its manifestation in the mundane everyday practices of universities. In opening the loop, we identify the following effects of the student voice policy ensemble: students have to construct feedback as it is not just waiting to be gathered; it promotes a dividing practice, where reps are positioned differently to other students; there is a focus on problems; an ‘us and them’ is reinforced between staff and students; the loop closes down discussion; and a managerial logic obscures political processes. The article articulates its opening of the loop as a way of unmasking the modes of power which work through discourses of ‘student voice’, and hence seeks to create possibilities for resistance to being governed this way.

Book Review: Llerena Guiu Searle. 2017. Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India

Book Review: Llerena Guiu Searle. 2017. <i>Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India</i>

Is digital health care more equitable? The framing of health inequalities within England's digital health policy 2010-2017.

Informed by a discourse analysis, this article examines the framing of equity within the UK's digital health policies between 2010 and 2017, focusing on England's development of NHS Digital and its situation within the UK Government's wider digital strategy. Analysis of significant policy documents reveals three interrelated discourses that are engaged within England's digital health policies: equity as a neoliberal imaginary of digital efficiency and empowerment; digital health as a pathway towards democratising health care through data‐sharing, co‐creation and collaboration; and finally, digital health as a route towards extending citizen autonomy through their access to data systems. It advances knowledge of the relationship between digital health policy and health inequalities. Revealing that while inclusion remains a priority area for policymakers, equity is being constituted in ways that reflect broader discourses of neoliberalism, empowerment and the turn to the market for technological solutionism, which may potentially exacerbate health inequalities.

Llerena Guiu Searle, Landscapes of Accumulation, Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in contemporary India

L’ouvrage de l’anthropologue Llerena Guiu Searle, Landscapes of Accumulation, Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in contemporary India, est une contribution importante aux etudes sur la financiarisation de la production urbaine dans les Suds, qui s’interessent a l’arrivee d’acteurs de la finance de marche dans l’urbain, plus precisement dans les secteurs de l’immobilier et des infrastructures. Les marches immobiliers des pays dits « emergents », et ceux de l’Inde en particulier, conna...

Neoliberalism, Technocracy and Higher Education: Editors’ Introduction

ABSTRACTThis special issue of Social Epistemology has its origin in two symposia organised by the Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Research Group at the University of Birmingham (UK). These were ‘The Digital University in a Neoliberal Age’ in November 2017 and ‘The Neoliberal Imagination’ in February 2018. The articles published here explore the relationship between neoliberalism, technocracy and technology, with a special but not exclusive focus on universities, which are open to contestation concerning their role in the public sphere and the politics of knowledge production. Where universities are discussed, English higher education is focused on, because this is undergoing an intense audit-driven neoliberal re-engineering. English higher education is an outlier in Europe to the extent to which it has undergone marketisation, with top-down reforms imposed by the supposedly rolled back, less-interventionist neoliberal state (Shattock, Times Higher, 3 April 2019). Central to these are state-imposed technocratic audit regimes which are used to provide ‘objective’ data on ‘performance’, which has, always already, to be ‘excellent’ (see Readings’ 1997 classic critique of the vacuity of the notion of ‘excellence’). Before briefly introducing each article, we will situate the concerns mentioned above in the context of a social epistemological critique of knowledge production.

Making an exception: market design and the politics of re-regulation in the French electricity sector

By subjecting market participants to uncertain and volatile prices, the liberalization of public concerns generates opposition that threatens its own survival. This paper asks how this contradiction is resolved in practice. We examine the case of the French electric power industry. When this sector was liberalized and integrated with European markets, a period of unexpectedly high prices brought strenuous objections from the French electro-intensive industries, and a crisis in political support for liberalization. Based on interviews with key participants and analysis of the documentary record, we trace a series of efforts to reach a political accommodation. Liberalization has not realized the neoliberal imaginary of an efficient and peaceful allocation of state services. But it has effectively transformed the terms under which political-economic struggles proceed, mediating, constraining and governing the politics of distribution.

Structure of Class Feeling/Feeling of Class Structure: Laura Wade’sPoshand Katherine Soper’sWish List

Theatre’s counter-hegemonic resistance to the “demonization of the working class” (Owen Jones, Chavs) is the subject of this article. This resistance is analysed through case studies of two “class acts”: the elite Oxford boys in Laura Wade’s Posh (2010) and the poverty-stricken youth in Katherine Soper’s Wish List (2016). My close reading of these two plays involves a reprise of Raymond Williams’s “structure of feeling”: the conjugation of “structure” and “feeling” allows me to engage with and advocate a dual concern with systems of classification as well as the affective, experiential (lived) dimension of being “classified.” Moving between the class-fuelled feelings of entitlement in Posh and those of alienation in Wish List, I elucidate how, under the United Kingdom’s regime of neoliberal austerity, the label “working class” has become “sticky” (Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion) with disgust-making properties (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction). Overall, what emerges is a critical feeling for the United Kingdom as a class-divided nation and an urgent need to resist the entrenched classifying gaze of the neoliberal imagination.