Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China

Kipnis, Andrew B.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00432.x

Cited by 289 publications

(150 citation statements)

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“…: 989)? We are still left with the impression that "neoliberalism" serves as a single explanatory and analytic umbrella under which vastly discrepant phenomena can nonetheless be brought together (see Kipnis 2007, Sanders 2008). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tenure reformed

James

2011

Focaal

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This article explores the contradictory and contested but closely interlocking efforts of NGOs and the state in planning for land reform in South Africa. As government policy has come increasingly to favor the better-off who are potential commercial farmers, so NGO efforts have been directed, correspondingly, to safeguarding the interests of those conceptualized as poor and dispossessed. The article explores the claim that planned "tenure reform" is the best way to provide secure land rights, especially for labourers residing on white farms; illustrates the complex disputes over this claim arising between state and NGO sectors; and argues that we need to go beyond the concept of "neoliberal governmentality" to understand the relationship between these sectors.Keywords: citizenship, NGOs, land reform, planning, South Africa, the state Planning "seeks to make the will of the people in some way compatible with efficient control" (Robertson 1984). Whereas such planning was a paradigmatic undertaking of states in the postwar era, the outsourcing of many state functions and the establishment of parallel bureaucracies-often by NGOs-have been seen as both cause and effect of the progressive weakening of states and their functions (Abrams and Weszkalnys, this volume). NGOs have become involved in "planned interventions" (Long 2001), drafting policies and laying out designs that aim to shape the future. Rather than replacing the state, however, they interact with it in the enterprise of planning "to turn an unreliable citizenry into a structured, readily accessible public" (Selznick 1949: 220).Such outsourcing of state functions has been associated with neoliberalism, and seen as a sign of "neoliberal governmentality" (Ferguson and Gupta 2002). The program of planned intervention described here sounds like an enclosed and self-referential system, and hence evidence of "South African exceptionalism" (Bernstein 1996). But the country's economy is of course implicated in global trends, and was incorporated into the sphere of global trade and industry during the 1990s on terms that made competing in the world market difficult. This led to a loss of jobs in industry, to the government's adoption of strict restrictions on state spending, and to its pursuit of an economic restructuring similar to that implemented in many other countries. Some have claimed that South Africa's new political leaders showed unwarranted enthusiasm in choosing the path of privatization rather than delivering welfare and safeguarding the interests of the poor and marginalized, attributing the failure of all of these to strategies followed by the new elite within the context of the neoliberal global economy, rather than to the complex and particular history of South Africa or to its specific social and legal culture (Bond 2000;Marais 2001).Seen from this point of view, it seemed clear that poor people in post-1994 South Africa were destined not to enjoy much improvement in their well-being. Ambitious plans for restructuring the ownership of pr...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tenure reformed

James

2011

Focaal

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“…The term 'neoliberal' has been recently subjected to critical analysis, with attempts made to untangle its confusingly multiple meanings (Ferguson 2011; see also Kipnis 2007;Sanders 2008). First, says Ferguson, there is neoliberalism as ideology, viewed by Harvey as a disguise for self-interest (Ferguson, 2011:170).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizenship and land in South Africa: From rights to responsibilities

James

2013

Critique of Anthropology

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The anthropological study of citizenship enables an understanding of restitutive and redistributive reforms in the post-transitional context of South Africa. In its earlier, state-derived form, citizenship’s situated and contingent character, its use of pre-existing modes of identification as templates, and its ethnic differentiation which expresses ‘class’ distinctions while also masking them, reveal that no single democratic vision can easily encompass all of those who would belong in a new society. In its later market-oriented form, citizenship becomes more individuated, with discourses stressing enterprise, responsibility and the need to earn rights. The term ‘neoliberal governmentality’ has been used to describe the switch from state- to market-driven arrangements, but is inadequate to do so since it overlooks the extent to which state and market intermesh and are tightly interwoven, with apparently purely market-oriented initiatives reliant on extensive state intervention both for design and implementation. In societies undergoing rapid transition, even though new policies and social forces have come into play and people have responded to these in new ways, this novelty is mitigated and mediated through older social forms, attitudes and approaches, which have left their imprint upon both formal institutions and on the expectations and responses of those who ‘receive’ those institutions’ interventions. The paper calls for a view of citizenship which merges elements – state and market – that might at first sight seem contradictory: and which both acknowledges the power of wider frameworks and recognises the ability of ordinary actors on the ground to respond to and sometimes resist these.

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“…This mode of capitalism comes into its own with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and now China as spaces of political-economic organisation ostensibly outside capitalism (Loong-Yu, 2012). That itself was an ideological fantasy in the West with its own powerful effects, and the place of 'neoliberalism' as a reified discourse itself needs to be culturally contextualised as part of the apparatus of power (Kipnis, 2007). One of the characteristics of neoliberalism is that it dismantles barriers between nation states.…”

Section: Neoliberalism and 'Gender'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Neoliberalism and the Strong State in Higher Education: Psychology Today

Parker

2014

Qualitative Research in Psychology

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This paper locates significant changes in the discipline of psychology in recent years in the context of transformations of higher education that are in turn a function of the emergence of 'neoliberal' capitalism which deregulates welfare and education services and places responsibility on the individual. The paper reviews theoretical resources -from Marxism, post-structuralist theories of power, and feminism -and brings them to bear on narratives of the 'paradigm revolution' in psychology -the attempt to shift research from laboratoryexperimental method to a qualitative approach attentive to meaning and experience. These debates can now seen to resonate with deeper political-economic changes which have taken place at the level of institutional management practices and subjectivity, changes which are profoundly gendered in line with the neoliberal emphasis on 'emotional labour'. The paper concludes with an account of the consequences for experience, rhetoric, affect and self-abasement in these neoliberal conditions, and for how we might understand the role of 'psychologisation' in critical psychology, qualitative research and the broader culture.

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Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and tropes of neoliberalism in the People's Republic of China

Cited by 289 publications

References 47 publications

Tenure reformed

Tenure reformed

Citizenship and land in South Africa: From rights to responsibilities

Managing Neoliberalism and the Strong State in Higher Education: Psychology Today

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