Neoliberalism K—UMich 2013 neg 1NCs 1NC: Generic

Empirically, policymaking focus kills political agency and fails to understand the root of neoliberalism—discursive analysis must come first

It is certainly not our intention to question the extent to which our knowledge of the empirical phenomena associated with claims of globalisation has been enhanced in this way. Nonetheless, we will argue that something quite significant is lost in this overly restrictive emphasis upon material indices of globalisation and on arguments which such indices might adjudicate.2 The implicit supposition which seems to underlie much of the sceptical or second-wave literature seeking to expose the ‘myth’ or ‘delusion’ of globalisation, is that a rigorous empirical exercise in demystification will be sufficient to reverse the tide of ill-informed public policy made in the name of globalisation. Sadly, this has not proved to be the case. For however convinced we might be by the empirical armoury mustered against the hyperglobalisation thesis by the sceptics, their rigorous empiricism leads them to fail adequately to consider the way in which globalisation comes to inform public policy-making. It is here, we suggest, that the discourse of globalisation — and the discursive construction of the imperatives it is seen to conjure along with attendant fatalism about the possibilities for meaningful political agency — must enter the analysis. For, as the most cursory reflection on the issue of structure and agency reveals, it is the ideas actors hold about the context in which they find themselves rather than the context itself which informs the way in which they behave (Hay 1999a, forthcoming a). This is no less true ofpolicy makers and governments. Whether the globalisation thesis is ‘true’ or not may matter far less than whether it is deemed to be true (or, quite possibly, just useful) by those employing it. Consequently, if the aim of the sceptics is to discredit the political appeal to dubious economic imperatives associated with globalisation, then they might well benefit from asking themselves why and under what conditions politicians and public officials invoke external economic constraints in the first place. It is to this task that we direct our attentions in this paper.

Policy approaches externalize globalization and fail to understand how it motivates their environment and decisions—examination of neoliberal motive must be prior

Rosamond, Professor of Political Science, University of Copenhagen 99 (Ben, “Discourses of globalization and the social construction of European identities”, Journal of European Public Policy 6:4, 1999, Taylor and Francis)//AS

As discussions like this proceed, so the limits of rationalistic approaches become apparent. The externalization of globalization in mainstream accounts is related to the treatment of interests and identities as exogenous or prior to the processes of institutionalized interaction. The implication of much of the literature on globalization and European integration is that actors’ interests are affected by globalization and/or that it is in some actors’ interests to promote globalization. The role of globalization in actually constituting those interests and identities is largely ignored. This need not be so. Increasing attention is being paid to the complex effects of institutionalization in the EU, and particularly to the capacity of institutions to co-ordinate actor expectations, generate shared systems of belief and shape norms, values and conventions within policy communities (Cram 1997; Radaelli 1995; also Armstrong and Bulmer 1998; Garrett and Weingast 1993). It is here that constructivist approaches can add value by forcing an explanation of the social construction of the external environment as a means to understanding how particular identity claims and interests arise within a policy-making context. This is discussed further in the following section which elaborates briefly a case for the analysis of the discursive aspects of globalization and goes on to discuss how constructivism might be used to think about the usage of ‘globalization’ in the EU context. The third section of the article lays out some empirical material, with reference to the role of globalization discourses within the EU polity. The argument is that our understanding of the global–European interface can be greatly enhanced by the application of a form of constructivism. More concretely, the argument builds the hypotheses that (a) the deployment of ideas about globalization has been central to the development of a particular notion of European identity among élite policy actors but that (b) ‘globalization’ remains contested within EU policy circles.

