Radicalising ‘disability’ in conflict and post-conflict situations

In this article, a radical social model of disability lens is taken to illustrate what counts as ‘disability’ within a neoliberal mindset. The South African and disabled activist Vic Finkelstein describes both an ‘outside-in approach’ that looks at the material conditions of how ‘disability’ is constructed and an ‘idealist’ ‘inside-out’ approach, or how people describe experiences of inequality and disablement. The ‘outside-in’ approach is where the focus of a social model of disability should be in terms of trying to understand how global capitalism or neoliberalism is (dis)ablest and creating impairment. The ‘inside-out’ approach is ‘idealist’ and where the other ‘components’ of the model such as ‘rights’ are located. This article begins with an overview of the relationship between disability and conflict. The article then moves to an inside-out framework to examine how disability is still viewed and created through a medical humanitarianism. Using an outside-in framework, I illustrate how states become disabled through neoliberalism. Lastly, I discuss how ensuring greater participation and rethinking neoliberalism in terms of sustainability may provide us with a way forward in a humanitarian setting and rethinking of disability.     

Self as enterprise: digital disability practices of entrepreneurship and employment in the wave of ‘Internet + disability’ in China

ABSTRACT

Situated in China’s neoliberal context and its rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs), this study aimed to examine how disabled people in China transformed themselves into new self-enterprising subjects in the wave of ‘Internet?+?Disability.’ In order to answer this question, this study tried to develop an analytical framework to illustrate the disability practices that situated in the ICTs and neoliberal context, underpinned by the discourse of ‘self as enterprise,’ and demonstrated by the practices of entrepreneurship and employment. Based on the research design of case studies and methods that included ethnographic participant observation and in-depth interviews, this study explained how a disabled entrepreneur, Mr. Yuan, took advantage of the wave of ‘Internet?+?Disability’ to realize his dream of entrepreneurship and face the uncertainties of a precarious entrepreneurship. It also explained how Mr. Yuan’s employees achieved their dreams of employment but suffered the precariousness of enterprising subjects.     

Self-work and social change: disindividualised participation amongst young Australian Buddhist practitioners

Recent work on youth participation has mobilised a ‘DIY’ or ‘individualised’ framework to explain the nature of contemporary participation, particularly amongst minoritised religious youth. This paper examines this conceptual framework in light of concurrent claims that contemporary participation can be better conceptualised using a ‘doing it with others’ (DIWO) approach, which emphasises the collaborative nature of participation. In light of these claims, I analyse the participation experiences of 22 young adult Buddhist practitioners who are located within a neo-liberal Australian context, yet simultaneously have access to religious teachings and practices which challenge distinct notions of selfhood. This paper shows that both ‘DIY’ and ‘DIWO’ conceptions of participation find expression in the participation experiences of participants from the study, and that both DIY and DIWO approaches can additionally be seen as mutually reinforcing rather than distinctly contrasting. I propose a new concept of ‘disindividualisation’, suggesting that Maffesoli's concept of ‘disindividuation’ and Elias's work linking psychological development and social change should be considered in conjunction with an individualised or DIY perspective on youth participation to denote this kind of participatory work.     

Antagonistic governance in South African fruit global production networks: a neo‐Gramscian perspective

Governance is a core focus of the global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) literatures. Recent research claims ‘complementary’ or ‘synergistic’ governance, achieved through the confluence of private, public and civil society actors, is required for sustainable social gains. While moving beyond a narrow focus on economic coordination, such analysis lacks a sufficiently nuanced examination of power relations. In this article, I draw on neo‐Gramscian perspectives to account for ongoing contestation, positing that governance needs to be understood in the context of a broader hegemonic project. ‘Antagonistic governance’ is proposed to conceptualize contestation within and across diverse initiatives, which forge, challenge and transform hegemonic stability in GVC/GPNs. I explore this through the South African fruit sector, in particular, a labour crisis in 2012/13. I argue that we need to move beyond apolitical readings of governance to account for the material and discursive practices through which contestation gets played out, compromises are forged, and hegemonic order is maintained.     

‘Good faith and effort?’ Perspectives on educational inclusion

This paper considers what might ‘count’ as educational inclusion from the perspectives of six women who are both mothers of and teachers of children with special educational needs (SEN) and/or disabilities. The mother‐teachers draw on their own personal and professional experiences to consider meanings of inclusion in relation to ‘their’ children. Their voices suggest that it is the detail of daily interaction and the commitment to ‘good faith and effort’ on the part of both parents and educational professionals that matters. For the purposes of this paper I shall consider the discourses of SEN, learning difficulties and disability together, although I am aware of the danger of reductionism in doing so.     

