Neoliberal Order Research Articles

Forty years of IKEA kitchens and the rise of a neoliberal control of domestic space

This article uses a social semiotic approach to look at the representations and designs of kitchens in the IKEA catalogue from 1975 until 2016. The authors find a shift from function to lifestyle of the order observed by scholars of advertising. But using Fairclough’s concepts of ‘technologization’ in Discourse and Social Change (1992) and Van Leeuwen’s New Writing (2006) concept, they are able to dig deeper to show that there are four stages of kitchen that become, they argue, more and more codified, with increasing prescription over the meaning of space and also regarding what takes place there. Such coding aligns with the ideas, values and identities of neoliberalism: ‘flexible’, ‘dynamic’, ‘creative’, ‘solutions’ and ‘self-management’. The authors show how the features of New Writing allow a suppression of actual causalities and context, and permit symbolic and indexical meanings to take over. Domestic life itself becomes technologized, coded and stripped down to a number of symbols and indexical meanings which assemble easily into the requirements of the neoliberal order.

Making or unmaking a movement? Challenges for civic activism in the global governance of migration

ABSTRACTThis article discusses dilemmas of global civic activism from a neo-Gramscian perspective as both subordinated and a potential challenge to hegemonic neoliberal order. With the investigational focus on the People's Global Action on Migration, Development and Human Rights (PGA) event, the space for civic activism relating to the intergovernmental Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and its associated Civil Society Days and Common Space is analysed. The article asks how the future of PGA activism may be influenced by its formalized representation within the GFMD. It posits that the PGA has landed at a crossroad between becoming a global activist counterhegemonic movement to a dominant neoliberal migration policy and being captured in a tokenist subordinated inclusion within a truncated ‘invited space’ for interchange. This ambiguous position jeopardizes its impact on global migration governance, discussed with reference to theories of transversal politics and issues of counterhegemonic alliance-building.

On Lying and Disillusionment

This paper looks at our current political crisis in terms of a general disavowal of the evils of neoliberalism. Drawing on Freud’s and Bion’s discussions of disavowal and lying, I look at the way this disavowal, turning a blind eye to the truth of neoliberalism, operates among neoliberalism’s winners, losers, and critical bystanders. The paper goes on to argue for a radical psychoanalytic ethic of disillusionment, in which we, as therapist-citizens, might understand more about our complicity with and resistance to the inequities of the neoliberal order.

Zarys problematyki ekonomii społecznej jako propozycji podejścia do wzmacniania dobrobytu gospodarczego

Ekonomia społeczna jako propozycja alternatywnego podejścia do zarządzania rzadkimi zasobami gospodarki powróciła jako reakcja na efekty neoliberalnego porządku gospodarczego. Kiedy zarówno państwo, jak i rynek okazały się niezdolne do stworzenia takich konstelacji organizacyjnych, które doprowadziłyby do optymalnego zaspokojenia potrzeb społecznych – potrzeb, które rodzą się zarówno z tradycyjnych uwarunkowań rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego, jak i tych niesionych współczesnymi przemianami krajowymi, regionalnymi i globalnymi (np. starzenie się społeczeństw, zmiana stylu życia, zmiana modelu rodziny). Kiedy wzrost gospodarczy w efekcie podnoszenia wydajności i działań polityki ekonomicznej jest w dużej mierze obarczony zjawiskiem bezzatrudnieniowości, wskaźniki zatrudnienia wciąż pozostają wyzwaniem dla polityków gospodarczych, dostęp do pracy jest nierówny dla poszczególnych grup społecznych, coraz wyraźnej ukazuje się mnogość organicznych inicjatyw społecznych nastawionych na tworzenie warunków sprzyjających zaspokajaniu potrzeb niezaspokojonych ani przez państwo, ani przez rynek. Istota ekonomii społecznej ujawnia się w przypadku analizy możliwości zagospodarowania zasobów tkwiących w takich grupach społecznych, jak: byli więźniowie, kobiety, w tym samotnie wychowujące dzieci, niepełnosprawni, mniejszości narodowe, długo chorujący pracownicy i bezrobotni, w tym przede wszystkim chorzy psychicznie. Z jednej strony (od strony rynku), miejsca pracy dla takich osób często wymagają przystosowania do specjalnych potrzeb, a proces zawodowego wdrażania tych osób czy utrzymywanie ich stałego zatrudnienia pociąga za sobą znaczące nakłady, na które przedsiębiorstwo zarządzanie tradycyjnie na rynku przeważnie nie może sobie pozwolić. Z drugiej strony (od strony państwa), sprowadzanie pomocy dla narażonych na dyskryminowanie zawodowe grup społecznych w przeważającej mierze do pomocy pieniężnej czy uprzywilejowanego dostępu do opieki zdrowotnej jeszcze bardziej wyklucza te grupy z rynku pracy, życia społecznego, a całe społeczeństwo/budżet państwa istotnie obciąża finansowo.