We have a responsibility to challenge neoliberal dominance of the policymaking sphere—it damages equality, education, and the environment

Hursh and Henderson, associate professor of education at theUniversity of Rochester and PhD at the Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development11 (David and Joseph, “ Contesting global neoliberalism and creating alternative futures”, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 32:2, May 2011, Routledge)//AS

Neoliberal policies, in spite of their considerable damage to economic equality, the environment, and education, remain dominant. In this paper, we suggest that neoliberalism has remained dominant in part because the power elite who benefit from the policies have gained control over both public debate and policy-making. By dominating the discourse and logic regarding economic, environmental, and education decision-making, neoliberal proponents have largely succeeded in marginalizing alternative conceptions. We then use critical theory and critical geography, or ‘historical geographic materialism’, to situate communities, cities, and countries within different scales and networks and analyse current neoliberal policies. Environmentally, neoliberalism elevates the market and profit above considerations of climate change and environmental sustainability. Educationally, learning is valued primarily in terms of its contribution to economic growth. Finally, we engage in the more complicated question of what kind of world we want to live in, remembering that rather than a self-perpetuating neoliberalism in which individuals are responsible only for themselves and all decisions are supposedly made by the market, we have responsibility for our relationships with one another and our built and natural environment.

Process

Neoliberalism must be examined as a process – no interpretation of neoliberalism exists independently.

Springer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, Canada, 2012 (Simon, “Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and

Marxian poststructuralism,” Critical Discourse Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2012, 133–147, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.656375)//CS

Nonetheless, following Ward and England (2007) within the existing literature, we can identify four different understandings of neoliberalism: (1) Neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project. This understanding maintains thatelite actors and dominant groups organized around transnational class-based allianceshave the capacity to project and circulate a coherent program of interpretations andimages of the world onto others. This is not merely subordination to particular coerciveimpositions, but also involves a degree of willing consent. Attention is focused on thepeople and ideas behind the conceptual origin of neoliberalism, as well as those whoare at the forefront of its adoption in a range of geographical settings (see Cox, 2002;Dume´nil&Le´vy, 2004; Harvey, 2005; Peet, 2002; Plehwe et al., 2006).(2) Neoliberalism as policy and program. This frame of reference focuses on the transfer ofownership from the state or public holdings to the private sector or corporate interests,which necessarily involves a conceptual reworking of the meaning these categories hold.The understanding itself is premised on the idea that opening collectively held resourcesto market mediation engenders greater efficiency. The usual motifs under which suchpolicy and program are advanced include privatization, deregulation, liberalization,depoliticization, and monetarism (see Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Klepeis& Vance,2003; Martinez & Garcia, 2000).3) Neoliberalism as state form.In this understanding, neoliberalism is considered as aprocess of transformation that states purposefully engage in to remain economicallycompetitive within a transnational playing field of similarly minded states. This isthought to involve both a quantitative axis of destruction and discreditation wherebystate capacities and potentialities are ‘rolled back’, and a qualitative axis of constructionand consolidation, wherein reconfigured institutional mediations, economic managementsystems, and invasive social agendas centered on urban order, surveillance, immigrationissues, and policing are ‘rolled out’ (see Peck, 2001; Peck &Tickell, 2002).(4) Neoliberalism as governmentality. This interpretation of neoliberalism centers onacknowledging a processual character where neoliberalism’s articulation with existingcircumstances comes through endlessly unfolding failures and successes in the relationsbetween peoples and their socially constructed realities as they are (re)imagined, (re)interpreted,and (re)assembled to influence forms of knowledge through ‘the conduct ofconduct’ (Barry, Osborne, & Rose, 1996; Brown, 2003; Ferguson & Gupta, 2002;Larner, 2003; Lemke, 2002). This understanding implies power as a complex, yetvery specific form centering on knowledge production through the ensemble of rationalities,strategies, technologies, and techniques concerning the mentality of rule thatallow for the de-centering of government through the active role of auto-regulated orauto-correcting selves who facilitate ‘governance at a distance’ (Foucault, 1991a).Thus, the internal dynamics of neoliberalism in this understanding are underpinned byan unquestioned ‘commonsense’, meaning quite literally, a sense held in common.Given that scholars of neoliberalism typically amalgamate two or more of these views on neoliberalism,my alignment of the studies cited in each understanding of neoliberalism remainsopen to reader interpretation. Potential misgivings over the associations I have made withregard to particular scholar’s views on neoliberalism actually reinforces my argument thateach interpretation of neoliberalism does not exist in isolation, but is actually connected to and recursive of the alternative views. Recent contributions demonstrate a growing readinessto sift through the methodological, epistemological, and ontological differences between thesefour definitions (see Larner, 2003; Peck, 2004; Peet, 2007), even if particular views on neoliberalismneoliberalismstill come through. Nonetheless, important ‘middle ground’ inquires are emerging, whereGilbert (2005), Raco (2005), and McCarthy (2006) all develop more amalgamated interpretations.Yet truly hybridized approaches that attempt to synthesize or at least reconcile thesedivergent conceptions in any sustained sense are much less common. A series of progressreports by Sparke (2004, 2006, 2008) offers a notably rare exception. Concatenating such divergent theorizations is clearly no small task, as it is one that necessarily involves reconciling the Marxian political economy perspective of hegemonic ideology with poststructuralist conceptualizations of governmentality, where policy and program along with state form approaches fall somewhere in between. For Barnett (2005) the potential of such an exercise is entirely unconvincingas the two intellectual projects imply different models of the nature of explanatory concepts,of causality and determination, of social relations and agency, and different normative understandingsof political power. Thus, he argues, ‘We should not finesse these differences away by presuming that the two approaches converge around a common real-world referent’(Barnett, 2005, p. 8). Similarly, Castree (2006, p. 3) disavows what he calls the ‘both/andagenda’ for its ‘intractable inability to “fix” [neoliberalism’s] meanings with real-world referents’stemming from the use of multiple definitions where ‘“the real world” can only partly functionas a “court of appeal” to resolve competing claims as to what is (or is not) neoliberal indegree or kind’. Castree (2006, p. 3) uses the peculiar analogy of water to illustrate his point,taking its meaning from positivist scientism as having liquid, gas, and solid forms, yet alwaysremaining water ‘wherever and whenever it is’. This comparison, however, belies a faux realismas it fails to consider how different languages, cultures, and individuals may have very differentmeanings for and understandings of ‘water in general’. The idea that Inuit peoples have hundredsof words for the English language equivalent of ‘snow’ is an anthropological myth (Martin,1986), but it is nonetheless instructive of how ‘the real world’ can be viewed as little morethan a semiotic construction, where even something as seemingly universal as water may bereduced to competing claims as to what it is (or is not) in degree or kind. In other words,Castree (2006) engages a very narrowly and privately defined understanding of the ‘real’,which is mobilized as a cipher for his own idealism.