Reflections on engaging with an advisory network in the context of a ‘sensitive’ research study

This article surfaces issues about the often-used but widely under-reported practice of working with advisory fora. We critically reflect on our experiences working with an advisory network when co-designing a research study about a ‘sensitive’ subject. We discuss the following: 1) How the network evolved as a matter of ethical and pragmatic choices; 2) Potential issues when discussing sensitive issues ‘outside’ of the participatory or participant context; and 3) Practical and epistemic issues involved in (not) ‘taking’ advice. We suggest that although sensitive research is more conventionally aligned with more ‘radical’ forms of participatory practice, advisory networks can present a useful and sometimes more appropriate form of inclusion and engagement for some advisors and for some types of research study. The article should, therefore, be of interest to a wide range of academic and practice-based health and social care staff and, in particular, those who plan to use advisory fora in their work.     

‘Off the wall’: reading community mural making as a contestable site of urban youth governance

This paper weighs in on discussions contemplating the current state of arts programing targeting ‘at risk’ youth as handmaiden to a strategic neoliberal cosmopolitanism. I examine a City of Toronto, Canada, youth governance initiative that sought to link graffiti abatement, neighborhood beautification and gentrification through mural production, and ‘at risk’ youth civic engagement and crime prevention. While these coordinates were designed to harness racialised youth within a matrix of disciplinary practices concerned with risk mediation and economic productivity, program participants and youth workers drew from the aesthetics of multiculturalism as resource to navigate the governance dictates of the Grafitti Transformation Project. I focus on one particular incident that unfolded over a week-long period at a youth serving agency located in one of Toronto’s designated ‘Priority Neighbourhoods’. The incident illustrates in granular detail a politics of multicultural citizenship and belonging articulating at the limits of what was conceived for the project. I then consider analytical and practice lessons to be learned about the political aesthetics and ‘cultures of youth praxis’ by examining the workings of power leveled in such moments of tension, and by assessing the contours of an alternative multicultural sensibility forwarded when disruption occurs.     

Global Studies—The Handmaiden of Neoliberalism?

Abstract

The field of global studies has gained momentum over the past 20 years and today occupies a significant presence within many universities. As a result, there is now a burgeoning array of institutional support for global studies scholarship. Perhaps not surprisingly, concurrent to such institution-building there has been a spate of essays engaged with the question ‘what is global studies?’ that have promoted lively debate and commentary. In this essay, I ask a rather different question which is ‘who gets to define global studies, and what is at stake in these kinds of delineating efforts?’ I argue that debate about global studies demands the inclusion of multiple voices and perspectives from around the world. I conclude by urging global studies scholars to be deliberately conscious of their taken-for-granted assumptions with respect to power and the related capacity to speak for others from the global south and east who are largely still absent in defining this new field of inquiry.     

Good Governance as Managerialism: Rationalisation and International Donors in Vietnam's Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Sector

Donors’ appreciation of their relationship with Vietnam as a ‘mature development partnership’ requires explanation. Drawing on Rural Water Supply and Sanitation policy, the article argues that the success of donor collaboration with Vietnam is based on Vietnamese political culture coincidentally aligning with a managerialist ‘world culture’, presently extant in the form of neoliberal ‘good governance’ development orthodoxy. The article shows that Vietnam ‘delivers’ rationalised development policy to international donors through its system of state administration and planning, the implementation of target‐oriented planning and the role of statistics in the policy process. The strength of the ‘darling’ partnership is explained in relation to this cultural dimension of legitimacy creation through the performance of rational development planning and administration.     

Confronting the Informal in Good Governance: The Case of Decentralised Education‐System Reform in Guinea

For twenty years, technocratic planning and management approaches have dominated good‐governance reforms in developing countries. This is true even for newer ‘participatory’ and ‘citizen‐driven’ reforms that still struggle to engage with powerful informal forces affecting public service delivery. This article presents evidence from a case study of decentralised education‐system reform in Guinea, revealing a wide range of influential dynamics outside the technical realm. These corroborate the argument for ‘good‐fit’ alternatives to traditional governance approaches and concrete measures to better capture the constructive and disable the destructive effects of informality on development.     

