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The concept of neo-liberalism has become an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the twenty-first century

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Citation for published version (APA): Venkatesan, S., Laidlaw, J., Eriksen, T. H., Martin, K., & Mair, J. (2015). The concept of neo-liberalism has become an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the twenty-first century: 2012 debate of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(4), 911. Published in: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

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Download date:09. Oct. 2021 Debate:‘Theconceptof has become an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the twenty-first century’*

Soumhya Venkatesan: of the individual and aspirations thereof. Herein lies introduction the moral position taken up by the opposition: if cannot or do not recognize the This debate focuses on neoliberalism, a term whose inequalities perpetrated in and by the new increasing prominence in global public and political configurations of that favour marketization discourses has been reflected in proliferating academic and the retreat of the state, we are letting down the interest, within and beyond . The idea for people with whom we work, instead quibbling about the motion came from a remark about the increasingly the exact meanings of words and indulging in a kind of common appearance of the words ‘neoliberal’ and ‘Bongo-Bongoism’. For the proposition, however, ‘neoliberalism’ in published works, conference papers, suggesting that neoliberalism is at the bottom of the and student writings in recent years, and a general various ills besetting the poor and marginalized around disquiet about both the moral valences of such usages the does violence to the particular histories and and their explanatory . As Tejaswini Ganti (2014) structural and life conditions of particular places and notes, since 2005 both terms have become near peoples. If we already ‘know’ that the problem is ubiquitous in anthropological publishing, neoliberalism, they argue, then we do not delve notwithstanding criticisms that they are insufficiently ethnographically and deeply into what might be going theorized and obscure understanding even as they on in any given location, how things have changed, mightilluminatesomekeyglobaltrends.Aswillbe how people perceive they have changed, and their seen, this is one of the points that the proponents of the expectations and aspirations. In a related vein, as motion pick up on. The opponents of the motion argue Martin argues, when our informants are using the that there is a pattern to the ways in which relations terms ‘neoliberal’ and ‘neoliberalism’, surely it behoves between states, corporations, and the public are being us to do so as well. At stake here, I would suggest, is the modified around the world and that this pattern can be usage of the same concepts by both anthropologists described as neoliberal. The concomitant changes and our informants and the subsequent need to clarify adversely affect not only various groups of people, our respective usages. Perhaps predictably, given how especially those already marginalized, but also notions the opposition laid out its case, a large part of the general discussion centres on the place of political *The following discussion developed from a debate held convictions and what the role of the is on the motion: ‘The concept of neoliberalism has become or should be – description and analysis and/or an obstacle to the anthropological understanding of the activism. At times, it almost seemed like querying the twenty-first century’, held at the 2012 meeting of the Group use of the terms in question implied a leaning towards, for Debates in Anthropological Theory (GDAT) at the if not actually occupying, a right-wing position. I will University of Manchester. The debate was organized and leave it to the reader to examine the different positions edited for publication by Soumhya Venkatesan. A full put forward in the debate and make up his/her mind transcription of the debate is hosted on the JRAI website: http://www.jrai.net; a full podcast of the debate can be about the validity and utility of ‘neoliberalism’ as a heard at the Talking Anthropology website: concept in anthropological usage. The presentations http://www.talkinganthropology.com/2013/01 below and discussions certainly make for lively and /18/ta45-gdat1-neoliberalism/#t=2:49:40.219. thought-provoking reading.

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REFERENCE case for a teleology to be valid, might have been Ganti, T. 2014. Neoliberalism. Annual Review of specified, and these might have been agreed upon and Anthropology 43, 89-104. generally adhered to in the discipline. Instead, the category of function became a catch-all term for any kind of connection or relation between any kind of James Laidlaw: proposing the phenomena. Before long it signalled the vague idea that motion everything is connected somehow or other to everything else, and pretty soon that degenerated into the fatuous A slur for all seasons suggestion that the fact that everything is connected to The 2012 American Anthropological Association everything else is itself an explanation for each thing in meeting included something north of 150 papers with particular. Now that could only have been true, of the words ‘neoliberal’ or ‘neoliberalism’ in their titles. course, if one assumed a whole set of conditions, which If you survey these titles, it rapidly becomes apparent one can summarize with the notion of some kind of that – according to the body of anthropologists writing historical equilibrium state. And that, people fairly today – there is pretty well nothing and no place on soon realized, was not in place. As this became earth not encompassed by this phenomenon. Among recognized, the paradigm began to be discredited and these papers one finds neoliberalism deployed as an abandoned. The pity is that it has left a good deal of explanation for why middle-class people shop at excellent research locked into a flawed explanatory farmers’ markets in the United States; for the form of framework. the introduction of environmental regulation, and Forsometimenowitseemstomethat resistance to the introduction of environmental neoliberalism has been headed in the same meaningless regulation,inplacesasvariedasKenyaandChile;for direction. And once this goes a certain distance (which the imposition of heritage regulation, and resistance to I think it undoubtedly has in this case), you can’t put the imposition of heritage regulation, in places such as the genie