Neoliberal Processes Research Articles

Why and how ontology matters: A cartography of neoliberalism(s) and neoliberalization(s)

AbstractIn this article, I discuss the importance of ontology and its implications, demonstrated in the examples of different approaches to neoliberalism. The lack of careful ontological considerations leads to confusing and often contradictory usages of the term ‘neoliberalism’, obfuscating its usefulness. Instead, I suggest a cartography which consists of integrating two ontological debates ‐ structure‐agency and material‐ideational ‐ through the interplay between the problematiques of structuration and semiosis, and the operational debate on ideas/interests. In so doing, this cartography can provide readers with various heuristic devices to understand the making of theories, why and how conceptualizations of neoliberalism differ between and within theories and pinpoint the thematic implications of these differences. The translation of this cartography helps to achieve two things, (1) to move beyond the static analyses of neoliberalism and endorse the dynamic understand of neoliberalization processes, (2) to understand why systemic process‐based understandings of neoliberalization can create distinctions between analytical understandings of neoliberalism in terms of either the commodification of marketization processes or the marketization of commodification processes.

Analysis of the Educational Administration of the Public Educational Centers of Andalusia (Spain): The Role of the Manager in the Face of New Social Challenges

The advance and influence of neoliberalisation processes has changed the way of understanding and managing the educational system under a New Public Management (NPM) of education that integrates the values of the free market, competitiveness, accountability, external evaluation, etc. The objective of this work is to analyse Andalusian headteachers’ perceptions of their professional practices from within the context of neoliberal and neo-conservative processes. The methodology used is based on a qualitative research approach, where we analyse the implications of neoliberal processes and NPM in the school principalship in Andalusia (Spain). The sample of participants was consolidated into 15 principals belonging to public high schools. For data collection, in-depth interview was used. Information analysis applies content analysis and its assembly with the grounded theory. The results are expressed in four categories that refer to the implications of neoliberal processes and NGP in the school principalship. There is a tendency to redefine the role of the headteacher as a manager. The discussion and conclusions point out how the neoliberal processes and the NPM are reconfiguring the school principalship towards a “manager-administrator” profile, a management instrument with administrative functions and an agent for assessment in the school. In this context, there are also processes of confrontation and discomfort with these transformations in the principal’s role.

Notions of time in a neighborhood destined for state-led regeneration

ABSTRACT The paper deals with temporal aspects of state-led regeneration processes, focusing on a pre-gentrification era in a neighborhood’s lifecycle when various repercussions could follow. Relying on ethnographic research in neighborhood C (“Gimel”) in Beersheba, Israel, the paper joins theorizing efforts from southeastern “ordinary” cities, particularly highlighting the significant role of the state in putatively neoliberal processes. The paper argues that unknown temporal spatialization – the timing, length, and location of development – produce different perceptions of time with regard to urban transformation. Different actors develop a temporal perspective based on their subjective memory, imaginaries, and positioning. The paper offers three timescapes in a place constructed to be on the verge of change: (1) the “above” perspective of planners and municipal actors, patiently envisioning change based on external imaginaries; (2) the “intermediate” perspective of realtors and developers, seeing redevelopment as a nascent on-going process; and (3) the “below” perspectives of residents, either focusing on the decades-long decay or seeing their residency as a transient solution, with present-time longing for rapid change or fear of displacement.

Diagrammatics of Spatial Justice: Neoliberalisation, Normativity, and the Production of Space

AbstractThis article focuses on the concept of “spatial justice” and argues for its analytical significance in a critical comprehension of a series of phenomena, from processes of neoliberalisation, socio‐geographic composition and the production of urban space to how space and justice are conceived. Being an expression of social theory’s spatial turn, the concept has served to enrich apperceptions of social justice. Nonetheless, the article adopts the contention that neither the concept’s more disturbing implications nor its radical potential have been fully attended. After contextualising the relevant theoretical problematic through an analysis of neoliberal urbanism, this radical potency is foregrounded by a Deleuzian‐inspired conceptualisation, which conceives spatial justice as a contentious process of territorialising and deterritorialising assemblages that operate and unfold diagrammatically. This conceptualisation, it will be argued, allows theory to move beyond the distributive paradigm and its anthropocentric bias, which continue to prevail in the relevant theoretical and political discourses.

