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"Thanks to the rise of neoliberalism over the past several decades, we live in an era of rampant anxiety, insecurity, and inequality. While neoliberalism has become somewhat of an academic buzzword in recent years, this book offers a rich and multilayered introduction to what is arguably the most pressing issue of our times. Engaging with prominent scholarship in media and cultural studies, as well as geography, sociology, economic history, and political theory, author Julie Wilson pushes against easy understandings of neoliberalism as market fundamentalism, rampant consumerism, and/or hyper-individualism. Instead, Wilson invites readers to interrogate neoliberalism in true cultural studies fashion, at once as history, theory, practice, policy, culture, identity, politics, and lived experience. Indeed, the book's primary aim is to introduce neoliberalism in all of its social complexity, so that readers can see how neoliberalism shapes their own lives, as well as our political horizons, and thereby start to imagine and build alternative worlds."--Provided by publisher.

Intro -- Table of Contents -- Series page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Neoliberalism: a useful concept? -- Perspectives on neoliberalism -- Neoliberalism: a critical synthesis -- The structure of this book -- 1: Neoliberalism in Historical Perspective -- Intellectual origins -- The early postwar order and its decline -- Advancing neoliberal policies -- Spreading neoliberalism -- Consolidating neoliberalism -- Neoliberalism into the twenty-first century -- 2: Neoliberal Finance -- Globalizing finance -- States and financial markets -- Inflation and the Volcker shock -- Debt and austerity -- Financial crises -- Financialization -- 3: Work and Welfare -- Changing patterns of work and employment -- Neoliberalism and the welfare state -- Transformations of welfare -- 4: Corporate Power -- Corporate transformations -- Corporations, markets and neoliberal ideology -- The corporate funding of neoliberalism -- Neoliberalism and corporate power -- 5: Power, Inequality and Democracy -- Power in capitalist society -- Inequality in historical perspective -- Neoliberal inequality in the West -- Neoliberalism, inequality and the developing world -- The return of inequality into Western political discourse -- 6: Crisis and Resilience -- Neoliberal resilience after the crisis -- Neoliberal reason and resilience -- The paradoxical politics of neoliberalism -- References -- Index -- End User License Agreement.

"Thanks to the rise of neoliberalism over the past several decades, we live in an era of rampant anxiety, insecurity, and inequality. While neoliberalism has become somewhat of an academic buzzword in recent years, this book offers a rich and multilayered introduction to what is arguably the most pressing issue of our times. Engaging with prominent scholarship in media and cultural studies, as well as geography, sociology, economic history, and political theory, author Julie Wilson pushes against easy understandings of neoliberalism as market fundamentalism, rampant consumerism, and/or hyper-individualism. Instead, Wilson invites readers to interrogate neoliberalism in true cultural studies fashion, at once as history, theory, practice, policy, culture, identity, politics, and lived experience. Indeed, the book's primary aim is to introduce neoliberalism in all of its social complexity, so that readers can see how neoliberalism shapes their own lives, as well as our political horizons, and thereby start to imagine and build alternative worlds."--Provided by publisher.

Neoliberalism has been a popular concept within anthropological scholarship over the past decade; this very popularity has also elicited a fair share of criticism. This review examines current anthropological engagements with neoliberalism and explains why the concept has been so attractive for anthropologists since the millennium. It briefly outlines the history of neoliberal thought and explains how neoliberalism is different from late capitalism. Although neoliberalism is a polysemic concept with multiple referents, anthropologists have most commonly understood neoliberalism in two main ways: as a structural force that affects people's life-chances and as an ideology of governance that shapes subjectivities. Neoliberalism frequently functions as an index of the global political-economic order and allows for a vast array of ethnographic sites and topics to be contained within the same frame. However, as an analytical framework, neoliberalism can also obscure ethnographic particularities and foreclose certain avenues of inquiry.

Johanna Bockman unpacks a hefty term, neoliberalism. She cites its roots and its uses, decoding it as a description of a "bootstraps" ideology that trumpets individualism and opportunity but enforces conformity and ignores structural constraints.