back in the bottle. Here we have to remember India and Colombia; and for Islamist calls for the some basic facts about how language works: I mean the re-establishment of a Caliphate, and liberal opposition basic Wittgensteinean point that the meaning of a word to Islamism, just about anywhere you might care to is its use. Once its use becomes established, that is its look. meaning. Prescriptive definition just doesn’t work. So Neoliberalism also apparently explains changing even if we now come up with a brilliantly concise patterns of parenting in the Caribbean, the sale of fake definition of how we should use ‘neoliberalism’ it is, branded headscarves in various places where Islamism I’m afraid, already too late for this word to be a useful is on the rise, Malay marginalization in Singapore, term in anthropological analysis. That boat has sailed, I anti-homosexual legislation in Uganda, and suggest. educational policy in Morocco. The words get dropped Just look how many things the term has come into titles, in particular in the adjectival form, so that, routinely to mean, and therefore how much you’d have you will have noticed, nothing ever happens anymore to arrest and reverse if you wanted to establish a clear in Mexico, it only ever happens in neoliberal Mexico... meaning for it. There are, to begin with, two or Turkey or India, and so on. I was recently sent an incompatible, big ideas about neoliberalism as a huge abstract of a paper where something or other was going great system. You have the idea of it as a structural on in neoliberal Syria, which I thought was ‘stretching system – this is the meaning that Ferguson (2010), I theenvelope’quiteabit.Itcanonlybeamatteroftime think, nicely summarized as ‘a sloppy synonym for before I see one set in neoliberal North Korea. I’m capitalism itself’ – the notion of neoliberalism as a thinking of offering a prize for the person who gets that pervasive abstract causal force that comes along and into print first. assimilates local ways of life. Collier (2012)nicely So, apparently, everywhere, everything is describesWacquant’s(2012) version of this theory as neoliberal. Obviously this is pretty hopeless. Any ‘neoliberalism as big leviathan’. And then there is the concept or theory that purports to explain everything equally extensive all-encompassing global system, but can only be explaining nothing. We’ve seen this happen one not of structural uniformity but rather of an before, of course, many times over. To give you just one infinite malleability, whose point is that it isn’t a system example, back in the period when structural at all. This is the version of neoliberalism that we get functionalism was becoming established as a paradigm, from Aiwa Ong (2006) – a system defined by the fact the concept of function might have been properly that its parts are not systematically related. This is defined. The and limits of the organic analogy nicely summarized by Muehlebach in her recent book might have been established, set out, and agreed upon; The moral neoliberal with the sentence ‘Neoliberalism is and, similarly, that of the mechanical analogy might a force’ – just notice that, it’s a force here – ‘that can have been delineated. The conditions necessary for containitsownnegation’(2012: 25). Initially that functional explanation, in terms of what has to be the sounds intriguing, until you notice that the idea of a

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015 Debate 913 self-negating force is not only logically confused but mid-twentieth century – Mises (1949), Hayek (1960), also empirically quite un-falsifiable: a handy tool for Friedman (1962), Buchanan and Tullock (1962), and so attributing a virtually unlimited range of bad states of forth – and use the term ‘neoliberalism’ to refer affairs in the world to the same undefined cause. specifically and exclusively to their ideas, views, and Cognitively empty, it has the merely rhetorical function proposals. Here at least we would be in the presence of of signalling the author’s political affiliation and moral something it would not be inaccurate to call an ‘ism’, disapproval of any unhappy situation whatsoever, and although, as ever with schools of thought, its of implying that the latter vindicates the former. boundaries would be open to dispute, and so forth. Now we could reject both these ideas of a global This is the problem that Collier explores in his book system, and try to pick on something a little bit more Post-Soviet social (2011), where he makes the point that specific to be what we mean by neoliberalism. For one of the things these particular authors had in instance, we could think of it as a ‘clique’ of ideologues common was that their formulation of liberalism was and politicians carrying out a cunning conspiracy to specifically a response, as classical liberalism from advance class (the Harvey [2005] version) or Locke to Mill had not been, to mid-twentieth-century we could use it to mean any policies of deregulation, socialism. This is undoubdtedly the most intellectually marketization, and so forth, any active government coherent exercise I’ve come across in the literature, and pursuit of the extension of markets. The trouble with follows Foucault (2008) at least, as much of the this last one, of course, is that this is one of the things literature that cites him extensively does not, in actually that liberalism has been about doing (at least reading these texts with some attention. But if you do intermittently) for a very long time, long before the this, if you take this as your project, two things follow. word ‘neoliberalism’ was invented. That was indeed, I First, you discover that much of what I’ve mentioned thought, one of Lenin’s points (Lenin 2010 [1916]). above, and what is referred to in the normal Now no doubt both these phenomena – conspiracies anthropological lexicon of neoliberalism – processes of and the liberal advocacy of markets – exist, but they are audit, and so forth – would have been anathema to much more limited than the nebulous behemoth that those authors, and therefore if we were to take the anthropologists have come to dub ‘neoliberalism’. writings of those authors as definitional of Or we could speak instead of a particular set of neoliberalism, anthropologists would have to unlearn techniques, devices, modes of rationalization, virtually everything they associate with the term. That paradigmatic modes of audit, and so forth. This is the might not be a bad thing, but it’s not going to happen. formulation you get in Rose (1999), Ong (2006), and The second thing you discover is that if this is the others. And the point about these techniques, in these meaning of the term, then