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My contribution has six parts. First, starting from the Harvey-Ong debate on the 'strange case' of neoliberalism in China, it proceeds to the wider discussion of the path-dependent, geographically-conditioned variegation of neoliberalization. Second, it suggests how a meso-level cultural political economy can mediate between abstract-simple and concrete-complex analyses. Third, it proposes making ordoliberal and authoritarian turns to examine (non-western) cases where sovereign, disciplinary and biopolitical power coexist and co-evolve. Fourth, it deploys the concept of ordoliberal authoritarian governance to examine China since Deng's opened it to the world market in 1978. Specifically, it describes a hybridized ensemble of meta-governance ground rules (e.g., GDPism), socialist statecraft, the bio-sovereign ordering of the population through hukou (household registration system) and suzhi (human quality), and the politics of desire/morality (e.g., consumption and neo-Confucianism). These governing techniques and strategies have strengthened China's national growth and entrepreneurial potential; but they have also weakened them through exclusionary practices that generate inequalities and social unrest. Fifth, it considers the new subaltern resistance identity of Diaosi, which has emerged since 2011. Diaosi live in marginal and subaltern conditions but also aspire to gain urban hukou and embrace suzhi consumption. To re-establish control in response to these challenges, the government has intensified Internet surveillance, censorship and the use of a "social credit" system. Sixth, the article offers some conclusions on the cultural political economy perspective on variegation and heuristic potential of the ordoliberal and authoritarian turns in examining variegated neoliberalization/ordoliberalization in non-western settings.

This article employs cultural political economy to explore, interpret, and explain the articulation of competition, competitiveness, and competition policies in Asia in the current neo-liberal era. It describes how this approach explores social order and change in terms of the interaction between semiosis and structuration in the context of four types of selectivity: structural, agential, discursive, and technological. It then outlines an analytical framework and methodology to apply this approach to the chosen case study. This concerns how these modes of selectivity have operated since the 1997 'Asian Crisis' to produce changes in the policy discourses and practices of the World Bank and its Asian regional agencies with the declared aim of reducing poverty, enhancing competitiveness, and promoting corresponding forms of competition policy. Next it examines how these discourses and practices are assembling a new dispositive around an emerging disciplinary and governmentalized socioeconomic-cum-legal order in the wake of the Doha conjuncture in Asia. The concluding remarks address some tensions and challenges in the making of this competitiveness order in Asia.

This article explores discourses and practices of crisis recovery from a cultural political economy (hereafter CPE) perspective. It examines the imaginaries used by (trans-)national and/or intergovernmental forces in identifying and promoting alternative road to recovery. Specifically, it focuses on how entities such as international investment banks, economic strategists, international organizations, think tanks, intergovernmental agencies, and business media, have (re-) imagined the role of the 'BRIC' (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies as drivers of recovery in the context of financial crises in the USA and Europe. The article has five parts. Part one briefly addresses the rapidly developing literature on 'cultural economy' and the ways in which the proposed CPE approach can add to a micro-macro understanding of (financial) (dis-)orders. Part two applies this approach to the roles of nodal (trans-)national forces in making, negotiating and circulating 'BRIC' as an economic imaginary. Part three addresses the structural/material contexts in which the BRIC discourses were popularized by private and public sector actors in response to the continuing financial crisis that became visible in 2007. In this conjuncture, the BRIC economies were identified as sites that could facilitate 'economic recovery'. This imagined recovery was made more credible when the BRIC countries developed their own stimulus packages. China was seen as leader of the pack here and its large national package was described by one international economist (Lardy) as 'gold standard' (see below). Part four examines how this package intensified some deep-rooted tensions in central-local relations such as the commodification of land and intensification of the 'property bubble. This harms China's subaltern groups in various ways, illustrated below by the cases of 'house slaves' and the plight of migrant workers' children. Part five comments on CPE's contribution to understanding the micro-power relations involved in constructing hope as well as ...