Neoliberalism must be understood as a process and a hybrid. – it should be understood as the means not the ends.

Springer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, Canada, 2012 (Simon, “Neoliberalism as discourse: between Foucauldian political economy and

Marxian poststructuralism,” Critical Discourse Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, May 2012, 133–147, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2012.656375)//CS

On the other hand, some have called for a moment of pause, suggesting that we should be wary of overly concrete or introspective analyses of the local, as such accounts inadequately attend to the principal attributes and meaningful bonds of neoliberalism as a global project(Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Peck &Tickell, 2002). The ‘larger conversation’ that neoliberalism provokes is regarded as imperative in connecting similar patterns of experiences across space, which may serve as a potential basis for building solidarities (see Brand &Wissen, 2005;Escobar, 2001; Featherstone, 2005; Kohl, 2006; Routledge, 2003; Springer, 2008, 2011b;Willis, Smith, &Stenning, 2008). Thus neoliberalism as a concept allows poverty and inequalityexperienced across multiple sites to find a point of similitude, whereas disarticulation underminesefforts to build and sustain shared aims of resistance beyond the micro-politics of thelocal. Accordingly, conceptualizing neoliberalism requires an appreciation of the elaborate and fluctuating interchange between the local and extralocal forces at work within the global political economy (Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Ferguson & Gupta, 2002; Peck, 2001). Ong (2007,p. 3) corroborates this notion by conceptualizing ‘big N Neoliberalism’ as ‘a fixed set of attributeswith predetermined outcomes’, while ‘small n neoliberalism’ operates in practice ‘as alogic of governing that mitigates and is selectively taken up in diverse political contexts’. Inthis light, Peck and Tickell (2002, p. 383) propose ‘a processual conception of neoliberalizationas both an “out there” and “in here” phenomenon whose effects are necessarily variegated anduneven, but the incidence and diffusion of which may present clues to a pervasive “metalogic”.Like globalization, neoliberalization should be understood as a process, not an end-state’. Thus, neoliberalism-cum-neoliberalization can be viewed as a plural set of ideas emanating from both everywhere and nowhere within diffused loci of power (Plehwe&Walpen, 2006). The inability to straightforwardly align neoliberalism to particular individuals, organizations, or states, and the further recognition that there is no ‘pure’ or ‘paradigmatic’ version of neoliberalism, but rather a series of geopolitically distinct and institutionally effected hybrids (Peck, 2004),plays a significant role in the difficulty of realizing consensus on a conceptual definition of ‘neoliberalism in general’. Neoliberalism, it would seem is simply too nebulous to isolate or determine(McCarthy &Prudham, 2004).

Identity

The economic discussion of neoliberal democracy is intertwined with political and social elements of one’s individual identity – we must examine the economic freedoms of neoliberalism as if we were examining our political freedoms and rights.

Hughes, a PhD candidate in the School of Political Science and¶ International Studies at The University of Queensland, 2005 (Bryan, “The ‘Fundamental’ Threat of (Neo)Liberal Democracy: An¶ Unlikely Source of Legitimation for Political Violence,” UQ PolsiseJournal, pages 47-49, http://www.polsis.uq.edu.au/dialogue/3-2-4.pdf)//CS

The conceptions of liberalism, neo-liberalism, democracy and liberal democracy derive from similar historic-cultural origins and therefore, not surprisingly, they answer questions about how to live the ‘good life’ in much the same ways. The raison d’etre of these theoretical viewpoints is to provide a framework for living together. With that noted it then becomes possible to emphasize the point that the ideals and practices advocated by these discourses spill into all facets of life.How we approach work and play, how we conceive justice, security and self-realization are examples that begin to illustrate the ubiquitous influence of these frameworks touch our daily lives. A comprehensive social structure is ultimately constructed through these