Elsewhere

Two Meetings and a Funeral is an 85-minute historical opus by the artist Naeem Mohaiemen about the rise and fall of the 1970s Third World resistance movements that once threatened the emergent Western neoliberal order. By juxtaposing archival footage with a contemporary walking tour through Algiers, Dhaka, and New York, Mohaiemen asks of the failed socialist movements in the global South: “What went wrong?” In the context of this writer's cinephilia, what drew me to watch and rewatch Naeem Mohaiemen's latest film was not only its timely subject matter but also its wondrous big-screen delivery. Mohaiemen savors the possibilities of an expansive three-screen presentation in high definition with 5.1-surround sound. Which prompts other fundamental questions: What exactly constitutes gallery art and what belongs in a cinema? Where does this expansive, gripping, and elegant piece of filmmaking truly belong?

Shake the Tree or Rock the Boat: The Not Nice Protest and Radical Democracy in Israel

AbstractWhat has remained of Israel’s tent encampments protest; what mark has it left on Israeli society and politics? This paper seeks to answer these two questions and to reflect on the “post-protest” protest. In reviewing the different accounts of the 2011 protest I propose to identify two political actors – the “hegemonic” and the “subaltern” – taking part in an agonic game which destabilized the neoliberal order. Central to the analysis is an activist group – The Not NiceTrans.: The Not Nice invokes an utterance attributed to the then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir labeling the Mizrahi social protest leaders of the early 1970s as “Not Nice.” There is however a distinction in the Hebrew language between Female and Male voice and the activist group here was self-labeled Lo Nekhmadim-Lo Nekhmadot, i.e. The Not Nice (m) – The Not Nice (f). To distinguish between the two we will use hereafter ‘Not-Nice’ to refer to the female-led splinter group and ‘The Not Nice’ to the group as a whole. (I am using The Not Nice and Not-Nice in their chronological content; Not-Nice became more prevalent since the split in the group leading to greater female predominance). – studied in consideration of its relations to the mainstream of the protest movement. The group’s activities and position challenge the conventional patterns of Israeli political discourse and its boundaries. It thus offers an opportunity to extend the discussion on citizenship and democracy beyond the liberal discourse and adopt the Radical Democracy theory as a conceptual framework to grasp present-day political reality.

South Africa and the Question of Hegemony in Africa

This article examines the viability of mainstream neo-realist international relations scholarship for understanding regional power dynamics within Africa by offering a critical evaluation of the categorization of South Africa as a hegemonic power on the continent. Using the theoretical framework of hegemonic stability theory, it argues that there is a somewhat weak link between South Africa’s foreign policy character and its hegemonic disposition in Africa. The South African state, which is the driving force for political, economic and foreign policy processes, is itself subordinate in relation to international capital and lacks the influence expected of a regional hegemon. Despite South Africa’s development, the article demonstrates that its dependency provides the theoretical construct for understanding the country’s ambiguous hegemonic projection. This analytical framework captures the crux of the “hegemonic debate” as well as other conversations in relation to the adaptation of the concept of hegemony to Africa. Therefore, any application of the hegemonic discourse to South Africa necessarily requires a deeper understanding that takes cognizance of the fact that country’s regional hegemony operates within the orbit of a dependent-development paradigm in the global economic order, a neo-liberal order that continues to deepen Africa’s dependency syndrome. Dependency, as well as other complexities, impedes the reality of South Africa’s hegemonic ambitions in Africa.