Wolfgang Streeck on consumption, depoliticisation and neoliberal capitalism

Tucked into Wolfgang Streeck’s influential crisis theory of contemporary capitalism are various attempts at causally linking processes of neoliberalisation to generalised depoliticisation, while depoliticisation is in its turn attributed to the emergence of a diffuse ‘consumerist’ ethos in the 1970s. Streeck argues that rising consumerism led to a generalised demotic embrace of marketised forms of need satisfaction and in so doing evacuated the political will to resist neoliberal reforms. If, however, we take neoliberalisation to entail both the depoliticisation of the demos and the marketisation of the polity, then Streeck’s attempt to connect these processes to consumption is weakened by significant historical oversights on both ends. Streeck’s attribution of depoliticisation to a new consumerist ethos is beset by a reductive economism. At the same time, Streeck overlooks just how pivotal legitimatory ideals of consumer-side social order developed by specific networked elites have been for the marketisation of the polity.

Rethinking the Multilateral Order Between Liberal Internationalism and Neoliberalism/Neoliberalisation Processes

Discourses on multilateralism and liberal internationalism are replete with warnings about crises. However, theories often only address crises in pragmatic terms, as if they were discreet and isolated phenomena that have little to do with globalized structural tendencies and the specific limitations of knowledge production within the field of international relations (IR). This article initiates a process of reflection on the nature of the crisis of liberal internationalism and the multilateral world order with the help of the pedagogy of crises framework. It identifies the biases contained within IR research and knowledge production as integral to the crises themselves because of the limitations of their engagement with crises solely at the crisis management level. Acknowledging and situating these biases allows us to build a perspective around the notion of<em> crisis of crisis management</em>. This perspective entails a combination of the study of liberal internationalism and neoliberalism to better explain the nature and dynamics of the multilateral world order. This endeavour can offer a fresh take on analysing case studies related to developing countries and outlines a critical focus to inform further research. A brief review of the Chilean example is featured to support this argument, as it shows how the processes that unfold within the multilateral world order are articulated within a local context, and also points to the intimate relations between knowledge production and policy implementation. The article demonstrates the impossibility of understanding the multilateral world order without due consideration of the dialectical relationship between neoliberalism and liberal internationalism. Historically, analyses have focused on neoliberalism as something embedded within liberal internationalism while, in fact, processes of neoliberalisation have become a framework of reference in themselves. That is to say, liberal internationalism, and the study of it, are but a few of the elements that comprise contemporary neoliberalism. Given this, it is argued that systematic academic engagement with neoliberalism/neoliberalisation is essential for a proper understanding of the multilateral world order.

The moral economy of sex work in Mombasa, Kenya

This paper investigates the process of individuals trying to figure out how the neoliberal economy works by focusing on women selling sex in Mombasa, Kenya. The article will explore the key tensions prevailing in sex work through encounters with supernatural forces narrated by women selling sex. The analysis presented will argue that there are two key tensions that define the moral economy of sex work in Mombasa: the strong stratification among sex workers that position a minority of already better off women in more advantageous ways, thereby leaving most others in precarity; and worries about changing masculinities that result in men who are non-human. Both of those tensions signify the anxieties surrounding an occupation that historically allowed women to accumulate capital and re-insert themselves into Kenyan society in more advantageous positions (see for instance, White 1990, Bujra 1977). Furthermore, the contemporary lived realities of selling sex also speak to the processes of neoliberalisation that are internalised by women selling sex and are becoming a key feature of contemporary commercial sex work.

The rise of anti-establishment and far-right forces in Italy: Neoliberalisation in a new guise?