Der Autor analysiert den Aufstieg von globalen Einzelhandels- und Lieferantenketten wie "Wal-Mart" im Kontext der neoliberalen Deregulierung von Handel, Investition und Arbeit. Er zeigt auf, dass ihre globale Expansion von den Gewerkschaften und bewegungsnahen Nichtregierungsorganisationen mit Kampagnen bekämpft wurde, die sich gegen Ausbeutung und Umweltzerstörung richteten, die durch die Deregulierung ermöglicht und von dem Streben nach Profitmaximierung angetrieben wurden. Davon beunruhigt, dass ihr Ansehen durch solche Kampagnen Schaden nehmen könnte, haben die entsprechenden Unternehmen mit freiwilligen Kodizes und Praktiken reagiert, die diese lokalen und globalen Kritiken aufnehmen. Diese Reaktion lässt sich nach der These des Autors als eine Verschiebung von Government hin zu Governance und von "hartem" zu "weichem" Recht interpretieren. Die Governance des globalen Einzelhandels wird demnach in erheblichem Maße durch transnationale Institutionen (multinationale oder internationale Organisationen, Ethikinitiativen etc.) ausgeübt, wobei dies auch in Kooperation mit staatlichen Institutionen auf einer oder mehreren Handlungsebenen erfolgt. (ICI2)

Der Beitrag gliedert sich in drei Abschnitte. Im ersten Abschnitt schlägt die Verfasserin ein Umdenken innerhalb des neogramscianischen Ansatzes vor, indem sie zwei Ansichten von Hegemonie und deren Gebrauch in den Sozialwissenschaften unterscheidet - die "Hegemonie der Produktion" und die "Produktion von Hegemonie". Im zweiten Abschnitt geht sie auf Letzteres näher ein und unterstreicht, wie wichtig Ideen, Diskurse und Vorstellungswelten für die Gestaltung sozialer Beziehungen sind. Im dritten Abschnitt illustriert sie, wie Foucault "gramscianisiert" werden kann, und untersucht im Zuge dessen das Zusammenspiel von Diskursen, Gouvernementalitäten und Strukturen in der Produktion von Hegemonien. Abschließend wird vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Finanzkrise und gegenhegemonialer Herausforderungen argumentiert, dass sich Gills "New Constitutionalism" mit einem emergenten, zur aktuellen Phase erweiterter neoliberaler Hegemonie gehörenden "New Ethicalism" artikuliert. (ICE2)

This paper adopts a "cultural political economy" (CPE) approach to examine the production of hegemony and related hegemonic struggles during the socio-spatial changes occurring in the Pearl River Delta. Drawing from the case of Hong Kong/Pearl River Delta, economic restructuring has given rise to the "hollowing out" debate. In face of this debate, two knowledge brands, the Harvard-Porter's "competitive advantage" (1985) and MIT-Berger-Lester's "industrial performance" models, have been stabilized as competing modes of developmentality (development governmentality) and have operated as paper-based economic panopticons to order/manage, at a distance, the organization of Hong Kong's/Pearl River Delta's space, policy, and, ultimately, the conduct of its population. These modes of developmentalities have met resistance from other forces in other spaces and with other interests, including from below. Nonetheless the two main power blocs are engaging in inter-bloc negotiations in the light of such resistance and are creating a hybrid strategy under the dominance of the service bloc.

A cultural political economy (CPE) approach is adopted to examine the rise of discourses about the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies and about their implications for power shifts in the world system. Forces such as international investment banks, economic strategists, international organizations, national governments, business media, etc. contributed in constructing and circulating 'BRIC' as a new economic imaginary and investment form. These involved constructions of 'hope' and 'strength' over three overlapping stages: an investor story, an investor-consumer story, and now an investor-consumer-lender story. This amalgam of discourses and practices (which are subject to continuing renegotiation in response to changing circumstances and further shifts in the balance of forces) has facilitated the gradual sedimentation and naturalization of BRIC as a potential 'group' and has mediated particular power shifts in the global political economy. Specifically, this (trans-)national privileging and popularization of 'BRIC' is contributing to the (re-)making of investment patterns and neoliberal social relations. Adapted from the source document.