The problem of modern-day slavery: is critical applied history the answer?

ABSTRACTThis article suggests that historians have much more to offer in the fight against modern-day slavery and human trafficking. It argues that the modern-day abolitionist movement should reorient its approach in the fight against slavery, as it tends to rely on a sanitized, unproblematic, rendering of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century abolitionist movement while simultaneously side-stepping discussions about the impact of global neo-liberal economic order. The article advances the notion of critical applied history which provides a methodological framework that can facilitate discussions about the role of power, historicity, and memory in shaping present-day abolitionist discourses.

Against the Evils of Democracy: Fighting Forced Disappearance and Neoliberal Terror in Mexico

On 26 September 2014, Mexican police forces in Iguala, Guerrero, attacked and abducted four dozen students known as normalistas (student teachers); some were killed on the spot and the rest were never seen again. Within and beyond Mexico, rights activists immediately raised the alarm that the normalistas had joined the country's growing population of “the disappeared,” now numbering more than 28,000 over the last decade. In this article, I draw from a growing scholarship within and beyond critical geography that explores forced disappearance as a set of governing practices that shed insight into contemporary democracies and into struggles for constructing more just worlds. Specifically, I explore how an activist representation of Mexico's normalistas as “missing students” opens up new political possibilities and spatial strategies for fighting state terror and expanding the Mexican public within a repressive neoliberal and global order. I argue that this activism brings to life a counterpublic as protestors declare that if disappearance is “compatible” with democracy, as it appears to be within Mexico, then disappeared subjects demand new spaces of political action. They demand a countertopography where the disappeared citizens of Mexico make their voices heard. Activists demonstrate such connections as they compose countertopographies for counterpublics across the Americas landscape of mass graves, prisons, and draconian political economies, mostly constructed in the name of democracy and on behalf of securing citizens. Understanding how Mexico's activists confront the intransigent problems of state terror, spanning from dictatorships to democracies, offers vital insights for struggles against policies for detaining and disappearing peoples there and elsewhere in these neoliberal times.

Resources, regulation and the state: Struggles over gas extraction and passive revolution in Evo Morales's Bolivia

The indigenous-influenced policies of Evo Morales's Bolivia represent arguably the most important attempt to improve the socioenvironmental implications of resource extraction in recent years, reasserting the role of the state and social movements against ‘corporate-led governance’. In this paper, through combining the regulation approach with neo-Gramscian state theory, I carry out a conceptually informed analysis of struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Bolivia, in order to shed light on the reasons why such an ambitious political project has largely failed to realise its transformative potential. I make two interrelated arguments. First, initial, important advances in the governance of resources in Bolivia were later partially reversed, due to shifting power relations between social movements, the hydrocarbon industry, and the state. This points to the need of understanding resource governance and its changes as reflecting or ‘condensing’ shifting power relationships among social forces. Second, the coming to power of Evo Morales resulted in a ‘passive-revolutionary’ process whereby an initial radical break with the neoliberal order was followed by a gradual adaptation to pre-existing political economic relations and arrangements. Most notably, plans to reduce the country's dependency on gas exports as well as to challenge the transnational domination of the hydrocarbon sector were abandoned, generating an increasingly explicit incompatibility with indigenous demands. I conclude that neo-Gramscian theory offers important insights that enable us to advance our conceptualisation of the state in resource governance research and in political ecology more generally.

Blood Ties

Chelsea Szendi Schieder, a political scientist at Tokyo’s Meiji University, describes how, in the wake of Japan’s triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown), the country has moved to fortify national harmony and women’s place in the traditional family unit. But Schieder writes that, for women struggling to extricate themselves from violent households, these “bonds that link families become bondage.” She discusses how policies under Shinzô Abe, including a proposed constitutional revision, seek to strengthen the neoliberal order at the expense of women.

Corporate Climate Policy-planning in the Global Polity: A Network Analysis

Alongside the climate change denial movement, a section of the capitalist class has been organizing to promote a project of “climate capitalism” that relies on carbon markets and other policies compatible with the neoliberal order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Like the denial movement, promoters of climate capitalism have constructed an extensive network of think tanks and policy-planning groups to foster adherence to their climate policy proposals. This article uses social network analysis to map out the reach of these climate and environmental policy groups within the array of interconnected NGOs, inter-governmental organizations, philanthropic foundations, and other organizations that constitute the global polity. This analysis sheds light on the position climate capitalism—understood as a project of a section of the global corporate elite—occupies among international organizations. Overall, I find that climate and environmental policy groups: (1) maintain substantial ties to key organizations of the global polity, and (2) mediate a substantial amount of relations, bridging between central organizations and more peripheral ones, as well as among those located in Europe and North America. I thus argue that a global inter-organizational infrastructure exists that supports climate capitalism, which contributes to its dominant position in climate change politics.

Translation and hegemonic knowledge under advanced capitalism

Translation occurs in a context of power asymmetries. Using two English translations of Adorno’s seminalÄsthetische Theorieas an example, this paper elaborates an eclectic phenomenology of power structured alongside three symbolic images: the street market, the assembly line, and a technological gadget. By aligning some key concepts of critical theory with the evolutionary stages of capitalism, it will be argued that recontextualisations of Adornian thought in English may reflect the well-known antagonism between Adorno’s philosophical thought and the dominant scientistic mindset of mid-20th century American social science. Ultimately, this paper contemplates the extent to which Adorno’s Anglophone mirror image has been refracted through a positivist and neoliberal order of discourse that is at odds with the ideological, or utopian, convictions of German critical theory.

Identity politics, the ethos of vulnerability, and education

In this article, identity politics is understood as a form of politics stressing collective but malleable group identities as the basis of political action. This notion of identity politics also allows thinking of identity as intersectional. The focus of this article, and a problem related to identity politics, is that when discussed in the context of the neoliberal order, identity politics has a tendency to become harnessed by the ethos of vulnerability. Some implications of the ‘vulnerabilizisation’ are considered in the field of education, which is a field currently thoroughly affected by neoliberalism. Therefore, it is also important to look closer at the relationship between identity politics and the ethos of vulnerability. In addition, we re-consider poststructuralist thinking as a theoretical and political approach to see what it can offer in terms of re-thinking identity politics and in analyzing the ethos of vulnerability. When categories of vulnerability keep expanding into various psycho-emotional vulnerabilities defining subjects that can be known and spoken about, it is crucial to ask whether we regard these changes as educationally and politically progressive. The article discusses some problematic policies in educational environments and the phenomenon of trigger warnings.

Neoliberalism and the Psychology of Time

An analysis is given of how the contemporary neoliberal order is reshaping the experience and understanding of time, the ways the neoliberal transmutation of time is reorienting and reorganizing individual and collective psychological life, and psychology’s response to the malaise of temporal acceleration. It is argued that the capitalist dynamics of competition and profitability, the collapse of Fordism and rise of neoliberal economics and market rationality, technological innovation, the supplanting of clock time by “network” time, increasing burdens of individual risk and responsibility, the proliferation of choice, and erosion of the distinction between private and public are accelerating the pace of life. The result is a culture of urgency and shift in the understanding of human fulfillment. The proposed psychological solution of time management strategies and its inadequacies also are discussed.