discourses. The structure’s particular ‘foundational logics’, in other words its underlying commitments about how to live the ‘good life’, inform the details of everyday interaction. I elaborate further on these connections below. The principal point I want to make at this juncture is that the explicit political and economic prescriptions of neo-liberal democracy have a direct impact on group identity. Identity underpins these theories according to the assertion that identity is mutually-constituted with economic and political practices. This allows group identity to take a central role in discussions about conflict and neo-liberal democracy.The discussion below explores a number of the debates pertaining to the commitments of liberalism, neo-liberalism, democracy and liberal democracy. I do so in order to delineate neo-liberal democracy in such a way as to make it clear that its commitments constitute a particular group identity. A discussion on these topics is complicated by the fact that the concepts of ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ remain contested and are often used vaguely, even interchangeably. However, it is all too clear that the overlap of these theoretical discussions comprises both explicit political and economic commitments rather than just political machinations. Neo-liberal economic elements combine with the philosophical inclinations of liberalism and the political traditions of liberal democracy. And this is appropriate since the political and economic commitments in the neo-liberal democratic structure do work in tandem. I would add, along with others, that genuinely democratic practices could never exist in a political institutions vacuum in the first place, immune to and uninfluenced by the economic realities of the citizenry. This mutual reinforcement yields a total social structure which guides how we should live together. What then are the characteristics of this social structure?The liberalism discourse highlights an essential principle of the neo-liberal¶ democratic tradition: the freedom of the individual. As Michael Doyle (1983: 4-5) observes, this core principle generates civic rights and institutions like freedom of religion. More precisely, equal freedom for individuals underwritten basic liberal institutions such as freedom of speech, equal opportunity, and civic equality (Barry 2001: 122). Democracy, when grafted onto liberalism, provides the procedural and institutional advice by which individuals are to determine their social affairs, based of course on the ideal of equal freedom for the individual. Freedom rights are located at the individual level of analysis rather than the collective.18 But democratic institutions alone are not sufficient to guarantee the freedom of the individual when it is recognized that democracies can behave illiberally if the majority of individuals so choose (Lynn-Jones 1996: xxxii; Owen 1994: 153). Thus the checks and balances envisaged by liberalism must work together with democratic institutions to achieve a ‘liberal democratic’ system which protects the rights of each individual against a backdrop of the popular will. Yet, as maintained above, these philosophical groundings and political procedures are not devoid of economic commitments. 19The sanctity of equalindividual freedom extends, necessarily, to the economic sphere, according to the social perspective put forward by neo-liberal democracy. This is the point at which the discourses of neo-liberalism and capitalism influence the direction of the social structure. The logic added from the neo-liberal dimension presses that the lack of interference needed to ensure the political freedoms of the individual, like those applying to speech, must also extend to economic free choice. After all, so the logic goes, an employer should have¶ the right to set wages for their employees, for example. To this way of thinking, the notion of freedom applies to economic markets no differently than to political rights.20 The intersection of the discourses of liberalism, democracy, and neo-liberalism is a unique political economic structure which therefore impacts (whether directly or indirectly)all facets of social existence.From the practices of an individual’s religious beliefs to the terms of one’s job, all social interactions fall somehow under the rubric of the neo-liberal democratic framework’s commitments.

