The Arab uprising and the persistence of monarchy

The Arab uprising that began in 2010 saw the fall of rulers in states that had republican governments, yet the monarchs in their states survived. This is ironic in light of the fact that many monarchs throughout history have been vulnerable to revolutions. What explains this discrepancy? Although the literature has emphasized the impact of petrodollars in preserving the rule of the monarchs, this article stresses ideological and institutional factors. Like the Soviet Union's embrace of Marxism–Leninism, the Arab republics had regimes based on the failed ideology of revolutionary nationalism. Although revolutionary nationalism, which fused the nation and state, declined by the late 1960s, it left an institutional legacy that made it difficult for the republican states to change. On the contrary, in defining themselves in opposition to revolutionary nationalism, the monarchs provided for security and stability in making themselves somewhat immune to transnational revolutionary movements like the Arab uprising. In differentiating the state from the nation, the monarchs, paradoxically, showed more respect for different societal interests within the nation than the republican rulers.     

Prosaic state governance of community low carbon transitions

This paper unpacks the complex relations between community low carbon transitions, the prosaic state, neoliberal modes of governing, and the role of numbers therein. It aims to outline the ways in which the prosaic state can, through everyday tasks, decisions, measurements and demonstration requirements, force a calculative logic onto and into community based movements and groups in ways that can be counterproductive. It centrally argues that the will to quantify, in particular the accompanying demonstration requirements (most often a number), enacts three fundamental shifts in the collective subjectivity integral to community groups and movements. First, the preferred form of knowledge becomes abstract, disembodied and fungible (episteme) over and against relational ways to understand and conceive togetherness (mētis), including ecological relationships. Second, the vision of community shifts from a search to belong, an intrinsic end in itself, towards an instrumental means to achieve specific targets. Finally, third, the splitting of means from ends. These can all be traced from the demonstration requirements, and numbers, accompanying neoliberal prosaic state engagement with community groups.     

In the front line: women,work and new spaces of labour politics in Poland

Pessimistic accounts of women's lives in post-communist Poland view women as powerless and passive victims of the transformation process. In contrast, this article argues that while political change and the restructuring of the economy have closed down some spaces of articulation and organisation, others have opened up. The article focuses on the way in which women in their spheres of work are shaping and actively resisting change through new organisations and individual and collective actions, which are in some ways a break with the past, but in other ways build on previous forms of activity. The work draws on qualitative research conducted over the last decade across Poland. This has coupled extensive interviews with women workers, national and regional trade union leaders, activists and feminists in a number of major Polish cities with reviews of Polish media and policy. We examine the economic and ideological context in which these new articulations are taking place, against the background of Poland's post-war communism and the rise of opposition movements. We look at the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and the implications for women within the labour market and in their domestic lives. In particular, we examine initiatives from below in workplace organisation, by focusing on new unions and new actions in the public sector, and the beginnings of organisation in the new areas of the economy such as supermarkets. Finally, we look at how women are articulating their interests beyond formal workplaces. We conclude that we should be optimistic about these new spaces of activism. While some are well established, others are embryonic but provide a strong foundation on which women can increase their participation in spaces that promote their varied interests.     

Class Monopoly Rent and the Redevelopment of Portland's Pearl District

This study examines the role of class monopoly rent in shaping the spatial form and pattern of urban redevelopment processes in the contemporary neoliberal city. Since an initial flourishing literature during the 1970s and 1980s, urban land rent theory has fallen from the analytic radar of critical urban studies since the early 1990s, with the influence of class monopoly rent often considered an aberration of how capitalist real estate markets normally operate, if not rejected. Consequently, class monopoly rent has never been systematically elaborated. Based on an empirical analysis of Portland's Pearl District, this study suggests that the influence of class monopoly rent in contemporary processes of urban redevelopment is far more pervasive than often recognised, representing a “standard institutional practice” that is endemic (rather than aberrational) to the working of neoliberal urban governing regimes, and embeds in the social and physical landscape in a multiplicity of ways.     