it renders the ‘neo’ in accounts, is that they’re particularly far-reaching neoliberalism basically otiose. Hayek, for instance, says because they are used by power, but also get assimilated explicitly at the beginning of The constitution of liberty and used against it. So whatever’s going on, you can (1949) that his project is to restate and reformulate always detect them in operation. But we should note classical liberal principles for the era in which he was two things about these techniques. First of all, they writing, specifically in answer to all those good and have no necessary connection with ideology or well-intentioned people he identifies as socialists. So practice–apointpowerfullydemonstratedbyKipnis the retrospective use of the ‘neo’ label does not tell us (2007; 2008) with respect to China. And secondly, they anything that it did not say on the first time round have no necessary relation either to the promotion of for these particular theorists. Liberalism, of course, is a the interests of the rich or to the undermining of the historical phenomenon. It will change and be interests of the poor – as Ferguson (2010) has also reformulated through time: think of the differences neatly pointed out for Africa. betweenJohnLocke,JohnStuartMill,T.H.Green, Alternatively, we can speak of neoliberalism as the . Hayek is no more ‘neo’ than any fostering of some sort of self-actualizing subject, where of those other authors. subjects are encouraged to see themselves as a project But all of this is pointless speculation anyway. None or an enterprise – again Ong (2006) also uses this. But of these ways of redefining or pinning down the the problem with this characterization and the reason meaning of ‘neoliberalism’ is going to happen. It is Ong finds it so widespread in Asia is, of course, because hopeless to think you could pick any one of these it’s been around a long, long time. The idea of taking meanings and tell people they are not allowed to use the self as a project of self-discovery in the West goes the word ‘neoliberalism’ for any other than the one back at least to Stoicism and has been there in Asia in you’ve picked. In practice, if you look at those Buddhism and Confucianism for centuries. The use of American Anthropological Association papers and at some market idiom for describing that comes and goes the major journals over the past ten years or so, and is not essential to it. anthropological usage is converging on the version One last possibility is that we could go back to a set popularized I suppose most by Ong, where it means of texts, the writings of some specific thinkers of the roughly ‘any or all of the above, as applicable’ and,

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crucially, ‘everything I don’t like about the world’. Jon Rose, N. 1999. Powers of freedom: reframing political Mair will say a bit more about this later. thought. Cambridge: University Press. In one sense, therefore, I am tempted at this point Wacquant, L. 2012. Three steps to a historical to say, ‘we rest our case’. This is all we need to carry the anthropology of actually existing neoliberalism. motion: if we demonstrate that the term is so baggy 20, 66-79. and unclear that it means almost nothing, except, of course, the patently false idea that markets in the Andes Thomas Hylland Eriksen: and handbags in Shanghai are all effects of the same big bad thing. The right thing to do, I suggest, would be to opposing the motion drop the term ‘neoliberalism’ entirely, rejecting The neoliberal person therefore the spurious idea that we already know how Suddenly, the word seemed to be everywhere, which is all these things are connected – these things being audit reason good enough to treat it with caution. Otherwise , self-improvement, deregulation, and so forth – different events, crises, and changes taking place across and instead call these various things what they are and the planet were now blamed on neoliberalism. Is it actually inquire into if and how they might be merely, as (2002) seemed to suggest, a connected in different places and different new word for what we used to call late capitalism? (A circumstances. The idea of the big bad package, that conceptIneverwarmedto.Lateforwhat?)Orarewe they all hang together as ‘neoliberalism’, could only be talking about a new turn on the machinery of an obstacle to that endeavour. , where complicated financial instruments, new public management, unreformed REFERENCES , and a strong version of individualism Buchanan, J.M. & G. Tullock 1962. The calculus of rule the global waves? Moreover, is the concept helpful consent: logical foundations of constitutional in comparative anthropological research, or does it, democracy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. owing to its ubiquity and general fuzziness, obscure Collier, S.J. 2011. Post-Soviet social: neoliberalism, more than it reveals? social modernity, biopolitics. Princeton: University It is doubtless true that neoliberalism has become Press. ‘something of a “rascal concept” – promiscuously ——— 2012. Neoliberalism as big leviathan, or . . . ? pervasive, yet inconsistently defined, empirically A response to Wacquant. Social Anthropology 20, imprecise and frequently contested’ (Brenner, Peck & 186-95. Theodore 2010: 184, original emphasis). It needs an Ferguson,J.2010. The uses of neoliberalism. Antipode operational definition, a credible genealogy, and 41, 16-84. convincing empirical justification. It is far from Foucault, M. 2008. The birth of biopolitics: lectures at obvious that we can meaningfully use the concept of the Coll`egedeFrance1978–1979.NewYork:Palgrave neoliberalism to analyse shifts in state policy towards Macmillan. Dalits in India, changes in Sami ethnopolitics in Friedman, M. 1962. Capitalism and freedom.Chicago: northern Scandinavia, new public management in University Press. hospitals and universities across the North Atlantic, Harvey, D. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. and local responses to the crisis in Southern Oxford: University Press. Europe. There may be good reasons why the Hayek, F.A. 1960. The constitution of liberty.Chicago: particularistic instincts embedded in the intellectual University Press. habitus of social anthropologists kick in when a new Kipnis, A. 2007. Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse universal concept is proposed. Yet at the same time, and tropes of neoliberalism in the People’s Republic neoliberalism affects life- across the planet, and of China. Journal of the Royal Anthropological we cannot afford to ignore this for the sake of a Institute (N.S.) 13, 383-400. programmatic particularism or because it is being ——— 2008. Audit : neoliberal overused. The concept, and the diverse phenomena to governmentality, socialist legacy, or of which it refers, also sit well with at least two sets of governing? American Ethnologist 35, 275-89. questions which have been constitutive of modern Lenin, V.I. 2010 [1916]. Imperialism: the highest stage of social anthropology, namely the comparative approach capitalism. London: Penguin. to personhood and the relationship between Mises, L. von 1949. action: A treatise on reciprocity and market utilitarianism. . Chicago: University Press. Before moving on, a short genealogy of the concept Muehlebach, A. 2012. The moral neoliberal: welfare may be useful, and I hope it will convince you of its and citizenship in Italy. Chicago: University Press. continued and indeed acute relevance for an Ong, A. 2006. Neoliberalism as exception: mutations in anthropology of the contemporary world. citizenship and sovereignty. Durham, N.C.: Duke The origin of neoliberalism is generally traced to University Press. and his successors, notably Milton

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Friedman, whose finest moment may have been in the redistribution, is growing in intensity with each turn early 1980s with the implementation of this economic on the wheel of global deregulation. The Occupy ideology in the United States and the United Kingdom. movement shows this opposition well. More global in However, there is an immediate precursor which scale and diverse in content, participants in World should be interesting for anthropologists. Hayek’s Social Forums show that discontent with disembedded teacher in Vienna, Ludwig von Mises, was an global capitalism and the spread of market principles enthusiastic libertarian, an enemy of socialism in all its into life-worlds goes well beyond the North Atlantic forms, and a believer in deregulation of markets. world and concerns a perceived threat against not only Mises’s most important critic was the economic economic self-sufficiency but entire ways of life. The historian , whose The great transformation projects of groups such as Brazilian indigenous almost immediately caught the attention of organizations, Spanish unions, and Japanese anthropologists upon its publication in 1944.Thisbook greens differ almost as much as their respective in fact was the main source of inspiration for the life-worlds, but the target of their discontent is the subsequent ‘great debate’ in same, namely global neoliberalism. between substantivists and formalists. And the debate Polanyi turned the libertarian argument on its head continues to this day, in new guises, across the field of by arguing that laissez-faire did not emerge sui generis economic anthropology. in the absence of state interventions, but that it relied, The great transformation begins on a dramatic note contrary to popular , on political protection from as the author states, as a matter of fact, that societal opposition. While this has been confirmed ‘Nineteenth-century civilization has collapsed’ (Polanyi time and again – think about the widespread resistance 1944: 3). What he has in mind is the ultimate outcome to structural adjustment programmes in the global of nineteenth-century industrialization and South – this insight forms the basis for much of the , whereby the market principle became anthropological engagement with neoliberalism. The predominant and pervasive in Western . In ways in which people, groups, or communities try to what is virtually an avant la lettre criticism of protect themselves against the changes imposed by neoliberalism, Polanyi argues that the values and state-implemented marketization are wide-ranging, practices of sociality, based on reciprocity and studied by anthropologists and comparable because solidarity, are more fundamental to human existence they are responses to the same kind of process, namely than the disembedding and ultimately dehumanizing that which made the American journalist Thomas market principle. He predicts that they will prevail in Friedman exclaim, a few years ago, that the world had the long term. A non-Marxist socialist, Polanyi argued become flat (Friedman 2005). (To which John Gray against the commodification of labour and more responded, in his eloquent review [Gray 2005], that as a generally the limited vision of . matter of fact, the world remained round and bumpy.) His main target was Mises, the father of neoliberalism. We are talking here about a tension between the Polanyi was not opposed to the market principle as culturally specific, but universally human qualities of such, and was well aware of the existence of functioning sociality as opposed to the disembedding forces of the markets in non-capitalist societies. What he objected to global market. was its spread into social domains which should be Neoliberalism is not just a handy analytical device governed by principles of sociality. Just as Gemeinschaft in research on global capitalism and local responses to is ontologically prior to Gesellschaft in Tonnies’s¨ it; it is not merely a new version of what we used to call analysis of the transition to urban, industrial , a late capitalism or an extension of the market versus ‘human ’ based on reciprocity and society tension. By positing and actively encouraging a redistribution (Hart, Laville & Cattani 2010)is particular view of the person as a disembedded, fundamentaltosociallife,andpeoplelivingin goal-rational individual, the ideology of neoliberalism communities everywhere will therefore resist market affects personhood and self-understanding. Back in the dominance. 1980s, European politicians could still praise The assumption that society would strike back non-European immigrants for looking after their against artificial and alienating market dominance families so well and representing a collective ideology seemed to come true in the North Atlantic world after of sharing and caring. Had they said similar things the war. This lasted until the implementation of a today, they would immediately have been accused of market ideology reminiscent of nineteenth-century promoting irresponsible and divisive multiculturalism, libertarianism, but fuelled by the increasing enforced marriages, and segregation. The globalization of the world economy. The spirit of the heroes of contemporary tales of integration are no nineteenth century had returned with a vengeance, in a longer the self-sacrificing Hindu mothers, but their global setting. At the same time, Polanyi’s ‘double daughters who bravely oppose tradition in order to movement’ between the market principle and the more fashion themselves into free, autonomous fundamental values of sociality, that is, reciprocity and agents.