Over the last decade, the succession of financial crisis, neoliberal reform processes, and emergence of anti-establishment and far-right political forces has become a familiar pattern across Europe. But in few countries has it been as striking as in Italy. After the 2018 national elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League joined forces to form a government characterised by its rejection of past neoliberalising reforms and by its defiant stance towards European Union fiscal rules. The League’s victory in the latest European elections confirmed its ascendance and its centrality in the Italian political landscape. This article examines these developments in light of the recent trajectory of the Italian political economy and investigates whether the rise of these parties, and particularly the League, marked a break with the post-2011 neoliberalisation process. Analysis of the M5S-League government’s action indicates that these forces can further neoliberalisation processes together with a mix of anti-migration and welfare chauvinist measures. Moreover, an investigation of the political-economic project of the League shows that far-right parties can advance ‘nation-based’ neoliberalisation processes.

Neoliberalism and state formation in Iran

ABSTRACT Stemming from the exceptionalist understanding of the 1979 revolution and/or relying on the key political and economic characteristics of the rentier state theory, most explanations of the Iranian post-revolutionary state privilege national space and downgrade capitalism as a totalizing unity. In contrast, this article defines the state as a set of institutional forms reflective of social relations that are generated from contestations over the processes of capital accumulation, arguing that these national social relations have been constituted through their interaction with global social relations. Accordingly, by documenting a conspicuous institutional reorganization of the Iranian state since the late 1980s, it contends that this transformation is the consequence of the reconfiguration of the class basis of the state. The article maintains that this class reconfiguration is internally related to the process of Iranian neoliberalization which has been spawned as a result of the interaction of global and local dynamics.

Space standards and housing design: typological experimentation in England and Chile

Space standards are a deliberately technocratic translation of housing experience, use, and demand into measurable minimum floor areas and dimensions by calculating standard furniture sizes, circulation, and activity zones in a dwelling. This paper discusses how space standards register regulatory cultures and affect housing design and perceptions of housing quality from a design research perspective. The definition and enforcement of standards depend on local design governance approaches. Housing standards are of particular importance to the protection of minimum subsidised housing supply in dualist rental systems with differentiated regulations, due to greater inequalities between private and subsidised housing sectors. This is characteristic of countries with neoliberalised housing access. Two archetypical cases are discussed here: England, whose privatisation of council housing is considered exemplary for Western neoliberal housing policy; and Chile, who is seen as the main Latin American neoliberal model. This comparison explores how neoliberal processes in housing relate to space standards, wider laissez-faire housing and social welfare histories, and design experimentation in subsidised housing. It further deals with the common issues of affordable housing in market-driven contexts, such as the peripheralisation of areas with less infrastructures and services, residualisation of social housing tenure, typological stigmatisation or preferences, homeownership prioritisation, and private-sector support through subsidies. The discussion of housing design and space standards connects problems of design governance to technical, legal, and socio-spatial discourses, through which responses to cultural, social, and economic contexts, as well as changing modes of living, can be analysed.

Public administrative aspect of the post-war reconstruction and reform of the higher education system of Ukraine

The article deals with specific issues of the post-war reconstruction and reform of the higher education system of Ukraine. Reforming the higher education system of Ukraine is an objective and necessary process, which leads to significant changes in the approaches of public administration, which are strengthened in the conditions of strengthening the principles of democracy, the cohesion of Ukrainian society, and social unity. The main directions of reform remain the processes of the formation of the market for educational services and a competitive environment in education, a high level of liberalization of management mechanisms, and publicprivate partnerships. During the research, such scientific methods as analytical, dialectical, structural-functional analogy and synthesis, comparative analysis, and modeling were used. Within the scope of the research, the current state of management of the higher education system in Ukraine was considered, and the need for the introduction of innovative management models and their practical development was determined. The author proposed a conceptual model of the reform of the higher education system of Ukraine in the conditions of post-war recovery, for which the principle content and structural elements are defined. Neoliberal processes and their consequences in the field of educational policy and «new public management» on the state education management system are analyzed. According to the new public governance approach, human resources are viewed from the perspective of human capital (i.e. as a potential form of productivity). In this way, «market values» are accepted, integrated, and subjectivized. A new form of rationality, which perceives the management of education through indirect forms of control, sees economic market values as a way to improve productivity. The management of education in the context of post-war reconstruction must change traditional political structures and processes, making room for new agents, in particular stakeholders who intervene in public policy. The concept of «decentralized governance» begins with an analysis of the behavior patterns of subjects and how they interpret the facts of everyday life, rather than with an analysis of external structures or causes. Subjects govern themselves without needing a strong external government to control them. In this context, educational management is perceived as a management technique and technology that affects the daily practice and management of the higher education system. Thus, the dynamics, functions, responsibilities, priorities, and practices are rethought in terms of choice, competence, provision, and «success», which are related to performance indicators and standardization of results within the higher education system of Ukraine.

Creating entrepreneurs: National curriculum change in South Korea

This article explores national curriculum change initiated by the South Korean state by examining the 2015 curriculum reform. Relying on interviews with policy actors who participated in the curriculum-making process, I aimed to understand how certain reform ideas within an institutionalized, state-led curriculum change made—or failed to make—their way into official documents. Three main themes emerged from interviews: (a) entrepreneurial vision supported by elite bureaucrats and politicians, (b) education professors importing performance standards from the United States, and (c) parent-citizens empowered by education consumerism opposing elitism. Based on the data analysis, I argue cyclical South Korean national curriculum revisions, dominated by Korean elites, function as a social apparatus to disseminate and underpin neoliberal ideology. I also argue parent-citizens’ political activism—empowered by three decades of education consumerism policies—succeeded in challenging Korean elitism and demonstrated anti-neoliberalism potential. As a theoretical framework, I chose critical works addressing neoliberal education reform discourses. I conclude by discussing the future of national curriculum making in the continued process of neoliberalisation.

הומולאומיות והפוליטיקה של תנועות להט"ב בישראל

Two processes have been central to the LGBT (lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual) movement in politics since the end of the 1980’s: NGOization, which has led to the practice of assimilation, and homo-nationalism, representing a binary process of normalization and national inclusion. The amalgamation of NGOization and homonationalism have greatly influenced the movements, their agenda, practices, achievements and networks. The article sheds light on the broad neoliberal processes used by the Israeli LGBT movements to achieve power and status. The analysis traces major milestones from the 1980’s to the 21st century. Viewed through a neoliberal perspective, LGBT social movements are revealed to have worked and grown and become more institutionalized and normalized. However, this does not reflect the attainment of more power by the LGBT social movements in Israel; it is indicative rather of their privatization by the state which enables LGBT social movements to fill a niche under the government’s exclusive responsibility. Thus, in the 21st century, the value and valuation of LGBT subjects have been established not so much by the work of their social movements but through their economic and urban power reflective of ’post-homonationalism.

The Judicial Fix for Forest Loss: The Godavarman Case and the Financialization of India’s Forests

In India, the setting up of large projects in forest areas can be undertaken only after government permission is obtained under the Forest (Conservation) Act (FCA) of 1980. Today, this approval process includes the enumeration and valuation of forest loss, and the financing of compensatory afforestation schemes to offset the loss. These procedures were designed through the orders and judgements of the Supreme Court of India in a set of cases that started in 1995 and continue to this day. These procedures are purportedly aimed to protect and restore forest ecologies in India. In this article we analyse the Supreme Court’s processes and orders between 1996 and 2006 which transformed the political ecology of forests in India. The judicial and expert discourses treated forest regulation and conservation as a techno-managerial exercise, separating it from social-ecological concerns such as historical dispossession of Adivasis and other forest-dependent people, and violent state suppression of diverse forms of forest management. The judicial interventions are instructive to understand the policy processes of green neoliberalism and the implications of the financialization of forests on environmental governance in India.

Street Names through Sociological Lenses. Part II: Constructionism and Utilitarianism

Abstract As toponymic means of inscribing urban space, street names have been addressed mainly by human geographers, who have articulated the field of critical place-name studies. In this paper, I continue the endeavor started in the previous issue published in Social Change Review of reading street names through sociological lenses. Whereas in the first part of this two-part contribution the analysis was made from functionalist and conflictualist perspectives, this second and final part employs social constructionism and the utilitarian theoretical tradition in making sociological sense of street nomenclatures. First, conceiving of street names as forming discursively constructed linguistic landscapes, the paper shows how urban namescapes – the “city-text” – are written, erased, and rewritten to reflect the shifting political powers. Second, the paper examines the neoliberal processes of place branding and toponymic commodification by which street names are turned into sought-after urban commodities with transactional value on the real estate market. The paper concludes by inviting sociologists to join the conversation on street names, which should become an important topic of sociological reflection.

Negotiating the Wild West: Variegated neoliberalisation of the Swedish labour migration regime and the wild berry migration industry

Neoliberalisation processes have long permeated Western societies, including a common direction towards neoliberal migration regimes. This paper combines the perspective of variegated neoliberalisation with the recent literature on migration industries, to investigate the neoliberalisation of the Swedish labour migration regime and how it affected and interacted with the wild berry migration industry. It shows how neoliberalisation as a historical and spatially contingent process resulted in the distinct phases of intertwined policymaking and enactment of the industry. The ‘roll back’ phase included mutual interests and ‘intimate relations’ between state and industry, which both empowered and increased the number of private actors, creating structures that remained during the regular restructuring phase of ‘roll out’ neoliberalisation. While adding the perspective of variegated neoliberalisation, the paper deepens the analysis of migration industries by pointing at neoliberalisation as a spatial and temporal process, where the interplay between state and industry, an enlarged number of intermediaries and the increased responsibility of private actors are central cornerstones. The Swedish case shows how the role of intermediaries in the wild berry migration industry was reconstructed in order for the neoliberal migration regime to regulate a previously irregular migration industry. It is concluded that strong but spatially contingent links exist between neoliberal political economies, migration regimes and migration industries.

Technocrats in (the crises of) the state. Political change and state transformations in Italy

Technocracy is one of the main issues in contemporary social sciences scholarship. While many authors have written on, among others themes, the rise of technocracy, the concept and definition of technocracy, or the typologies of technocratic governments, the specific question of the relation between technocracy (and technocrats) and state transformations has been less explored. Through the study of the Italian case, we analyze the role of technocrats in three critical junctures (since the early 1980s to the present), and in light of the intertwined process of state transformation and neoliberalization. The paper thus provides for a long-term analysis of technocracy and the state, asking when, how, and in what conditions technocrats not only came to hold top-government positions, but also concurred to redefine intra-state institutional relations especially as regards the strengthening of executive power.

World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent ed. by Sharae Deckard and Stephen Shapiro

Reviewed by: World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent ed. by Sharae Deckard and Stephen Shapiro Shahab Nadimi Deckard, Sharae, and Stephen Shapiro, eds. World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Pp. 269. CDN$166.24 hardcover. As the term neoliberalism, with its lack of unequivocal definition, is applied across diverse contexts, it has become more and more contested over the last few decades. However, financialization, deregulation of markets, privatization of public services, and wealth accumulation through dispossession remain some of the features associated with this concept. Within this context, World Literature, Neoliberalism, and the Culture of Discontent asks two important questions: are the cultural and ideological implications of neoliberalism experienced only in the US and Europe? How does neoliberalism function in a globalized setting? As editors Sharae Deckard and Stephen Shapiro note, the major goal of this collection is to forge a term that best characterizes the distinctive features of the last few decades that also include contexts beyond the Euro-American capitalist model of neoliberalism. The editors ask the reader to think through a broader framework of the capitalist world system within which neoliberalism is situated. The essays in this collection seek to reexamine the historical formulation of the term, periodize different phases of neoliberalism up to the present, and restore capitalism as the major object of critique to fully understand the shifting temporalities within these phases (4). Eleven chapters explore how neoliberalism is practiced in the core zones, semiperipheries, and peripheries. In their introductory essay, the editors address the difficulties and complexities of defining the term in diverse contexts while trying to provide a full-fledged approach that links different accounts of neoliberalism. They use a comparative framework to discuss these global zones and integrate three methodologies: a world-historical perspective; a world-ecological dimension; and a world-literary/cultural conception. Using the first methodology, the editors begin with “rehistoricizing” the development of neoliberalism within a “long spiral” of world-system perspectives. This method provides a comprehensive historical approach and focuses on the role of regions beyond Europe and North America. More than just undertaking a genealogical method, Deckard and Shapiro succeed in differentiating various phases of neoliberalism within capitalism’s longue durée. Following Duménil and Lévy’s The Crisis of Neoliberalism, the editors further divide the approximately 90-year neoliberal period into two major cycles of 40–50 years with an overlapping minor period in between. The neoliberal period is characterized by “a cluster of different, sequential conjunctural moments, a longer generational shift, and a longer duration of more expansive economic changes and processes” (40). Nested in the late nineteenth century, the first phase of neoliberalism runs from the 1930s through the mid-1960s as a reaction to the economic crisis [End Page 440] of the Great Depression along with the emergence of right-wing politics (Kennedy and Shapiro). Before entering the second major phase, this period saw an overlapping and transitional decade from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s as a key condition for neoliberalism to attack the working class and become a dominant force. In this period, social welfare protection began to be cut within the capitalist cores (Deckard and Shapiro 41). The second phase, from the late 1970s to 2008–11, began to hollow out the middle classes by forcing them into personal debts. A cluster of mini-cycles runs through this longer period that marks the growth of neoliberal strategies (42). The current phase, also called “late” neoliberalism, may indicate the movement of neoliberalism toward the supremacy of East and South Asia (6). Within their second methodology, the editors examine neoliberalism from a world-ecology perspective. As such, the process of neoliberalization is seen as a dynamic process/phenomenon “that registers the changing global composition of class relations governing the exploitation of peoples and the appropriation of natural resources” (25). Kerstin Oloff’s essay “From ‘Section 936’ to ‘Junk’: Neoliberalism, Ecology, and Puerto Rican Literature” explores the work of novelists such as Rafael Sánchez, Mayra Santos-Febres, Josué Montijo, and Rafael Acevedo from the 1970s onward, offering sharp-witted ways to lay bare “shifting socio-ecological realities...

Autonomous and responsible? Parental rationalities for their involvement in ECEC in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT This article examines different rationalities for parental involvement in their children’s early childhood education and care (ECEC). Starting from Foucault’s governmentality and the context of the transforming and diversifying Czech preschool system, it analyzes parents’ rationalities for their involvement in ECEC and discusses how they relate to the neoliberal ideal of the responsible autonomous family. Analyzing data from interviews with parents in six ECEC facilities with different characteristics, it identifies five rationalities for parental involvement and shows how the neoliberal processes of responsibilization and autonomization play a central role in the (de)legitimization of these parental rationalities. Reflecting on how the rationalities of parental involvement gain or lose legitimacy in relation to dominant norms and ideals helps ECEC students and practitioners to understand how social inequalities are potentially exacerbated through the promotion/expectation of certain forms of parental involvement in parent – ECEC facility relationships.

Remunicipalisation, Mutating Neoliberalism, and the Conjuncture

AbstractThere is a growing interest in the progressive potential of remunicipalisation, a global trend for towns, cities, and even subnational regions to take formerly privatised assets and services back into public ownership. In this paper, we offer a novel conceptualisation of remunicipalisation, developing a spatialised conjunctural perspective through critical engagement with the work of Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and recent geographical scholarship on political economy transitions. This draws attention to the open, dynamic, political, and spatially diverse aspects of remunicipalisation as part of a mutating process of neoliberalism. Emphasising the conjunctural insight of neoliberalism’s shifting and variegated terrain on which progressive forces have to mobilise, our theorisation has implications for left political strategy and broader transformative projects against a backdrop of global economic, social, and ecological crisis.