Diamond Mining in Canada's Northwest Territories: A Colonial Continuity

Abstract: The Canadian diamond industry has been lauded as a new approach to resource extraction, one whose institutions are characterized by a greater attention to Indigenous rights and the environment. However, an institutional analysis obfuscates the terrain of unequal relations that is the context for the Canadian diamond boom; an analysis of the effectiveness of social and environmental policies in relation to the extraction of diamonds in the Canadian North suggests that there is an intent on the part of those instigating this extraction (that is, the Canadian state, Canadian capitalist interests and international capitalist interests) to protect the Northern environment and to provide economic benefits to Northern Indigenous communities. This piece argues, instead, that this assumption is erroneous and that the Northern mining industry is part of Canada's project of internal colonization of Indigenous communities, a project that has intensified and expanded in the neoliberal era.     

Reframing autonomy in political geography: A feminist geopolitics of autonomous resistance

Autonomy is often universally defined and undertheorized, making invisible ways of knowing and understanding autonomy that are embodied and practiced. Alternate theorizations have drawn on anti-capitalist and alter-globalization movements and discourses to provide accounts of struggles for autonomy as they relate to self-determination, identity politics, and oppositional action, however, in many cases these accounts are still grounded in universal understandings. In this paper I use a feminist geopolitical perspective to re-read autonomy for difference within, alongside and outside of contemporary political geographies of autonomy. Empirical work in self-declared autonomous communities in Chiapas, Mexico, demonstrates that current political geographies of autonomy do not sufficiently explain the ongoing struggle for indigenous farmers in the highlands. In the article, I examine how autonomy is understood and practiced by subsistence corn and coffee farmers who have declared themselves autonomous and in resistance. I argue that in the case of farmers in resistance, autonomy is not just a political act, but also an embodied practice deployed through agricultural production and consumption. A feminist geopolitics assists with reframing autonomy and identifying different ways that it is understood and practiced. In examining the practices that farmers view as contributing to autonomy, different understandings and ways of knowing autonomy emerge.     

Revanchist Urbanism Heads South: The Regulation of Indigenous Beggars and Street Vendors in Ecuador

Abstract: Much of the discussion surrounding neoliberal urbanism has been empirically grounded in the North. This paper shifts the discussion south to focus on the regulation of indigenous street vendors and beggars in the Andean nation of Ecuador. Inspired by zero tolerance policies from the North, the cities of Quito and Guayaquil have recently initiated urban regeneration projects to cleanse the streets of informal workers, beggars, and street children. In this paper, I explore the particular and pernicious ways in which these neoliberal urban policies affect indigenous peoples in the urban informal sector. Grounded in the literature on space, race and ethnicity in the Andes, I argue that Ecuador's particular twist on revanchism is through its more transparent engagement with the project of blanqueamiento or “whitening”. I further argue that Ecuador's “refinement” of revanchist urban policies only works to displace already marginalised individuals and push them into more difficult circumstances.     

Economic Restructuring,Coping Strategies and Social Change: Implications for Institutional Development in Africa

Since the early 1980s, most African countries have experienced unsatisfactory rates of economic growth and profound changes in livelihood systems, which have affected the way their modern institutions function. However, when confronted with evidence of poor economic performance in countries undergoing adjustment, the international financial institutions often blame governments for their lack of political will in regulating the activities of bureaucrats and vested interests. They recommend policies aimed at restructuring public sector institutions through privatization, public expenditure cuts, retrenchment, new structures of incentives and decentralization. Despite efforts to implement these measures in a number of countries, the problems of low institutional capacity remain. Two key contradictions appear to explain why institutions have been largely ineffective in crisis economies in Africa: the growing contradiction between the interests of bureaucratic actors and the goals they are supposed to uphold; and the contradiction between the institutional set-up itself and what goes on in the wider society. To understand how these contradictions work, it is necessary to look more closely at the set of values and relationships that anchor institutions on social systems. The issues here are social compromise and cohesion; institutional socialization and loyalties; overarching sets of values; and political authority to enforce rules and regulations. The crises in these four areas of social relations, which are linked to the ways households and groups have coped with recession and restructuring, have altered Africa's state institutions so that it has become difficult to carry out meaningful development programmes and public sector reforms without addressing the social relations themselves.     