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When, more than twenty years ago, I began to from indigenous groups reject the logic of the market teach courses on nationalism, I could still speak about and the commercialization of their cultural identity; railways and postal services as nation-building devices but if they do so, they have to do it actively as a form of strengthening anonymous and abstract solidarity by resistance, surrounded by an encroaching sea of moulding persons into citizens. Such examples today neoliberal thinking. have an antiquarian ring to them, as citizens have been The shift from identity politics to tourism and redefined as customers and consumers by their other commercial activities is just one example. Today, governments and NGOs. This shift from political to it would be hard to come across a social movement, a consumerist identity has been theorized fairly political project, or an economic process anywhere in extensively, and from around the world the world which does not relate itself to neoliberalist indicate the significance of this change. For now, I shall ideas, whether condoning or opposing them. A current limit myself to showing how an understanding of case is the recent shift in the Indian state’s approach to neoliberalism is necessary in order to make sense of upwards social mobility among Dalits, where contemporary changes in the forms of collective individual mobility is now given priority under the identification. label of ‘inclusive growth’ (Dag Erik Berg, pers. comm., The Sami of northern Scandinavia have been 12 November 2012), as opposed to the collective obliged to relate to the state and Christian missions for schemes – reservation, or affirmative action – more than two centuries, and since the Second World dominating in the past. Again, when the current War, their organizations have worked politically to leadership of Bolivia declares the country promote their ethnic and cultural interests. This ‘post-neoliberal’, the very refutation of neoliberalism struggle has mainly involved claims to land, political indicates its pervasiveness, which incidentally has autonomy, and language rights. In recent years, affected Bolivian peasants, traders, slumdwellers, and however, there has been a perceptible shift in the civil servants alike through policies of deregulation, predominant Sami approaches to identity. Increasingly, structural adjustment, and marketization. the Sami territories are being marketed with a view to Let me be clear about this. Neoliberalism is not increasing tourism, and the market for Sami everywhere, and it is not a ‘universal acid’ making handicrafts has likewise grown steadily, especially in the other conceptualizations of contemporary societies ‘high’ designer end. One Sami woman, who now superfluous. As with any concept, one should be wary receives tourists in her home, serving traditional foods of misuse and overuse. For one thing, I am not entirely and entertaining the visitors with Sami tales and myths, convinced by the idea that ‘occult ’, seen as explains that this activity brings her in contact with her mystical entities where can be created through a origins in ways that feel more authentic than political form of magic, should be seen as a consequence of activity would. Now, she says, people voluntarily pay to neoliberalism; and if the concept is used as a blanket hear her stories, to familiarize themselves with the Sami term, it will in the end conceal more than it reveals. Yet way of life and to eat Sami food. This in turn has made the term is more specific than, say, ‘capitalism’ or it necessary for herself to relearn her half-forgotten ‘modernity’, while at the same time being a genuinely heritage. She contrasts her commercial venture with comparative concept enabling comparison between standard identity politics, which in her view represents contexts which would otherwise only with great a more negative approach, where the state or county difficulty speak meaningfully to one another. Already would eventually give in to pressure, not because they in 1964,inOld societies, new states,CliffordGeertz see the intrinsic of Sami culture, but because they pointed out that few anthropologists today, regardless feel they have to. At the same time, this kind of of their field-sites, could entirely avoid coming across revitalization is individualized, unpolitical, and framed expressions of nationalism. Today, this may doubtless by a narrative of self-realization and personal be said about neoliberalism: its effects are resisted or achievement. embraced, enthused over or worried about, and the Attempts among indigenous peoples around the neoliberal turn in the world economy and hegemonic world, from Siberia and the Pacific to the Americas and ideological constructions brings about changes in South Africa, to achieve copyright for their immaterial many realms, often without being acknowledged. Let cultural products and handicraft techniques, in order us keep in mind that Clifford was not exactly a to prevent piracy and economic loss, have similarly hardcore universalist; quite the contrary, but even the been documented by anthropologists in recent years. cultural relativist Geertz recognized a useful dimension Whereas this kind of identity work can be effective in of comparison when he saw it. strengthening collective pride and boosting self-esteem To sum up: neoliberalism is a peculiar, historically within the group in question, it can also be specific, kind of globalized financial capitalism controversial, precisely because it moves the project of operating in real time, ideologically guiding not just cultural identity in an individualized, goal-rational, markets but also political institutions and transnational and commercialized direction. Many spokespersons NGOs, and at the same time representing a particular

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015 Debate 917 view of personhood, positing the ‘responsible, is justified, is a spurious and self-defeating reason for bounded, autonomous, maximizing individual’, who is keeping alive a concept that has failed analytically. simultaneously a moral agent and a rational person, James’s argument should be enough to settle the but fully accountable for his or her actions. In order to issue. However, you may be thinking that, analytical understand the tensions surrounding contemporary concerns notwithstanding, this kind of moral personhood across the world, and to connect them to commitment in the face of the evidence is harmless – broader economic and political processes, we need the perhaps even admirable. Maybe you’re thinking that it’s concept of neoliberalism. It mediates between the right to stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with person and the system, the formal and the informal, well-meaning anthropologists of neoliberalism, even if the community and transnationally connected world their key concept is hopelessly confused. If that’s what society; and it encourages an anthropology which is