A Conceptual History of Neoliberalism (original) (raw)
Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016)
2016
Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts provides a critical guide to a vocabulary that has become globally dominant over the past forty years. The language of neoliberalism both constructs and expresses a particular vision of economics, politics, and everyday life. Some find this vision to be appealing, but many others find the contents and implications of neoliberalism to be alarming.Despite the popularity of these concepts, they often remain confusing, the product of contested histories, meanings, and practices. In an accessible way, this interdisciplinary resource explores and dissects key terms such as: Capitalism Choice Competition Entrepreneurship Finance Flexibility Freedom Governance Market Reform Stakeholder State Complete with an introductory essay, cross-referencing, and an extensive bibliography, this book provides a unique and insightful introduction to the study of neoliberalism in all its forms and disguises.
What is new about neoliberalism? Such a question immediately implies that certain objects and processes can be defined as ‘neoliberal’ and, importantly, that the contents of the ‘neo’ can be explained by reference to a larger phenomenon called liberalism. A veritable galaxy of things are now attached to the term neoliberalism, if not as some primary identifying marker then at least as one descriptive property among others. This chapter seeks to offer a window through which to problematise and analyze this core if recalcitrant question. In keeping with other debates in the social sciences, it proposes that the frame of neoliberalism tries to capture something about developments in capitalism since the 1970s, with commodification, financialisation, and general moves towards ‘market-based’ modes of regulation or governmentality being major debates in the literature (Harvey 2005; Brenner, Peck, and Theodore, 2010; Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2012; Springer 2010). While accepting this temporal frame as a starting point, the chapter seeks to contextualise the history of neoliberalism in two ways. First, the chapter sheds a sharper light on the relationship between capitalism and its mechanisms of legitimation, particularly at the level of everyday experience. Second, within the inevitable space constraints, the argument traces certain threads of meaning that connect the history of the liberal tradition to the present, specifically the themes of individualism, universalism, and meliorism. Thus, the chapter aims to reveal how justifications for neoliberal capitalist practices are the product of a long history of social struggles that are, moreover, often confusing, multifarious, and even contradictory. Ironically, once this perspective is recognised, the task of deciphering contemporary neoliberalism arguably becomes harder, particularly concerning efforts to understand where certain ideas and values tied to neoliberalism acquire their commonsensical power. If neoliberalism is a moving concept then scholarship needs to be equally adept at moving with it.
'Introduction', in Eagleton-Pierce, M., Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016).
2016
Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts provides a critical guide to a vocabulary that has become globally dominant over the past forty years. The language of neoliberalism both constructs and expresses a particular vision of economics, politics, and everyday life. Some find this vision to be appealing, but many others find the contents and implications of neoliberalism to be alarming. Despite the popularity of these concepts, they often remain confusing, the product of contested histories, meanings, and practices. In an accessible way, this interdisciplinary resource explores and dissects key terms such as: capitalism, choice, competition, entrepreneurship, finance, flexibility, freedom, governance, market, reform, stakeholder, and state. This introduction clarifies the context behind the rise of neoliberalism as an analytical term, its possibilities and pitfalls, and the rationale for the book. Overall, the book provides a unique and insightful introduction to the study of neoliberalism in all its forms and disguises.
2016
The Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism seeks to offer a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining the range of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks. Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful discourses to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. The Handbook of Neoliberalism accordingly serves as an essential guide to this vast intellectual landscape. With proposed contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a systematic overview of neoliberalism’s origins, political implications, social tensions, spaces, natures and environments, and aftermaths in addressing ongoing and emerging debates. Numerous books have been published on neoliberalism, including important edited volumes, but none of these contributions have attempted to bring the diverse scope and wide-ranging coverage that we plan to incorporate here. Most of the edited volumes and monographs on neoliberalism that have been published to date have a very specific thematic focus, either on particular empirical case studies, or alternatively attempt to wrestle with a specific theoretical concern. In contrast, the Routledge Handbook of Neoliberalism aims to provide the first comprehensive overview of the field. With authors working at institutions around the world, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will offer a thorough examination of how neoliberalism is understood by social scientists working from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Our goal is to advance the established and emergent debates in a field that has grown exponentially over the past two decades, coinciding with the meteoric rise of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, state form, policy and program, and governmentality. In short, the Handbook of Neoliberalism will intervene by both outlining how theorizations of neoliberalism have evolved and by exploring new research agendas that we hope will inform policy making and activism. The Handbook of Neoliberalism will include a substantive introductory chapter and seven main thematic sections. By presenting a comprehensive examination of the field, this edited volume will serve as an invaluable resource for undergraduates, graduate students, and professional scholars alike. We envision the book as both a teaching guide and a reference for human geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, heterodox economists, and others working on questions of neoliberalism and its multifarious effects.