Socialization in the Neoliberal Academy of STEM Scholars: A Case Study of Negotiating Dispositions in an International Graduate Student in Entomology

This article examines how neoliberal orders of discourse shape the dispositions to academic literacies of an international graduate student in entomology. As this ideology of market logic consolidates its hegemony in universities of excellence and US culture at large, academic socialization and disciplinary activities increasingly aim to create scholarly dispositions and subjectivities that align with it. Such processes are further complicated by the backgrounds of international graduate students—an ever-larger proportion of graduate students in STEM who often hail from educational cultures significantly different from the U.S. Our analysis of an international graduate student’s literacy practices in terms of motivations and outcomes shows that his literacies echo the dispositions pushed by neoliberal ideologies, but are not over-determined by them. Rather, as our case study illustrates, his socialization is a layered process, with ambiguous implications and strategic calculations making up literacies and disciplinary outcomes. We believe closely mapping such tensions in literacies and socialization processes increases humanities scholars’ awareness both of the potential contradictions of educating international graduate students into the neoliberal model and of how the university can still be used to develop the dispositions needed to renegotiate the neoliberal order of discourse for more ethical and empowering purposes.

Diagnosis and prognosis of neo-liberal globalization: From the Tea Party movement’s perspective

Alter-globalization movement (AGM) studies have been thus far focused almost exclusively on the left movements’ struggles against neo-liberal globalization. This article uses the Tea Party movement to demonstrate how a right-wing movement reacts to neo-liberal globalization. It discusses the grass-roots Tea Partiers’ (TPers) diagnoses and prognoses of neo-liberal globalization’s impacts in three realms: the US economy, popular control of the political processes and the preservation of the national community. My findings show that while the TPers largely agree with the left AGMs in locating the problems and causes of neo-liberal globalization, their solutions diverge sharply from that of the latter and point to a US-dominated neo-liberal global order. By thematizing conservative movements’ relation to AGM, this article indicates the possible coalitions and cleavages between the right-wing movements and left-leaning AGMs, which suggest that AGMs should not be solely defined negatively vis-à-vis neo-liberal globalization.

Power relations? What power relations? The de-politicising conceptualisation of development of the UNDP

The UN′s Sustainable Development Goals agenda points far into 2030, which shows that its post-war development endeavour is not functioning effectively. This article implements a discourse analysis of the UN Development Programme′s (UNDP) Human Development Reports (HDR) and exposes their internal contradictions. This analysis enables a critical reflection on the UNDP′s political position: its reports conceal the political causes of underdevelopment. By concealing the antagonistic/conflictual dimension of social issues – poverty, inequality, and exclusion – the UNDP naturalises the actual neoliberal order. The HDR turns political problems into technical issues; according to this approach, no power relations have to be changed in order to overcome underdevelopment.

Brazil in the Shadow of Mega-Regional Trade and Investment Standards: Beyond the Grand Debate, Pragmatic Responses

This chapter addresses the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)-like policies on third countries, looking at the case of Brazil, one of the most important emerging economies. We argue that TPP-like agreements are a way to bypass resistance to neoliberal ordering in the World Trade Organization (WTO) through the institution of alternative fora. We investigate whether this type of agreement — or bilateral agreements with TPP-type standards — could represent a threat to Brazil’s state-led development mode and conclude they could significantly affect industrial policy, the role of state-owned enterprises, and foreign investment regulation while possibly also constraining Brazil’s policy space in areas such as intellectual property and the digital economy. We review a series of pragmatic moves by Brazil as it seeks to carve out a new role in global economic space during a period of rapid change. This evolving approach, we contend, could allow Brazil to engage in the 21st century economy while preserving the core of its state-led development model.

Alternative organizing in times of crisis: Resistance assemblages and socio-spatial solidarity

This paper draws on research conducted in Greece, where, during the last seven years, an acute socio-economic crisis has led to the emergence of a number of alternative organizational forms. By foregrounding the term drasis, the unexpected unfolding of an event in a specific space and time, we discuss how these alternative forms assemble differential capacities in order to resist the neoliberal ordering of socio-spatial and economic relations. In particular, we focus on two self-organized spaces, namely, a social centre and a squatted public garden and discuss two concrete instances of drasis. We propose that drasis instigates the establishment and evolution of transformative, prefigurative organizing through three interrelated processes, namely, the formation of resistance assemblages, social learning and socio-spatial solidarity. The paper offers three propositions, suggesting that drasis provides the socio-material conditions through which new resistance formations challenge the established productive forces of society and co-produce alternative forms of civic life.