you’re thinking, then my speech is for you. truly globally comparative while remaining committed The moral commitments entailed by the to the study of the present – an anthropology enabling anthropological use of the neoliberalism concept are us to study a world divided by a shared destiny. themselves a source of great obscurity. The fact that the By opposing the motion, I have argued that term can be and is applied to almost any situation, as neoliberalism appears not only as an economic practice James has shown, means that its proponents can draw or ideology, or as a particular form of governmentality little in the way of content from ethnographic such as New Public Management – both these aspects investigation: every case study further undermines the have been thoroughly described by anthropologists and effort to arrive at general characteristics empirically. other social scientists working in otherwise diverse However, the moral outrage that sustains the concept is parts of the world. Rather, a reconceptualization of the based on what linguists would call an implicit ‘schema’: person accompanying this shift places neoliberalism at a stereotypical narrative and set of oppositions and the very core of the anthropological endeavour, namely homologies. You may prefer to call it a discourse. And with the study of the social person. while the category of neoliberalism is effectively empty, the schema with which it is associated is heavy with moral and teleological assumptions deeply rooted in Western and academic common sense. REFERENCES Invoking the neoliberalism concept thus obscures Brenner, N., J. Peck & N. Theodore 2010.Variegated anthropological understanding in two ways that are neoliberalization: geographies, modalities, pathways. additional to the problems that James has already Global Networks 10, 182-222. enunciated. Friedman, T. 2005. The world is flat: a brief history of First, it has the effect of pre-emptively overwriting the globalized world in the twenty-first century. the moral views of our informants with this extraneous London: Allen Lane. commonsensical narrative. This is the sort of Geertz, C. (ed.) 1964. Old societies, new states: the quest substitution that anthropology was invented to undo, for modernity in Asia and Africa.NewYork:Free not to perpetuate. This is a formal objection: Press. neoliberalism-ism to poor . Gray,J.2005. The world is round. New York Review of Second, by wedding us to what is a rather Books, 18 December. self-defeating ethics in which the only moral victory is Hart, K., J.-L. Laville & A. D. Cattani (eds) 2010. a Pyrrhic one, the use of the concept of neoliberalism The human economy. Cambridge: Polity. prevents anthropologists from exploring the many Polanyi, K. 1944. The great transformation: the political other possible moral/economic settlements that we and economic origins of our time.Boston:Beacon. already know are out there in the ethical ecosystem. Sahlins,M.2002. Waiting for Foucault, still.Chicago: This is a substantive objection: neoliberalism-ism Prickly Pear. prevents us from taking alternative values seriously as ‘candidate universals’, to borrow a term from Joel Jonathan Mair: proposing the Robbins (2010). motion The substance of the schema The concept of neoliberalism as a So what is the content of the schema? I hardly need to moral schema spell it out – you know it already. It is based on a James Laidlaw suggested that one of the reasons division of the world into two spheres, the very division anthropologists continue to use the concept of that Thomas Hylland Eriksen invoked when he spoke neoliberalism, despite its obvious problems, is that they of the world of sociality and the ‘life-world’, and think using it is taking a moral stand against all that’s distinguished that from the world of the market. One wrong with the modern world. He also provided plenty sphere is suffused with morality. It is bound up with of causes to think that moral indignation, even when it customary obligations between people who are defined

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by their relationships to each other and to a community ‘’ were not just as compromised as defined by its relationship to a local place. The other ‘neoliberalism’, one might want to deploy it here.1 )The sphere is dominated by instrumental reason, profit use of the concept of neoliberalism in anthropological maximization, and efficacy. In this sphere, people count writing has been little more than an excuse to rehearse not because of their relationships, but as individuals, as this old and essentially parochial argument, in a way owners, consumers, entrepreneurs. In this world, local that appears to mobilize ethnographic evidence but in loyalties count for nothing: trans-local networks rule. fact precludes the possibility of learning anything new. According to the schema, the two spheres coexist, and aspects of both have been present for the whole of the modern period, at least. The forces of , The schema in use industry, and capitalism mean that the moral sphere To see what I mean, consider a typical example of the has long been in decline. This transformation genre: Dan Smyer Yu’s¨ ‘Living Buddhas, netizens, and continues, but the moral sphere is more endangered the of religious freedom’ (2008), published in a than ever because of the conspiratorial forces of key text in the anthropology of neoliberalism, Li Zhang neoliberalism. This is why the ‘contemporary moment’ and Aihwa Ong’s edited collection on China. I have is thought to be special – ‘epochal’ is the term of art. chosen this piece because it deals with a subject of And it is why some think that a special form of which I have some experience, the revival of Tibetan anthropology, the anthropology of neoliberalism, is Buddhism among non-Tibetans in China, but the logic required to understand what is happening. of the neoliberalism bandwagon means that all contributions to the ethnography of neoliberalism are In a much-cited article, ‘Neoliberal newspeak: notes on condemned to follow a similar pattern. the new planetary vulgate’, Bourdieu and Wacquant I want to draw your attention to three steps in Yu’s¨ (2001) condemn the vocabulary of the neoliberal argument. technocracy. Its categories, they say, purport to be Step (1) is to identify the object of study as an universal, but they are actually derived from the local instance of neoliberalism. This is no straightforward experience and prejudices of US elites. The categories matter, because no case of neoliberalism is like any are related in such a way that the use of one reinforces other. Contemporary China in particular, Yu¨ notes, is the others, and the discourse as a whole has the power not a ‘classic’ case of neoliberalism (2008: 198). to impose a particular normative view of the world However, the capaciousness of the neoliberalism wherever it is deployed. They break the discourse down concept means that if one looks for the signs of into a number of key oppositions, unified by their neoliberalism, one is sure to find them. relation to the narrative of globalization. Yufindsachainofclues:TibetanBuddhistsin¨ Bourdieu and Wacquant argue that this discourse is China use electronic networks, including the Internet. shaping the world in its image. Subsequent scholarship These networks are dependent on the infrastructure gives us reason to doubt the extent to which this planned by the Chinese government. The Chinese discourse has really taken over (see, e.g., Goldstein government is ‘an agent of global neoliberal practices’. 