Neoliberal Times Research Articles

Emotional Intelligence Dimensions and Professional Standards: Trajectories for Building Capacities for School Improvement

ABSTRACT School leaders worldwide face challenges in dealing with equity, inclusion, and coexistence because of various global forces. This quantitative study investigated the relationships between emotional intelligence dimensions (EIDs) and professional performance standards (PPS) of Abu Dhabi public school leaders dealing with the changing times of neoliberalism. The study used questionnaires and a scoring guide to measure the emotional intelligence and leadership attributes of 123 school leaders, who were the participants. A multi-structural level analysis tracked the correlation and association between school leaders’ EIDs and PPS. The results indicated areas of EIDs requiring development to facilitate school improvement.

On narcissist leadership and authenticity: Moving towards an ecological understanding of the self

Neoliberalism promotes the self as an enterprise. The entrepreneuring self originates from a western concept of autonomic individualism, which in its extreme form, gives rise to narcissist leadership in neoliberal times. Narcissist leaders are efficient in achieving neoliberal indicators and outcomes for personal gain. This leadership style is detrimental to the public good and democracy. Critiques of narcissist leadership could benefit from using an alternative ontological perspective: a Confucian notion of the self as an ecological being.

Thinking with decoloniality: Authorship and collaborations in neoliberal times

Thinking with decoloniality: Authorship and collaborations in neoliberal times

Cities in Flux

Abstract From Singapore to New York, via New Delhi, Johannesburg, London, Glasgow and Buenos Aires, “Cities in Flux” registers some of the most profound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities around the world. Narrated in different styles, the individual pieces draw on theories of global cities in neoliberal times as well as on the phenomenological truths of inhabiting these disparate places bound together by a global crisis. The pieces make use of a plethora of urban signs—flashing images, sounds of silence and emergency vehicles, Whatsapp chatter, billboards, found objects, and media noise—to reflect on experiences that are both deeply personal and embodied as well as reflective of a common urban predicament. Even as the pandemic exacerbated problems of housing, transport, health, schooling, employment, environment, and food supply, it also created feelings of waste, loss, and loneliness. All the pieces draw inspiration from a range of urban projects such as the Hot City Collective in New York, the Workers’ Stories Project in Glasgow, the Black Lives Matter movement in London, the Feminist Assembly in Buenos Aires, the C-19 People's Coalition in Johannesburg, and the anti–citizenship law protests and the farmers’ movement in Indian cities. Against the multiplying crises of cities during the time of the pandemic, the different pieces in this pod come together to hope for an urban commons that is based on justice and freedom.

Rereading Turkey’s recent history through the lens of rock music: how rock has lost its socio-political edge in neoliberal times

In presenting the historical development of rock music in Turkey from the early 1960s to the present within a socio-political framework, this study provides (1) a rereading of Turkish politico-economic changes and (2) a correlative cultural critique of rock musicianship and songwriting in the neoliberal age. Two related hypotheses are tested through a content analysis of 67 rock acts, 426 releases and 3452 songs from 1963 to 2019. First, it is argued that as Turkey moved from import substitution industrialisation between 1960 and 1980 to 1980s neoliberalism, the content of rock music lyrics changed from being overtly socio-political to having no relation to such matters or to adopting implicit and indirect language in mentioning them. Second, it is proposed that this lyrical unresponsiveness to social matters grew so powerfully as part of the neoliberal economic rationale that it put individuation, self-realisation and market demands ahead of other forms of social relations. So, today’s rock artists are unequipped to respond through their lyrics to grand events, such as the Gezi Park protests of 2013, the failed coup attempt of 2016, or a two-year state of emergency, terrorism and femicide, in contrast to the rock music of the 1960s and 1970s.

Stephen Greer. Queer Exceptions: Solo Performance in Neoliberal Times. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, ix + 222 pp., £80.00 (hardback), £20.00 (paperback), £20.00 (ebook).