The neoliberal mom: how a discursive coalition shapes low-income mothers’ labor market participation

Research has elucidated the conflict low-income mothers face when trying to comply with the imperatives of the neoliberalism and mothering discourses. Feminist scholars have argued that low-income mothers’ alternative conceptions of morality and behavior constitute an act of resistance to inferiorizing definitions embedded in these discourses. Drawing on this literature, I offer a new conceptualization of the seemingly contradictory discourses. Based on interviews with 48 low-income Israeli mothers, I suggest that the neoliberal ideology is not limited to the neoliberal discourse, which primarily measures the individual's commitment to the labor market, but rather has diffused into the mothering discourse, which sets the standards for good mothering. This diffusion constructs a discursive coalition of ‘neoliberal moms’, wherein the current hegemonic notion of good mothering and the neoliberal call for personal responsibility intersect and shape mothers’ perceptions and decision-making processes. Moreover, the neoliberal mom constructs an alternative morality: moral motherhood. Accordingly, the moral component of good mothering means taking personal responsibility to act in ways that promote one's children's future inclusion. I argue that the discursive coalition framework helps us to better understand mothers’ labor force entries and exits, and how these constitute a way of negotiating paths to social inclusion.     

Decoding Valuing People

Government policy frameworks on the support of disabled people can often be difficult to 'read', as they contain contradictory elements that simultaneously support and confront social processes that create inequalities and oppression. Valuing People (VP), the UK government's policy framework for learning disability (intellectual disability), provides such a context for work that enhances learning-disabled people's inclusion in community and society, and to reverse some of the systemic disadvantage they have experienced. However, as an uneasy amalgam of the progressive and the neoliberal, the romantic and the practical, it has been difficult to evaluate in order to use its opportunities and minimise its dangers. This article attempts to decode VP in terms of ideologies in human services, and the current New Labour policy mix. Its emphases on Person Centred Planning, Direct Payments and employment will be analysed to try to establish what VP means, and to suggest more adequate priorities. This analysis might also be relevant to other sectors where there is a similar problem of decoding their particular policy context.     

Subjectivation processes and gender in a neoliberal model of science in three Spanish research centres

From a Foucauldian approach, neoliberal rationality in science can be understood as a form of governance of the self that produces mechanisms through which the subject is constructed and subordinated at the same time. In this study we examine subjectivation processes and gender in centres of research created under neoliberal scientific rationality. We analyse 19 semi‐structured interviews of men and women researchers conducted in three highly competitive centres of excellence — a context rarely addressed in the literature of academic subjectivities. Following a critical discourse analysis, we show how subjectivation processes of neoliberal rationality result in two main discursive mechanisms of subjection that prevent or hinder alternative subjectivities and collective resistance, especially for women, presenting a double turn that we call: a ‘turn on oneself’ and a ‘gendered turn on oneself’. We conclude that these centres are spaces which provide the conditions of possibility to develop a scientific entrepreneurial self, excluding ‘other’ scientific subjectivities and preventing possible resistances that could emerge from them.     

The neoliberal multicultural state and the urban Indigenous associative model in Santiago de Chile

This article argues that since the recovery of democracy in Chile in the early 1990s, the state has been reshaping the Indigenous socio-political landscape by adopting neoliberal multiculturalism as a governance model. By not posing significant challenges to the state's neoliberal political and economic priorities, Indigenous cultural activity has been carefully channelled to meet state expectations of what constitutes urban indigeneity. Drawing on the minority and multicultural studies literature and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses how Mapuche civil society navigates the complexities of two relational models of state/ethnic minority interaction: ethno-bureaucracy and strategic essentialism. Although Mapuche associations have tried to accommodate their interests within the limits of neoliberal multiculturalism, the article argues that this governance model has established incentives for inclusion and exclusion in the socio-political apparatus, resulting in a fragmentation of the Mapuche associative landscape in urban Chile.     

RISK,MARRIAGE, AND NEOLIBERAL GOVERNANCE: Learning from the Unwillingly Excluded

Drawing from my ethnography of one prominent same‐sex marriage rights organization, I consider how activists' appropriation of a risk‐based political rationality blends utilitarian claims for equal access to self‐governance with moral assertions that posit the conjugal couple as a superior context for governing problems endemic to populations. When constructed according to risk‐based rationalities, marriage operates as a compulsory system that orients subjects to neoliberalism by promising to decrease danger for all of the “gay community,” not just same‐sex couples who marry. Articulating marriage according to a risk‐based political rationality yields a sense of urgency that makes nonconjugal intimacies and alternatives to a neoliberal ethic of care appear untenable. I add to the literature on governmentality by utilizing qualitative methods that uniquely capture the diffusion of governance from experts to social activists who are unwillingly excluded from a form of neoliberal governance.     