2012;Kipnis2007; 2008;Nonini2008). However, the On the basis of this game of consequences, he schema they elaborate is real enough. And it is no concludes that his topic ‘appears to be a triumph of coincidence that it bears a striking resemblance to the worldwide neoliberalism’ (2008: 198). schema that I have argued underlies the Everything hangs on this step, because however anthropological critique of neoliberalism. The tenuous the identification, once it is made, the whole discourse of academic critics of neoliberalism is explanatory apparatus of the moral schema can be nothing but the discourse of the academic proponents droppedintoplace.ThisisStep(2). of neoliberalism – but with the signs reversed. The characters are classified according to whether Neither side invented the categories it works with. they lie on this side or that of the epochal divide This disagreement is simply the latest battle in a long, between moral life and economic life. In this case, long war in Western thought about the proper balance traditional, local Tibetan communities and their of the moral and the instrumental spheres of life. One relationships with authentic tulkus are contrasted with side in this argument has always argued that the sphere a transnational network of spiritually empty Han of economic should be carefully constrained consumerists, who try to buy spirituality on the market in order to preserve moral life from its taint. The other through relationships with ersatz Living Buddhas. side has always argued that more amoral selfishness in The offerings made by these Buddhists often take the short term will produce the optimum outcome for the form of large sums of cash that destroy spirituality all in the end and is therefore, only apparently by externalizing it (2008: 201). In contrast, the offerings paradoxically, the more moral course of action. What made by traditional Tibetan Buddhists (all scoops of both sides take for granted is the fundamental division yak and sheepskins, he says, as if no one in the of the moral from the instrumental. (If the concept of history of Tibetan Buddhism ever endowed a

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015 Debate 919 monastery or commissioned an expensive set of For example, Yu¨ interprets the senior lamas’ scriptures) sustained ‘relationships of reciprocal complaints about fake Living Buddhas as an dependence’ (2008: 210-11). anti-neoliberal abhorrence of contamination of the Once the lines have been drawn, Step (3)isto spiritual by the economic. But in the quotations he assimilate the actors’ experiences and voices to the provides they say nothing of the sort. They express a master narrative. very long-standing concern in Tibetan Buddhism Evidence of enthusiasm or complicity in any aspect about the problem of impostors motivated by greed, of what has already been identified as neoliberalism is but nothing at all about the impropriety of taken as evidence of support for the dominance of the worshipping with large sums of cash (2008: 202). instrumental sphere in general. Since we know that And when Yu¨ speaks of the fear of ‘spiritual crisis’, neoliberal transformations are inimical to actors’ he glibly assimilates this to what he takes to be a authentic interests as moral beings, there is no universal human concern about the threat that need to ask why they might value the goals they economic development poses to spiritual life, as the pursue; they are dupes of forces beyond their instrumental sphere encroaches on the moral. comprehension. But this is not the problematic around which Thus Yu¨ explains that the Han Buddhists’ apparent debates among Chinese intellectuals about spirit and enthusiasm for this or that Living Buddha is stimulated matter are organized. by the commercialism of Living Buddhas through the In the 1980s, following the end of the Cultural trans-local electronic networks. It is no different from Revolution and the introduction of the Reform Policy, other consumers’ for brands such as Nike Chinese social scientists and Party theorists argued and Motorola (2008: 211). No doubt the devotees would about the relationship between ‘material civilization’ think it quite different, but no matter, they do not and ‘spiritual civilization’. Previously the government understand. In the only passage in which he pauses to had been engaged in planned social and economic consider their views, Yu¨ comments dismissively that, development, but from now on it would focus on the ‘In my participation in Tibetan Buddhist Dharma latter. The question was whether spiritual development events mediated by cyberspace, I noticed the obvious would follow on automatically from material gullibility of Chinese Buddhists’ (2008: 206). development, as orthodox Marxist historical On the other side, evidence of discontent about any materialism predicted, or if it required the same kind of aspect, be it ever so narrow, of what have been purposeful attention that the economy was receiving. identified as neoliberal transformations is taken, The potential danger was not that instrumentality and without further justification, as a rejection of all of the avarice would overcome morality, but that if moral phenomena that have been so identified. It is this logic improvement were neglected it would not keep pace that allowed Thomas Hylland Eriksen, in his speech, to with material development, so that material identify all resistance to structural adjustment development itself would become unsustainable and programmes as the reassertion of a single global ethic would collapse into instability. of sociality. There are interesting and important ethnographic This is how Yu¨ presents the complaints of two questions here. In fact, we know a lot about these things Tibetan Buddhist leaders, both of whom are worried already. There have been excellent anthropological and about fake Living Buddhas (2008: 202). He also enlists historical studies of the role of wealth and fortune in contemporary Chinese debates about the ‘spiritual Buddhist societies,2 and of the developing Chinese crisis’ of post-socialism as evidence of a local critique debates on spiritual civilization and personal quality.3 equivalent to his own (2008: 199). The effect of the concept of neoliberalism is to make us forget that we know about these things, because what In Yu’s¨ chapter, as in so much of the anthropology of we know cannot be accommodated under the simplistic neoliberalism, the moralized schema provides all the opposition of instrumental