Article Stephen Greer. Queer Exceptions: Solo Performance in Neoliberal Times. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2019, ix + 222 pp., £80.00 (hardback), £20.00 (paperback), £20.00 (ebook). was published on November 1, 2021 in the journal Journal of Contemporary Drama in English (volume 9, issue 2).

Transnational governing for the pedagogical ideals of K-12 international education: contrasting PISA and IB

ABSTRACT In 2018, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) added to their PISA regime the assessment of “global competence”. Given this novel, data-driven approach to governing the internationalisation of K-12 education, this study compares this recent intervention to a longer-standing mode of governing for the pedagogical ideals of international education – the approach of the International Baccalaureate (IB) across its 50-year lifetime. It employs a comparative, critical discursive analysis of how these two influential transnational organisations advance the pedagogical ideals of international education in neoliberal times. It illuminates the history and development of the IB’s soft governing for “international mindedness” and the OECD’s more recent approach to governing for “global competence” via PISA. As an entity without state authority, the IB has used a regime of centralised examinations for curricular control and quality assurance in the international schools where it was first adopted. However, IB has never attempted to use formal assessment as a direct technique of governing for international mindedness. Arguably, its liberal-humanist foundations and the need for “malleability” of IB across its many sites of adoption has mitigated from taking a too direct approach to its idealist ambitions. Whereas OECD’s testing for “global competence” is more ambitious and problematic. Despite the OECD’s use of liberal and social-justice vocabulary, its human capital development orientation remains active in its neoliberal conception of global competence. Contrasting these two transnational modalities of governing for the pedagogical ideals of international education, offers insights into the trends and prospects of internationalisation of K-12 education.

Decolonial Struggles in Indigenous Language Education in Neoliberal Times: Identities, Ideologies, and Activism

The importance of Indigenous languages and epistemologies for sustainable development, equitable society, and a green environment is acknowledged by a significant body of literature (e.g., Green et...

Transitional justice for whom? Contention over human rights and justice in Tunisia

ABSTRACT Despite the promise to address socioeconomic injustices and unemployment, these issues remain in political and public debates in ‘democratizing’ Tunisia without having no radical and systematic approach to resolving them in place. The existing literature notes that Tunisia’s ‘transition to democracy’ has been largely shaped by the old neoliberal approach, leading many youths to take to the street again. This article contributes to the literature and more broadly to the study of resistance in neoliberal times by exploring the relationship between the post-2011 transitional justice regime’s governing through rights and justice and the Mafrouzeen Amniya Movement, which consists of a group of unemployed protesters who claim that their right to work was violated by the state as a result of their protests against the authoritarian regime. Drawing on critical approaches to neoliberalism, human rights and social movements, I argue that transitional justice in Tunisia partly served neoliberal governing by marginalizing revolutionary demands for structural changes and social justice and promoting individualized forms of human rights. Crucially, the neoliberal function of transitional justice was not a top-down process but was constituted through a form of social movement whose dominant liberal human rights discourse was (re)produced by the state as well as by grass-roots movements including the Mafrouzeen Amniya group. In arguing this, rather than present unemployed protesters as being co-opted and subordinated to the state, this article offers a nuanced understanding of how they can reproduce and at the same time challenge the neoliberal transitional justice movement.

Girls and activism in a neoliberal time: How teen girls from Toronto negotiate care, activism, and extraordinary girlhood

Recently, a number of prominent teen girl activist leaders have been gaining the world’s attention, but how do girls not in the public eye and with less social power think about activism? Moreover, how do girls who may not exclusively define themselves as activists, negotiate their own desire to contribute to social change with challenges they identify as holding them back from doing so? Through qualitative research with eight teenage girls in Toronto, I explore the ways these teen girls define the “activist,” their role in activism, and the challenges holding them back from being more active. My methodology is congruent, reflecting my feminist and youth studies commitment to girls leading research, and my findings indicate that such an approach is crucial in order to truly understand how girls with less social power and public visibility experience the world and their roles within it. Doing so also challenge pre-conceived notions and standards of extraordinary girlhood. The findings coincide with what Catherine Rottenberg refers to as neoliberal feminism. The extraordinariness implicit in visible activism framed the girls from my study’s views on what it would take to be a true activist themselves, which was both intimidating and also at times is in contention with their monumental care and concern for loved ones.

