Neoliberalism as concept Venugopal, Rajesh
Economy and society,
04/2015, Letnik:
44, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This paper is a critical exploration of the of the term neoliberalism. Drawing on a wide range of literature across the critical social sciences and with particular emphasis on the political economy ...of development, it evaluates the consequences of the term's proliferation and expanded usage since the 1980s. It advances a case that neoliberalism has become a deeply problematic and incoherent term that has multiple and contradictory meanings, and thus has diminished analytical value. In addition, the paper also explores the one-sided, morally laden usage of the term by non-economists to describe economic phenomena, and the way that this serves to signify and reproduce the divide between economics and the rest of the social sciences.
This book examines the relationship between ethnic conflict and economic development in modern Sri Lanka. Drawing on a historically informed political sociology, it explores how the economic and the ...ethnic have encountered one another, focusing in particular on the phenomenon of Sinhala nationalism. In doing so, the book engages with some of the central issues in contemporary Sri Lanka: why has the ethnic conflict been so protracted, and so resistant to solution? What explains the enduring political significance of Sinhala nationalism? What is the relationship between market reform and conflict? Why did the Norwegian-sponsored peace process collapse? How is the Rajapaksa phenomenon to be understood? The topical spread of the book is broad, covering the evolution of peasant agriculture, land scarcity, state welfarism, nationalist ideology, party systems, political morality, military employment, business elites, market reforms, and development aid.
This paper engages with a central problem in development studies: why is development so depoliticised, and how can this be remedied? It does so by providing a theoretical/conceptual framework of the ...way that the 'political' and the 'technical' are constructed as a cognitive gap in the inner frame of the development planner. Drawing on Scott, Schmitt, Weber, Horkheimer & Adorno, and the critical development literature, it argues that politics presents itself to the planner as a sphere of uncertainty that can disrupt project outcomes. Knowledge production about development politics, for example through political economy analysis, is thus a compulsion that arises from the need to govern this source of uncertainty. The politics rendered legible and decoded in this way is also ipso facto no longer part of the political unknown, but now belongs to the realm of the technical. The implications of this framework are that the anti-politics machine will perpetually regenerate itself. The work of mitigating technocratic excess is productive, but it is a Sisyphian labour that will not have a clean or satisfying end-date.
How is ethnic domination produced, legitimised, and sustained under conditions of liberal democracy? This article engages with this problem and provides a re-conceptualisation that draws on the ...experience of Sri Lanka. Ethnic domination is typically understood in terms of a liberal normative framework, through the lens of the state, or primarily in terms of the one-sided coercive power of the dominant group. This article points instead to the importance of looking into inner processes, moral frameworks, and the way these are acted upon by contending ethnic groups. Instead of outcome typologies such as "ethnic democracy" and "ethnocracy," it emphasises the need to look beyond and below the state, and in particular, at the mechanisms through which stable hierarchies are produced.
•Examines how development is often characterised as a failure.•Explains that failure is socially constructed.•Outlines three categories of failure: implementation, design, agenda.
This paper explores ...the social construction of failure in development policy and academic narratives. Talk of failure is commonplace in development, and this paper seeks to use that as a heuristic to understand what that it signifies beyond face value. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary texts to provide illustrative evidence, the paper explores how failure is constructed, and advances a three-fold typology of failures that vary in terms of their positionality, the critical variables they identify as responsible, their epistemological stance, and the importance they accord to politics.
This paper explores the politics of the 2014 floods in the contentious and conflict-prone Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The September 2014 floods were the most serious natural disaster in the ...state in the past 60 years, and affected some two million people in the Kashmir valley. Drawing on qualitative interview evidence from 50 flood victims in south, central and north Kashmir, the paper examines the extent to which the disaster transformed existing political narratives. In doing so, it examines the role of the state and central governments, the army, local volunteers, and the media. The paper engages with the politics of disaster literature, exploring how disasters can serve as a lens rather than as a catalyst, and stressing the relevance of understanding the social construction of disaster narratives.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
BFBNIB, DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale and unfolding ...trajectory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it sets out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years, 1978-93, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis from 1994-2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Between 2005-14, the presidency regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite-mass power relationship to facilitate elite-led reform agendas.
The reconstruction of stable political order after violent conflict is a central concern of peacebuilding theory and practice. While much of the literature on this subject is based on cases where ...there has been state collapse or international intervention, this article draws on a case study from India's northeast, where a long-standing separatist insurgency has given way to a stable and protracted ceasefire. Drawing on fieldwork from Ukhrul district in the India-Myanmar border, the article studies the parallel military structures and civilian governance institutions and the nature of their interaction. In doing so, it evaluates the consequences of the ceasefire political equilibrium in terms of the larger project of conflict resolution and a permanent political resolution.
How can crisis, breakdown, violence, and collapse be explained in the social sciences? This paper engages with this broad question by studying an extraordinary episode of mass tension and anxiety in ...postwar Sri Lanka caused by a mystery male predator known as the “grease devil.” Reports of widespread attacks on women in mid-2011 by this shadowy, ubiquitous, and powerful being led to heightened levels of vigilance and fear across large parts of rural and peri-urban Sri Lanka. It had a particularly strong impact on the formerly war-torn northeastern part of the island, where it led to violent confrontations between affected communities and the police and military. Drawing on primary research and by engaging with a range of literatures across the historical and social science literature, this paper attempts to reconstruct and understand the grease devil crisis. In doing so, it identifies and evaluates the different ways in which the crisis could be explained and the extent to which these approaches produce analytically relevant insights.
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