Legal hyper-invasiveness and anti-legal practices in contemporary Italy

This paper gives an illustration of legal hyper-invasiveness in Italy over the course of the last decades, with particular emphasis on the increase in laws and law-producing institutions: neoliberal governmentality is not characterized by a retreat of the State, rather by the extent of its reach and force. The success of legal imposition has always been partial; in recent years, however, anti-legal constituent praxes are becoming more evident both in public demonstration and in everyday conduct. Street mobilizations are fuelled increasingly by disillusion with institutional politics, pursuing explicit anti-legal aims and marked by an autonomy from political parties and trade unions. The paper also provides an ethnographical examination of the day-to-day avoidance of institutional control, revealing a growing and widespread sense of intolerance of several regulations promoted by the institutional powers. Finally, contemporary forms of repression of these constituent energies are examined; and the belief that an increase in legality will benefit citizens is questioned.     

Global Politics of Microfinancing Poverty in Asia: The Case of Bangladesh Unpacked

Abstract

This article offers a critical and systematic political analysis of microfinance schemes linking international, national and local development policy. It substantiates the argument that microfinance schemes are a neoliberal development strategy, primarily advanced to realise a dual purpose: (1) financial sector liberalisation and commercialisation, while extending microfinance as a means to “poverty reduction”, and (2) the dampening and undermining of resistance to neoliberal development policies, by relying on the disciplinary potential of these schemes. I illustrate this argument through an examination of the politics of microfinance and development in Bangladesh, which includes analyses of policies prescribed by the World Bank (and also the CGAP). The analysis also draws out the implications (legal and institutional) for many NGOs who have been required to change their status to Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). Microfinance schemes are exemplary of (new) efforts to build markets in Asia in accordance with neoliberal visions of development, and in ways that advance and capitalise on the contradictions of neoliberal development. But they also challenge us to reflect more deeply on the limits of “market society”.     

Working the Spaces of Neoliberal Subjectivity: Psychotherapeutic Technologies, Professionalisation and Counselling

An analysis is presented of how a particular psychotherapeutic practice, namely voluntary sector counselling, contributes to and resists neoliberal forms of governance. Neoliberal governmentality invokes a concept of the human subject as an autonomous, individualised, self‐directing, decision‐making agent, attributes fostered in different ways by psychotherapies and processes of professionalisation. In this context I explore accounts of counselling offered by voluntary sector counsellors in Scotland, focusing on practitioners' use of the idea of empowerment to describe what they do, and on how this idea intersects with the professionalisation of counselling. I argue that empowerment and professionalisation both privilege autonomy in ways that are consonant with neoliberal subjectivity, but I also argue that there are points of resistance to the individualisation associated with technologies of calculation on which neoliberal subject formation depends.     

National maps, digitalisation and neoliberal cartographies: transforming nation-state practices and symbols in postcolonial Ecuador

The paper explores the connection between computerised techniques of mapping and the role of maps in modern nationhood, interrogating the ways that maps are naturalised and deployed in postcolonial neoliberal statecraft. A case study of Ecuador demonstrates how the relationship between cartography and the nation-state is being both altered and reaffirmed by new mapping practices and institutional processes. Despite neoliberalising moves to decentre state cartographers and the technological advances supporting the proliferation of national maps and map-makers, Ecuadorian cartographies are still authorised by the nation-state, as explored in relation to spatial information about the country, and in relation to the processes of land-titling. Under neoliberal governance and with advanced mapping techniques, land-titling produces small territories that replicate – in miniature – the jigsaw-like and modular quality of national territories. As such, mappings of individual private properties produce the reality of neoliberal statecraft.     