Review: Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit, by Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay

Review: <i>Women Rapping Revolution: Hip Hop and Community Building in Detroit</i>, by Rebekah Farrugia and Kellie D. Hay

Resistance as commitment. A reflective case study of teacher professionalism in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the concept of teacher professionalism in the higher education context of neoliberal performativity driven educational policy. We do so by analysing the extended narrative of Ursula, an academic working at a large, research-intensive university in Australia. Through this analysis, we see the debilitating effects of neoliberalism on the professional actions and identity of one educator. But we also see how resistance can function as the manifestation of commitment within a conceptualization of enacted teacher professionalism, and how caring action as an activist stance of principled resistance can support educators to align institutionally defined professionalism with their own professional self-understanding.

Resiliencia y cultura terapéutica en tiempos neoliberales: una exploración de discursos de autoayuda

Desde las ciencias sociales, y específicamente desde áreas como la Psicología Positiva, la resiliencia se entiende como una capacidad individual para resistir y re-construirse ante condiciones adversas. Situando dicho concepto en el fenómeno de la cultura terapéutica y en manifestaciones particulares de ésta, como la literatura de autoayuda, es posible interrogar los procesos de subjetivación que construyen discursivamente al sujeto en el marco de la gubernamentalidad neoliberal. En este tra-bajo se presenta un análisis del discurso de cuatro obras de autoayuda sobre resiliencia. Con la identificación de repertorios interpretativos, se encontró que la subjetividad resiliente está atravesa-da por determinismos cognitivistas, esencialismos psicológicos y biológicos, y por una lógica econo-micista vinculada con la racionalidad neoliberal. Se concluye que estos discursos incitan a una cons-tante exposición a los riesgos como parte de una gestión de la vida que aspira a un incesante poten-ciamiento de las capacidades individuales.

Book Review: Sexual harassment, psychology and feminism: #MeToo, victim politics and predators in neoliberal times by Lisa Lazard

Book Review: <i>Sexual harassment, psychology and feminism: #MeToo, victim politics and predators in neoliberal times</i> by Lisa Lazard

The Academic Profession in Neoliberal Times: A Gendered View

While witnessing a feminization of its workforce, the academic profession has experienced a process of market-based regulation that has contributed to the precarization of early career phases and introduced a managerial culture based on competition, hyper-productivity, and entrepreneurship. This paper aims to investigate the implications of these changes for female academics. A mixed model research design was used based on administrative data on the Italian academic population and qualitative interviews with life scientists within a specific academic institution. Results show that the implications of university transformations in terms of gender heterogeneity are complex. On the one hand, the increased precarization of early career stages has increased gender inequalities by reducing female access to tenured positions. On the other, the adoption of performance-based practices has mixed consequences for women, entailing both risks and opportunities, including spaces of agency which may even disrupt male-dominated hierarchies.

Offshoring & leaking: Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax evasion, and celebrity in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT This article examines how the news media framed the allegations made in 2016 against Cristiano Ronaldo for evading taxes through offshores, and how audiences discussed this online, in Portugal, where he is originally from, and Spain, where he played football at the time. These countries were amidst an “austerity culture” justifying welfare cuts, promoting entrepreneurialism as “success”, and presenting neoliberal policies as “common sense”. Our analysis reveals Ronaldo portrayed as a member of the economic elite criticized for the high earnings of football players and celebrity tax privileges; as an ungrateful immigrant who does not contribute enough to society; and as “one like us” maneuvering to evade taxes. The comparative analysis shows audiences had double standards based on their feelings toward the celebrity, and they interpreted this case positively or negatively in relation to the inefficiency of the fiscal and justice systems in Southern Europe.

Campus closures and the devaluing of emplaced Higher Education: widening participation in neoliberal times

Widening participation (WP) in Higher Education (HE) is often positioned as key to resolving social inequality; it underpins arguments that increasing levels of education lead to reduced levels of poverty. Located within the tension of duty and need, WP is positioned as both the responsibility of the University and a financial imperative. This paper considers the student experience of this tension, specifically the contradictions between discourses of equality and diversity and neoliberal conceptualisations of HE as market. Drawing upon qualitative research conducted during the closure of a WP satellite campus, the paper explores the consequences of the withdrawal of HE provision for ‘local’ students. Utilising focus group methodologies to develop an approach for ‘thinking with’ seven WP students, the paper explores the material, social and affective contexts within which students experience university in their ‘hometown’. Foregrounding participants’ critical understanding of their ‘place’ within a marketised HE sector, we consider the formation of student identity as a site of struggles for value. We argue, the closure of satellite campuses must be understood within the context of deepening social-spatial inequalities. Developing a critique of individualised constructions of ‘social mobility’, we outline an alternative imaginary of HE as an intergenerational community resource.

Strengthening Democracy Through Participation and Critical Adult Education

Reducing education to pure technique is to anesthetize curiosity (Freire, 1997). Neoliberal policies privilege private interests and promote a model of education based on competition and consumerism (Harvey, 2005). This model of education perpetuates and increases inequalities. It also affects education whose priority is not to deliver learners with an immediate financial return. I claim that critical citizenship education and adult education principles have the potential to oppose the neoliberal forces in education. Additionally, promoting a “thick” vision of democracy (Carr, 2008) underpinned in citizens’ participation is a strong tool to counter neoliberal policies. In this study, I will look into the Brazilian participatory budget initiative as a tool to promote democracy and citizenship. Finally, I will propose a theoretical framework that incorporates strong adult education principles to strengthen democracy in times of neoliberalism.

Efe Can Gürcan and Berk Mete, Neoliberalism and the Changing Face of Unionism: The Combined and Uneven Development Class Capacities in Turkey

Reviewed by: Neoliberalism and the Changing Face of Unionism: The Combined and Uneven Development Class Capacities in Turkey by Efe Can Gürcan and Berk Mete H. Deniz Sert Efe Can Gürcan and Berk Mete. Neoliberalism and the Changing Face of Unionism: The Combined and Uneven Development Class Capacities in Turkey. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 164 pp. + xiii. Cloth, $109.99. ISBN: ISBN 978-3319482835. This book aims to explain the actual conditions of Turkey's workforce and their institutional organizations within the context of certain neoliberal political and economic developments. Chapter 1 lays out the main scope of the book that focuses on the peculiarities of Turkey's labor movement's economic and political integration into the neoliberal capitalist accumulation since the 1980s (pp. 2–3). The authors provide a detailed overview of the chapters beginning with the theoretical specifications, periodization of the integration process of Turkey into the world capitalism from a structurally weak position. Next they mention the methodological choices and the empirical ground of this study. They provide a detailed list of semi-structured interviews conducted with the representatives of traditionally combative trade and the social unions in Turkey (pp. 8–9). The authors give a sketch of the collective struggles during neoliberal times both in the Global North and South to show that class as a social category still appeals to scholarly attention. In the last section, they substantiate the prevalence of class-centric focus in Turkey's neoliberalization experience, the prominent working-class firm-level struggles, and popular insurgencies are overviewed. Chapter 2 contains the theoretical backbone of the book. The authors refer to Leon Trotsky's concepts of combined and uneven development for providing an analysis of Turkey's peculiar process of class formation and articulation to the world capitalist accumulation. The concept of combined development aims to explain the synchronized and strongly bounded integration of particular [End Page 278] countries into global capitalism. The unevenness segment of the framework deals with the assumption that the countries' economic path is set against each other and allows privileges for some and impediments for others. The defining feature is to emphasize a peculiar capitalist development wherein backward elements and modern factors coexist. For analyzing the working class within the country's economic performance, the authors use Erik Olin Wright's concepts of working-class and organizational capacities. Within the combined and uneven development processes, the authors argue that small-scale firm-level concentration of the workforce, geographical discrepancies, welfare policies, privatization, subcontracting, ethnic and religious fragmentations within the working class serve as an impediment both for the structural and organizational class capacities. The last section of the chapter is devoted to the detailed review of the period starting from Turkey's nation-state formation until the implementation of the import-substitution economic agenda. The authors argue that the impact of the World Wars and alignment with the United States in international politics influence domestic political-economic outcomes that created an impediment to the working class's organizational and structural capacities. Chapter 3 discusses the end of the import-substitution policies that had to be terminated due to the foreign currency shortage and limitations on Turkey's domestic markets. The transition to trade liberalization and the export-oriented economy triggered initial neoliberal restructuring to become possible with military intervention. There has been an exponential growth of export-oriented industries, and the share of exports in the GDP led to a rise in low-skilled, subcontracted, and non-unionized labor in these sectors. The economic crises in 1994 and 2001 were a watershed for the Turkish economy, and their aftermath resulted in harsh wage reductions and further de-unionization for the workforce. The second part of the third chapter deals with the political and economic impacts of the post-2001 period. The three legal ramifications in the labor law deepened flexibilization, subcontracting and curtailment of the right to organize for the working class. Post-2001 is a period when traditional labor unions took a pro-government stance and saw the burgeoning of new government-affiliated trade unions both in the private and public sectors. The privatization of public enterprises also gained pace and resulted in massive...

