Category: Neoliberalism and The New Right
-
The US bombing of Afghanistan – A $16 million distraction from the harms of neoliberal policies at home?
America’s two latest attacks on Syria and Afghanisatan have been headline news in the last fortnight – in case you missed either of them… In Syria – the US launched 59 Tomahawk missiles to damage and air base in response to the claimed use of chemical weapons by Assad’s forces against civilians. In Afghanistan they…
-
Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity
This is a brief summary of Jason Read’s: A Genealogy of H*m*-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity (2009) Introduction Neoliberalism represents a fundamental shift in ideology – firstly, it is not generated from the state, but from the quotidian experience of buying and selling commodities from the market, which is then extended across other…
-
Are Downshifters Resisting Neoliberalism?
This is a summary of Verdow: The subject who thinks economically? Comparative money subjectivities in neoliberal context The findings below are based on a comparative study of the money values of 3 groups of Australian generation Xers -‘ordinary’ low and high income individuals and ‘downshifters’. The study is based on a sample of 41 interviewees…
-
What is the Neoliberal Subject?
What are the key aspects of the neoliberal subject? Below is a brief summary of some of the key theorizing around and indicators of the successful neoliberal subject, drawn from Verdouw 2016 (1) They are an entrepreneurial, competitive creature, forming a ‘company of one’ (Read 2009) Freedom is defined as the freedom to choose market…
-
The Neoliberal Approach to Education Reform
Stephen Ball argues that there are four central mechanisms through which neoliberalism has transformed the British education system (these are also the mechanisms of public service reform more generally): Top down performance management Greater competitivenss and contestability Choice and voice Measures to strengthen the capability of public servants to deliver improved public services All of…
-
Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities – A Summary
In this recent article – Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal subjectivities Stephen Ball (2012) effectively argues that teachers who resist the multiple demands of professionalism and just struggle to be themselves are resisting the dominant discourses of neoliberalism. based on a set of email exchanges with teachers about the terrors of…
-
Evaluating the The New Right View of the Family
The New Right believe that the traditional nuclear family is best and are critical of other ‘non-standard’ family types such as lone parent and reconstituted families. CIVITAS is one of the best examples of an organisation which represents the New Right View of the Family, and the decline of the nuclear family and increase the…
-
Sociology in the News (4)
Three articles about the close and friendly relationship between politicians and big business caught my attention this week. The three articles below all illustrate how the Marxist critical theory is still relevant, and also serve as good examples of why we have shifted towards neoliberalism – basically big business and government are tightly interwoven, so…