Thesis Eleven Six theories of neoliberalism
This article takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is 'oft-invoked but ill-defined'. It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: (1) an all-purpose denunciatory category; (2) 'the way things are'; (3) an institutional framework characterizing particular forms of national capitalism, most notably the Anglo-American ones; (4) a dominant ideology of global capitalism; (5) a form of governmentality and hegemony; and (6) a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978-9 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics, are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories. It instead proposes understanding neoliberalism in terms of historical institutionalism, with Foucault's account of historical change complementing Max Weber's work identifying the distinctive economic sociology of national capitalisms.
Introduction: Neoliberal Culture / the Cultures of Neoliberalism
Sites: a journal of social anthropology and cultural studies, 2015
This introductory essay situates the contributors' articles in relation to the over-arching questions for this special issue: how has neoliberalism impacted on culture, and how is neoliberalism thought from cultural perspectives; or, what happens to the idea of culture under neoliberalism? We acknowledge extensive disagreement among commentators as to what neoliberalism is, its coherence as a concept, and its duration. We trace the different values attributed to neoliberalism, from social democratic inflections that decry growing disparities in wealth distribution, to those perspectives that emphasise its promise of self-determination and the individual, social and ethical potentials of self-determination and consumer choice in market relations. Noting that neoliberalism is a term used to explain wide range of contemporary cultural phenomena, we argue that it maintains enough coherence as a project to act as an influential force on material life, even if it operates in some spheres more as a 'structure of feeling' than an explicit platform. We trace its reorientation of the key principles of classical liberalism, and its relationship to, and ascendancy over, postmodernity and globalisation as terms that have been used to designate the current cultural conjuncture. Neoliberalism emerges out of the same moment and conditions, but more directly names a particular mode of political economy and governance that is inextricable from cultural life, from intra-subjective through to collective levels.
Primacy of the Economy, Primacy of the Political: Critical Theory of Neoliberalism
Handbuch Kritische Theorie, 2016
Neoliberalization is a distinctive economic, political, and social project that promotes profit-oriented, market-mediated accumulation as the primary axis of societalization. This might suggest that neoliberalism promotes the primacy of the economic but, since its extension and reproduction require continuing state support and, indeed, involve what Weber called political capitalism, one might also argue that it entails a primacy of the political. To address this paradox, my article offers a baseline definition of neoliberalism and identifies four idealtypical historical forms thereof; relates neoliberalism to the world market, geopolitics and global governance; disambiguates the primacy of the economic; and addresses the role of the political in promoting neoliberalism and handling its contradictions and crisis-tendencies. It illustrates this exercise in critical theory from the North Atlantic Financial Crisis and how its (mis)management has strengthened the neoliberal project, enabled its main promoters and beneficiaries to escape the need to learn from their mistakes, and even enabled them to further enrich themselves.
The consumer as agent in neoliberalism
Matrizes, 2015
In recent decades, the prevailing neoliberal discourse has highlighted the active role of the consumer. The consumer agency is associated with several factors: the rhetoric of advertising that emphasizes complicity with the consumer; technologies of self through which consumers act as entrepreneurs of themselves; interactive mechanisms that suggest increased participation; appeal to social responsibility in consumer behavior. When we look closely at each of these factors, however, the limitations of today's presumed consumer empowerment are revealed.
Neoliberalism: The whys and wherefores ... and future directions
Neoliberalism means many things to many people. Often used indiscriminately to mean anything ‘bad’, neoliberalism is in need of dissection as an analytical category and a way of understanding the transformation of society over the last few decades. This paper is a brief introduction to neoliberalism and a number of key analytical approaches used to study it, including governmentality, Marxism, ideational analysis, history and philosophy of economics, institutional analysis, state/regulation theory, and human geography. It finishes with some suggestions for areas of further and future research.
The historical roots of neoliberalism: origin and meaning
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
Neoliberalism has succeeded in reaching unprecedented levels of power and domination. Despite this, the literature shows that many aspects of the history of neoliberalism remain unclear. In this regard, this article discusses two notable aspects. The first is that neoliberalism lacks a clear definition and is often confused with many other concepts. The second aspect relates to the origins of neoliberalism, which are often reduced to a particular version that does not necessarily reflect the deep roots of neoliberal thought. This article argues that subjecting the history of neoliberal thought to scrutiny contributes to removing many of the ambiguities associated with these two aspects. On the one hand, it allows identifying the different interpretations of neoliberalism, and on the other hand, it shows the fact that neoliberalism emerged in the midst of the crisis of classical liberalism and as a reaction to the expansion of collectivism.