Analytic

The analytic perspective, not a political perspective, must be used to evaluate neoliberalism.

Brand and Sekler,professor of International Politics at Vienna University and junior researcher in the area of international politics in the Department of Political Science at Vienna University , 2009 (Ulrich and Nicola, “Postneoliberalism – A beginning debate,” Development Dialogue, no. 51, page 6, January 2009,http://rosalux-europa.info/userfiles/file/DD51.pdf#page=173 )//CS

Dealing with ‘neoliberalism’ requires differentiating between at least two dimensions – an analytical and a political one. Despite all the differences, analytically we can distinguish between, firstly, considering neoliberalism as a theory and an intellectual movement (Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, the Mont Pelèrin Society, the dominance of neoclassical thinking in universities and beyond) and, secondly, focusing on neoliberalism as a broad strategy on the part of economic, political and cultural (and sometimes military) elites to destroy the (peripheral) Fordist compromises and to restructure power relations, institutions, overall orientations and truths, in particular societies and at the international level, even more towards capitalist interests. A third analytical perspective is to view neoliberalism as a social practice, implying the assumption that theoretical considerations and strategies to implement theory are not always and everywhere comprehensively successful and functional as such. Accordingly, the contradictory and conflictive aspects of (neoliberal) social practices in a global perspective – global North and South, East and West – and within societies are examined. It is precisely this third analytical perspective that leads us to the political dimension of ‘neoliberalism’ – that is, concrete neoliberal policies, practices and political discourses representing the compromises arising from the struggles of different social forces. In times of crises,neoliberal politics and these compromises come under pressure. Delegitimation of neoliberalism takes place not only via visible crisis – like the ecological and the financial one – or by means of the enormous social polarisation in many countries but in addition through the continuing conceptual and practical criticism undertaken by intellectuals, scientists and critical media, social movements and NGOs

Directory: rest -> wikis -> openev -> spaces -> 2013 -> pages -> Michigan7 -> attachments

Download 1.47 Mb.

Share with your friends: