Partners in Crime? Neoliberalism and the Production of New Political Subjectivities (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Neoliberal State: Then and Now
Scott, D. and Sim, J. (eds.) Demystifying Power, Crime and Social Harm. London: Palgrave (In Press)., 2024
This chapter explores Steven Box’s contribution to our understanding of the neoliberal state, both when Power, Crime and Mystification (1983) was published, and today. After situating the book in political context and establishing a working, if orthodox, definition of neoliberalism, we go on to unpack the text’s eponymous subject matter – power, crime, and mystification – as each relates to the neoliberal state. Having given Box a fair reading and highlighted a number of key contributions he makes, we argue that his concept of mystification provides an underdeveloped account of power, whether applying it to ‘crime’ and social harm then, or now. If Box’s ‘mystification’ does not adequately account for power, then we might similarly conclude that his text fails to accurately theorise the state as an underlying relation determining a range of possibilities for social action rather than directly setting them on course. However, an important caveat we conclude with is the disciplinary environment in which Box was working. Set against orthodox, administrative, or mainstream accounts of crime and criminology, Power, Crime and Mystification kept alive a radical agenda, rendering the state and its agents legitimate and intelligible as critical criminological research objects. In sum, Box’s contribution to our understanding of the neoliberal state can, and should, be read two ways: as an intellectual project with strengths and flaws, and as a political project with a practical and enduring legacy for as long as his concerns are echoed by contemporary scholars, activists, teachers, and students.
Alter-neoliberal analysis: Abduction, critique, radical imagination
European Journal of Social Theory, 2024
Radical critique and praxis today face an unprecedented challenge because neoliberal rationalities partly succeeded in encroaching upon emancipatory ambitions. On the one hand, as critical sociology informs us, this is because many of the utilitarian tenets of neoliberal rationalities have become naturalized in everyday conduct. On the other hand, as pragmatic sociology shows, because neoliberalism has succeeded in incorporating critical activity into its mode of functioning, challenging neoliberalism comes at the cost of its partial reproduction. Against this backdrop, the goal of this article is to reconsider both the role of critique in neoliberalism and the mode of inquiry of critique, in order to map out an 'alter-neoliberal analysis': a normative mode of critical inquiry that seeks to discover what would need to be the case for a future beyond neoliberalism to be conceivable. Building on the inferential logic of abduction, alter-neoliberal analysis (1) defamiliarizes the opaque ways in which neoliberal rationalities encroach upon practices, so as to (2) critique them in ways that curtail their reproduction and (3) radically imagine politico-epistemological positions that are unintelligible to neoliberal rationalities.
"The Challenges of Urban Activism in the New Neoliberal Context"
2014
El objetivo de este trabajo es investigar los retos que enfrenta el activismo urbano contemporáneo en el nuevo contexto neoliberal. Este contexto típicamente occidental se caracteriza por una creciente atmósfera de consenso que es 'post-política' y 'post-crítica'. En la práctica artística, la 'política' y la 'crítica' han sido más y más olvidado por varias 'vueltas éticas'-que han sido continuamente recuperado para servir el dictado neoliberal de la omni-economización. Mecanismos de recuperación cada vez más astutos-como la incorporación de artistas y activistas en la reestructuración de operaciones de aburguesamientos-se han aprovechado de los efectos intrínsecos de despolitizar a la más reciente "vuelta ética". La definición de Jacques Rancière de lo "político" como una reconfiguración disensual del statu quo es fundamental para calibrar y conectar a tierra la dimensión política del activismo urbano. Además, su definición de 'democracia' justifica los desafíos políticos que pudiesen interrumpir a tecnocrática "buen gobierno". Para situar la más reciente "vuelta ética", movimientos y tendencias históricas dentro de las disciplinas del arte, la arquitectura y el urbanismo son investigados con respecto a sus ambiciones políticas, componente utópico y de los procesos de recuperación que se han convertido a menudo instantánea e incluso preventiva. Ciertas disposiciones fundamentales se recomiendan para el activismo urbano dentro de un enfoque pluralista. La definición de Rancière de "lo político" es la base para la articulación de activismo tanto conceptual como táctico, mientras que el 'utopismo dialéctico' de David Harvey sugiere un modelo para la integración de la utopía. La máxima de Francis Alÿs 'a veces' ilustra el potencial de la ambigüedad inherente a los enfoques artísticos. Estrategias contemporáneas de disenso, sobre-identificación, oscilación y entrelazado y espacialización pueden ser eficaces. Y, mientras que una disposición holístico transdiciplinaria es una brújula esencial, la disciplinariedad se puede emplear estratégicamente. La eficacia marginal del activismo urbano es