Une lecture inquiète de l'activité militante: épuisement et effondrement dans deux mobilisations contemporaines en France

The 1990s in France were characterised by a resurgence of political engagement in the form of associative activity. New voices made themselves heard in the public domain, those of the sans‐papiers, the homeless, victims of Aids or the unemployed. This article focuses on two protest movements which received widespread media coverage during this period, that of the homeless grouped together in the association DAL (Droit au logement) and the struggle against the construction of the Somport tunnel in the Pyrenees. The aim of the article is to consider the difficulties and constraints that undermine efforts towards collective action and in particular the tension which exists between the general and particular interests of the groups campaigning.     

Class,Power, and Patronage: Landowners and Politics in Punjab

In the century following their conquest of the province, the British in Punjab erected an administrative apparatus that, like those of precolonial regimes, relied heavily upon the support of the province's landed class. The relationship between the landed class and the colonial state was one of mutual benefit, with the latter using the former to ensure the maintenance of order and collection of revenue in exchange for state patronage. In this paper, it is argued that this administrative framework gave rise to a path-dependent process of institutional development in Punjab, allowing for the different fractions of the province's landowning class to increasingly entrench themselves within the political order in the postcolonial epoch. This paper outlines the mechanisms underlying this process of institutional development, focusing, in particular, on the strategies adopted by the landowning class to reproduce its power. This paper also considers the potentialities for institutional change in Punjab, allowing for the creation of a more democratic and participatory politics in the province.     

WAC at a Crossroads

The Sixth World Archaeological Congress in Dublin is likely to be a crossroads for the organisation, as it negotiates a number of key issues. One set of issues is concerned with the manner in which we negotiate the sharply politically divided nature of the contemporary moment. It is one of the extraordinary ironies of the current moment that the world of Dublin 2008 is, in many ways, more sharply divided, less securely predictable, and less amenable to immediate analysis than the world of Southampton 1986. So how does WAC find a way through these contending forces, pressures and identities? One answer comes from reminding ourselves that WAC has always been an oppositional organisation of a particular kind, cutting against the grain of received modes of thought and practice. Another answer comes from reminding ourselves of WAC’s core intellectual project. The WAC of 2008 exists as a loose conjunction of at least three different projects. The first is concerned with asserting the rights of Indigenous persons and groups in relation to archaeological processes. The second is about asserting the interests of archaeologists from the global South. The third is about contesting a particular politics of knowledge, and framing an epistemological challenge to received modes of thought and practice. These projects share a number of points in common, although they also pull in different directions. WAC was founded on a discussion of “sameness”, the extent to which we formed part of a “one world” archaeology. Perhaps it is time to find a way—seriously, respectfully—to talk about the points on which we differ?     

Bounded political contestation: the domestic translation of international health and housing rights in Australia

Political contestation within liberal democratic states is an important, albeit limited, guide in defining how these states domestically implement their international human rights obligations. While often ritualistically endorsing human rights standards, political actors allow themselves a limited policy space with their domestic political contest circumscribed by more pervasive influences, often at odds with the state's international commitments. This article examines recent health and housing policy initiatives by Australia's two major political parties and assesses them against its international commitments. Applying a social constructivist approach, this article argues that the dominant neoliberal political discourse and the state's institutional structure set contextual boundaries to the parties’ policy contestation and reveal the limited influence of domestic political contestation in determining Australia's rights implementation.     