Authoritarian neoliberalism and capitalist transformation in Africa: all pain,no gain

ABSTRACT

As a region of the world capitalist political economy, Africa has been the epitome of neoliberalism as a universal project to remake societies in its image. In Africa, the neoliberal project encountered a region already ensconced in state-forms that were authoritarian, albeit very often weaker than their analogues in Latin America or Southern Europe. In these circumstances, neoliberalism both reconstructed and relied upon authoritarian state practices: reassertions of law and order, rising technocracy, re-built bureaucracies, and ‘choiceless democracy’. Liberal advocates of neoliberalism indulged authoritarian governance in the belief that economic liberalization would generate economic growth and transformation. Reviewing these authoritarian neoliberal constructions, one is struck by how poorly they performed as vehicles for market-based capitalist transformation. In a phrase, the pain of neoliberal adjustment was accompanied by no palliative of sustained economic ‘gain’. Liberalization, executed by top-down and undemocratic governance, has generated fragile growth, instability, some enrichment and no economic transformation. This conjuncture is pivotal to an understanding of moves by some governing elites to explore and at times implement non-neoliberal development strategies. The article concludes by suggesting that neoliberalism is currently a somewhat besieged orthodoxy. However, the exploration of unorthodox development strategies has taken place within an authoritarian political shell.     

Tokens or Stakeholders in Global Migration Governance? The Role of Affected Communities and Civil Society in the Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees

Focussing on the inclusion of those primarily affected as stakeholders (refugees and other migrants), this article addresses a key ambition of the compacts themselves. We employ an ‘inside‐outside’ perspective and firstly ask: which groups participated in the consultative processes, what agenda did they set ‘inside’ the meetings, what alliances did they establish and how did they influence the outcomes? Secondly, we investigate what kind of advocacy took place ‘outside’ of these formalized spaces and what impact it had? By this, we not only contribute to an evaluation of the processes themselves, but also advance current academic debates on strategies, spaces and political opportunity structures for civil society and particularly migrant involvement in global migration governance from below and the larger debate on democratizing global institutions.     

Politics and Positionality: Engaging with Maps of Meaning

This article considers critical social work education within the context of the challenges associated with the increasingly neoliberal, corporate and competitive nature of higher education and human service provision. The metaphor of maps is used as a framework for exploring the potential for transformational learning opportunities associated with alternative ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Countering the neoliberal tendency to depoliticise, metaphors of maps and map-reading, as discussed here and applied to social work education, evoke diverse perspectives and engagements in relation to the politics of knowledge, knowing, theory and practice. In emphasising the partiality of knowledge, the indivisibility of the ‘knower’ and the ‘known’ and, as such, the personal and the professional, efforts to cultivate critical consciousness, thus, enable different conversations. The central premise of this article is that in offering opportunities for engagement which open up rather than close down the space for meaningful dialogue, educators may contribute, in profound ways, to both student development and the (re)shaping of public discourse.     

Monstrosities and moral publics

Interdisciplinary scholarship on neoliberal urban governmentality has been attentive to the knowledges and techniques of government currently emerging at the interface of local state politics and invested claims of voluntary private actors such as corporate partners and philanthropic agencies. This article draws attention to the workings of the aesthetic as an epistemological grounding for the rationalization of urban rule. Specifically, I explore a Toronto, Canada-based philanthropic agency’s reliance on a mise-en-scene of urban terror to animate its own self-validated knowledges about targeted inner-suburban subjects and spaces. In their circulation and demand for public address, the agency’s graphic public service announcements, launched in 2007, herald what I argue is a moralized set of knowledges about municipal renewal that has its own normative orientations grounded in a neoliberal political rationality, and tangentially, in racialized security imperatives. I detail various dimensions of the social life of a video associated with this public service campaign targeting ‘youth at risk’, considering the ethical, political and economic valences it was expected to convey; its semiotic exchange with other images and representations of disenfranchised spaces, subjects and communities; and the publics it attempted to interpellate. Importantly, given the agency’s current standing as a prominent player in Canadian urban policy arenas, I pay analytical attention to the visual campaign as a site for the production of knowledges about proper urban citizenship and social governance, and as such, a strategic-orienting device for urban policy interventions and directives.     

Pushing the boundaries of our understanding of disability and violence: voices from the Global South (Guyana)

Our knowledge about disabled people’s lives is largely based on research in the Global North. This article considers disability and violence in the Global South, specifically in Guyana. It aims to push conceptual and empirical boundaries of our understanding of violence and disability. Conceptually, it argues for a social model materialist theory of disability attuned to how material barriers to disabled people’s inclusion in society and space are reproduced through processes of exclusion unfolding across geographic scales ranging from the global, to the inter-personal and intra-personal. It argues that Lacanian psycho-analytic theory provides a complimentary lens for understanding why people engage in acts that construct disabled people as ‘deserving’ of violence. Empirically, the article broadens our understanding of disability and violence by focusing on poverty, violence as a cause of impairment and disability, and disabled women’s and men’s experiences of violence in a majority world context.