una condición estructural y no debe distraer la atención de la amenaza mucho mayor de despolitización. Esta amenaza se ve agravada por el aumento de la sincronización de los dominios, los objetivos y los intereses de los capitalistas neoliberales, los tecnócratas, los artistas, los profesionales alternativos y los 'creativos'. Para mantener una actitud crítica y resistir a la recuperación, activistas urbanos pueden combinar las claras definiciones de Rancièreian de "lo politico" y de "la democracia" con una sofisticación tanto en la disposición como en la estrategia a través de integraciones hibridados de utopismo dialéctico, la ambigüedad, la ambivalencia, el disenso, la 'sobre-identificación', la autonomía y la espacialización disciplinaria, teniendo cuidado de centrarse tanto en lo residual como en el núcleo de la sociedad. Palabras clave: activismo urbano, despolitización, vueltas éticas, la política, la recuperación
2015
This paper examines cultural and anti-poverty resistance in the City of Peterborough.1 Resistance in the City of Peterborough reveals activists creatively and vibrantly responding to the effects of neoliberal policy. Rather than conform to neoliberalism, as recent scholars suggest that social movements do, they perform good neoliberal citizenship by discursively appropriating neoliberal goals of economic growth in the case of cultural activism and constructions of the self-sufficient, autonomous citizen in the case of anti-poverty activism. Such performances are in aid of (re)claiming public space and leveraging resources from the local state. Thus far, their efforts have rendered some notable successes, although not without challenges. Challenges include having to cope with slow change because of the time it takes to educate politicians and civil servants of the conditions cultural workers and poor people respectively face and uncertainty over who will maintain performative resista...
The Tentacles of Neoliberalism: How the Master’s Tools Became a Vehicle for Activism
The United States (US) is an economic superpower that attracts immigrants from less developed nations due to their desire to improve their living conditions. Immigrant laborers have been and are subject to a wide range of structural inequalities in the nation. Nevertheless, the United States implemented and hegemonically promotes neoliberal ideals centered on privatization, reduced social spending, and idealizing self-determination in the workforce. The economic theory is modeled on identity-blind assumptions that make the obstacles people face due to discrimination based on their gender, race, sexuality, economic class, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, and other identity traits invisible. In response to the subjugation minorities endure, over the years a significant increase occurred in the number of nonprofit organizations. However, (perhaps unconsciously) nonprofits often model their projects to align with neoliberal ideals despite their oppressive nature. Using discourse analysis, the publication below examines this trend in the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), which is a coalition of approximately sixty nonprofit organizations that strive to empower workers who are in-home caregivers, childcare workers, and domestic laborers. Likewise, this publication closely examines a decades long project which was spearheaded by one of the coalition's prominent members: Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA). The article proves that despite NDWA members' and MUA's goal of empowering subjugated populations, their projects often reinforce neoliberal ideals that oppress their clients.
Edges of Identity: The Production of Neoliberal Subjectivities
Edges of Identity: The Production of Neoliberal Subjectivities, 2017
The chapter explores how competing forms of self and society are repressed or exploit opportunities within the liminal space at the edges of neoliberalism. In each case how agency is expressed or is repressed is the point of fascination. Both space and place, in this sense, are multidimensional and sustained by discursive practices. This speaks to how we might understand the enormity of international relations and social structures through to the everyday intimacy of relations in the private sphere. The normalisation and the reproduction of particular social practices are linked to the expansion and penetration of a neoliberal hegemony that rationalises, atomises and homogenises the world around us. This volume critically explores how a range of subjectivities is formed, constrained, reshaped or resisted when confronted by the expansionary logic of neoliberalism. Many critics (see Harvey, 2006) have argued that neoliberalism has failed to achieve the growth rates of the golden age of Keynesianism in the 1960s. This failure to succeed on its own merits raises serious questions about how neoliberalism has maintained legitimacy in the face of its own failed raison d’être – which is to ensure wealth for all through market efficiency. In light of sustained criticism of the neoliberal project it seems only reasonable to seek both tools and ‘how-to’ guides in order to untangle a limiting and reductive ideology from our lives and our social structures. We hope that the critical analysis and theoretical reflection embodied in this book goes some way to providing both tools and guides for readers.