The ‘woman‐in‐conflict’ at the UN Security Council: a subject of practice

Since the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the woman‐in‐conflict has emerged as a central figure in the discourse of the UNSC Women, Peace and Security policy community. She is an ever‐present referent in discussions, the person in whose name critique is launched or action demanded. This figure is a representation of the needs and interests of the uncountable, faceless and nameless women affected by and living through war; a representation that takes place through imbuing her with particular meaning or characteristics. These meanings shape how the figure is understood in Women, Peace and Security discourse, which, in turn, constructs the horizons of possibility for both current and future policy and its implementation. This article explores how this figure is produced as a subject through layers of representation and is deeply embedded in the practices and relationships of power in the policy community. It suggests that accounting for these will offer an opportunity for feminist advocates to engage in this institutional space in more considered and effective ways.     

The Dark Sides of Social Policy: From Neoliberalism to Resurgent Right-wing Populism

This Forum Debate explores the confluence of neoliberal, populist, conservative and reactionary influences on contemporary ideologies and practices of social policy, with a focus on the poorer peripheries of global capitalism. Several fundamental tensions are highlighted, which are largely overlooked by the social policy and development literatures. First, many recent social policy innovations have been discredited by their association with neoliberalism. The rising political Right has been much more successful than the Left at exploiting this discontent, despite simultaneously deepening many aspects of neoliberalism once in power. At the same time, right-wing movements have proactively used social policy as a political tool to fashion the social order along lines deemed amenable for their interests and ideologies, expressed along nationalist, racialized, ethnicized, nativist, religious, patriarchal or other lines, and to innovate practices of segregation, exclusion and subordination. While these synergies of neoliberal and right-wing populism are observed globally, they need to be carefully and differentially interpreted from the perspective of late industrializing (or late welfare state) peripheral countries. Nonetheless, common themes occurring across both centres and peripheries, as identified by the invited contributions to this Debate section, include exclusionary identity politics, hierarchical and subordinating inclusions, and patriarchal familialism. In this context, segregationism is an ominous possibility of post-neoliberal social policy.     

China's Emerging Neoliberal Urbanism: Perspectives from Urban Redevelopment

Abstract: China's urbanization is undergoing profound neoliberal shifts, within which urban redevelopment has emerged in the forefront of neoliberalization. This study aims to understand China's emerging neoliberal urbanism by examining the association between urban redevelopment and neoliberalism. Rather than a deliberate design, neoliberalization in China is a response to multiple difficulties/crises and the desire for rapid development. The neoliberalization process is full of controversies and inconsistencies, which involve conflicts between neoliberal practices and social resistance, and tensions between central and local states. Nevertheless, China's neoliberal urbanism has a responsive and resilient system to cope with the contradictions and imbalances inherent in neoliberalism. Meanwhile, neoliberal urbanism is more tangible at the sub‐national scale, since the local state can most effectively assist neoliberal experiments and manage crises. This study not only contributes to the understanding of China's neoliberal urbanism, but also has multiple implications for neoliberalism studies in general. First, in examining the interrelationship between the state and market, it is the actual effect of legitimizing and facilitating market operation rather than the presence (or absence) of the state that matters. Second, a new nexus of governance has formed in the neoliberalization process. Not only the nation state but also the local state is of great significance in assisting and managing neoliberal projects. Third, this study further validates the importance and necessity of scrutinizing neoliberal practices, in particular the controversies and inconsistencies within the neoliberalization process.     

The Devil is in the (Bio)diversity: Private Sector “Engagement” and the Restructuring of Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract: Intensified relations between biodiversity conservation organizations and private‐sector actors are analyzed through a historical perspective that positions biodiversity conservation as an organized political project. Within this view the organizational dimensions of conservation exist as coordinated agreement and action among a variety of actors that take shape within radically asymmetrical power relations. This paper traces the privileged position of “business” in aligning concepts of sustainable development and ecological modernization within the emerging institutional context of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Global Environment Facility in ways that help to secure continued access to “nature as capital”, and create the institutional conditions to shape the work of conservation organizations. The contemporary emergence of business as a major actor in shaping contemporary biodiversity conservation is explained in part by the organizational characteristics of modernist conservation that subordinates it to larger societal and political projects such as neoliberal capitalism.