AbstractIn this essay I argue that the ideology of neoliberalism may have failed, but that neoliberal practice is alive and kicking. Most of the 'solutions' to the crisis are in the spirit of neoliberalism, rather than enraptured by neoliberal spirit. Yet, this neoliberal solution is not a solution; it is part of the problem in the sense that it is leading to more problems — not just today but also in decades to come. This so‐called solution is often presented as Keynesian, but it is only partly so. A better way to classify this solution is as an attempt to save the existing, neoliberal, system. The big crisis of our time did not become a crisis of the hegemony of neoliberalism, because actually existing neoliberalism is flexible enough to influence policy in other ways than through the mantra of free markets: it thrives on presenting existing socioeconomic conditions as failing and neoliberalism as the best solution. Considering the many blows neoliberal ideology has received during this crisis, it should already be dead, but like a creeping cancer neoliberal practice is able to resurface and show up in both new and unexpected, and old and predictable, ways.

In a recent contribution Hendrikse (2018) has coined the concept of neo-illiberalism to capture mainstreaming of illiberal doctrines among neoliberal elites, thereby signifying a "mutation and restoration of transatlantic neoliberalism." After a critical appraisal of his concept, this essay argues that it is too early to claim that neoliberalism is mutated and suggests that the present conjuncture can better be termed ill-neoliberal instead. Following several scholars who have argued that we have arrived at an interregnum, I argue, by also applying a Gramscian framework, that neoliberalism is increasingly malfunctioning, "ill" or even dying, while something new is yet to be born. Unlike most Gramscian reasoning, however, I do not regard the rise of Trump or the European far right as "morbid symptoms", but as attempted remedies for neoliberalism. In this "restoration perspective" neoliberal elites, somewhat reluctantly, welcome illiberal actors and doctrines in an effort to keep existing hierarchies in place, or to even restore old ones. This transformation in the West towards illiberalism differs, then, from the emerging (and already) illiberal or authoritarian world powers such as China who increasingly rely on an ever-growing private economy and can therefore more rightfully be considered "neo-illiberal" (cf. Aiyar 2016). Whether such powers will be able to install a new (global) order depends foremost on the ability of the atlantic heartlands to overcome neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is subject to conflicting interpretations. Although often associated with the relation between state and market, neoliberalism is certainly beyond the scope of these relationships. It is a complex phenomenon composed of beliefs, practices and institutions. Neglecting any of these elements leads to a misunderstanding of the whole. One of the most complex issues facing those who deal with the issue of neoliberalism is to establish a connection between normative recommendations of neoliberal theory and political and economic changes in market economies. Elementary insights into economic changes over the last decades show that there is a certain correspondence between the neoliberal ideas and the trajectory of many capitalist economies, but also clear discrepancies. The goal of this paper is to investigate the analytical potential of the 'embeddedness' concept in the analysis of discrepancies between neoliberal theory and practice.

While the by now popular term "posttruth" remains, as Jayson Harsin and others argue, a contested and problematic concept, as a periodizing term it is useful in that it encapsulates collective anxieties and cognitive effects brought on by the increased commodification of knowledge, the marketization of political discourse, and the emergence of new economies and technologies of attention that fragment and destabilize relations of trust and authority across fields of inquiry (e.g. science and medicine), knowledge institutions (e.g. news and universities), and media technologies (e.g. video and photography) traditionally seen as arbiters of truth and facticity within the hegemony of Anglo-American liberalism. This paper considers the role of neoliberalism in the emergence of posttruth performance by reflecting on the work of public relations companies deployed in 2017 to promote the construction of a new power plant in New Orleans, as well as the work of the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave.EU in the run up to the 2016 referendum. Through these case studies the article demonstrates ways in which theater and performance studies can offer important critical tools with which to understand and dissect the structural conditions of posttruth in the twenty-first century.

"The current global recession has exacerbated the political and social crisis of finance-led neoliberal capitalism. Despite this, fears of its demise appear to have receded. In fact the crisis seems to present an opportunity: to accelerate and deepen neoliberal restructuring. By addressing the key dimensions of the crisis of neoliberalism, the authors trace its impact on the regulation of capital in the OECD world. Through analysis of the nature of capitalism in the BRICs and the impact of key new players as well as an investigation into the challenge to neoliberalism presented by the 'pink wave' in South America, they examine the rise of new centers of capital accumulation in the periphery. The authors also discuss the neo-conservative project under Bush and its continuation under Obama, the rise of China and Russia, and consider the prospect of inter-imperialist rivalry."--Provided by publisher.