Capitaloceno, luchas por lo común y disputas por otros términos de interdependencia en el tejido de la vida. Reflexiones desde América Latina

Las reflexiones que aquí se presentan nacen de las preocupaciones del área de investigación de “entramados comunitarios y formas de lo político” en torno a lo que hoy en América Latina significa defender la vida para un amplio y variado abanico de procesos organizativos y luchas comunitarias en medio de las renovadas dinámicas de apropiación, despojo, devastación y degradación de las naturalezas humanas y no humanas que las violentas lógicas de acumulación impulsan sin parar. Esta inquietud nos ha llevado a la tarea de dotarnos de una mirada analítica, ecológica, holística y relacional en torno a la noción de vida, que hemos ido componiendo en diálogo con la perspectiva de la ecología-mundo, la ecología política latinoamericana y la apuesta de algunas tradiciones del feminismo por poner en el centro la vida. En este texto, a modo de síntesis parciales, presentamos lo que, desde nuestras propias inquietudes políticas, implica pensar la vida, el Capitaloceno y las disputas planteadas por una multiplicidad de luchas en defensa de lo común con base en diversas investigaciones en diferentes países de América Latina, en particular en México y Bolivia, pero también en Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia y Uruguay. El texto se compone de tres apartados. En el primero, explicamos qué entendemos por condición de interdependencia y cómo, a partir de esta idea, recuperamos la noción de trama/tejido de la vida propuesta por diferentes autores. En el segundo, nos preguntamos por la vida que el proyecto moderno-capitalista ha ido produciendo a partir de la lógica de dominio de carácter antropocéntrico, patriarcal y colonial y los modos en los que se ha buscado reorganizar la condición de interdependencia, poniendo a trabajar a las naturalezas humanas y no humanas para garantizar la lógica de acumulación. Un ejemplo a través del cual ilustramos estas dinámicas es la gestión capitalista de las relaciones de interdependencia en torno al agua en tiempos neoliberales. Y finalmente, exponemos sobre la base de numerosas investigaciones, enfocadas principalmente en experiencias comunitarias en oposición a algún proyecto extractivista, nuestro acercamiento al antagonismo social y la disputa que entablan las luchas por lo común en América Latina para defender la vida y gestionar las relaciones de interdependencia en contradicción con los términos de coproducción capitalistas.