and moral spheres. categories, and attributes a positive or negative value to I have considered what happens to an them. Ethnographic exploration of how the people anthropological study of China and of Buddhism when involved classify and value their activities is rendered it is viewed through the prism of the concept of unnecessary. The argument boils down to a question of neoliberalism: anything distinctively Chinese or which people or processes we are supposed to be in Buddhist, anything ethnographic, is pushed out by the favour of: is religious revival in China resistance to morally propelled explanatory schema that goes along neoliberalism or just another aspect of it? with the use of the term. The point could be made in But the limited snippets of ethnography that Yu¨ relation to any ethnographic setting because it is a does provide illustrate how much more adventurous a problem not of local misinterpretation, but of the logic genuinely ethnographic approach – that is, one that of an overbearing anthropological metanarrative. That defers moral judgement for long enough to understand is not to say that there are no worthwhile ethnographic local ethical categories – could be. studies that use the concept of neoliberalism, but it

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does mean that they are successful in spite of its use, Keir Martin: opposing the motion not because of it. Taking neoliberalism seriously As we have heard, the case against ‘neoliberalism’ as a concept is all too often characterized by a claim that it NOTES acts as a kind of straitjacket imposed on non-Western 1 See the 2008 debate ‘Ontology is just another word peoples whose rich inner lives and cultural expressions for culture’ in Critique of Anthropology 30, 152-200. are reduced to mere symbolic representations of the 2 For a recent example that also deals with Tibetan underlying or true economic distresses that neoliberal Buddhism in contemporary China, though in this case policies bring in their wake. And of course, as we have among Tibetans, see da Col (2012). also just seen, anyone can cherry-pick examples that 3 For example, there is an excellent discussion of the seem to illustrate this danger. But, as we are surely all development of the spiritual civilization debate in aware, even the most useful concepts illuminate some Reform-era China in Bakken (2000), and aspects of social life only at the risk of obscuring other anthropologists have tackled the related notions of important features if they are applied too rigidly. Only population quality and personal quality (see Anagnost a fool would claim that everything of importance in 2004;andKipnis2006; 2007). cultural creations as diverse as therapy groups in Manhattan, sorcery in Southern Africa, or initiation into the tubuan cult of the Tolai people of New Guinea could be explained away with reference to neoliberalism. But wouldn’t it be equally foolish to REFERENCES imagine that every aspect of these and other cultural Anagnost, A. 2004. The corporeal politics of quality phenomena, such as the workings of financial markets (suzhi). Public Culture 16, 189-208. or the effects of deregulation and outsourcing on Bakken, B. 2000. The exemplary society: human working-class communities in Manchester, could be improvement, social control, and the dangers of explained away with reference to concepts such as modernity in China. Oxford: University Press. , , or dividuality? Isn’t it equally possible Bourdieu, P. & L. Wacquant 2001. Neoliberal to use these concepts in a manner that obscures issues newspeak: notes on the new planetary vulgate. of vital concern to the people with whom we work? Not Radical Philosophy 105, 1-6. everything in life can be reduced to an expression of the da Col, G. 2012. The elementary economies of Western-derived concept of neoliberalism, just as not Dechenwa life: fortune, vitality, and the mountain in everything in life can be particularly well explained Sino-Tibetan borderlands. Journal of Empirical with reference to the equally Western-derived concept Theology 56, 74-98. of ontological deixism, and nor should we expect it to Goldstein, D.M. 2012. Decolonializing ‘actually be. So what lies behind the obsession in some quarters existing neoliberalism’. Social Anthropology 20, with removing neoliberalism in particular from the 304-9. anthropological toolkit? One of anthropology’s most Kipnis, A. 2006. Suzhi: a keyword approach. The China valuable distinguishing features as a discipline has been Quarterly 186, 295-313. its commitment to taking seriously the lives and the ——— 2007. Neoliberalism reified: suzhi discourse and worldviews of the peoples with whom we work. At a tropes of neoliberalism in the People’s Republic of time when concerns are so widespread amongst billions China. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of people from New Guinea to New York over the social (N.S.) 13, 383-400. effects of the related trends that have come to be ——— 2008. Audit cultures: neoliberal characterized as neoliberalism, such as withdrawal of governmentality, socialist legacy, or technologies of state care, deregulation and privatization, and an governing? American Ethnologist 35, 275-89. aggressive encouragement of the spread of market Nonini, D.M. 2008. Is China becoming neoliberal? relations and individual property rights, doesn’t a Critique of Anthropology 28, 145-76. deliberate studied refusal to engage with these concerns Robbins,J.2010. Recognition, reciprocity, and justice: mark the starkest betrayal imaginable of that Melanesian reflections on the rights of relationships. fundamental pillar of the anthropological project? In Mirrors of justice: law and power in the post-Cold My own field research area of Papua New Guinea War era (eds) K.M. Clarke & M Goodale, 171-90. provides one of the archetypal destinations for such Cambridge: University Press. people within our profession who want to leave the Yu,¨ D.S. 2008. Living Buddhas, netizens and the price unpleasantness of politics and poverty behind and just of religious freedom. In Privatizing China: socialism get away from it all to immerse themselves in the from afar (eds)L.Zhang&A.Ong,197-213. Ithaca, refreshingly esoteric and radically other. And in the N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Tolai area in which I conduct anthropological research,

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015 Debate 921 there is much material that could be gathered together when Melanesians are themselves concerned with such to present that picture: most men (though not all) still insufficiently exotic issues as falling or the undergo periods of seclusion in the bush to be initiated disintegration of state services. into the secrets of the ancestral tubuan cult; mortuary The protests against the in 2001 were rites in which shell-wealth or tabu is exchanged explicitly framed by many of their participants as being between clans paying off of blood and semen still a part of a global movement against neoliberal reforms. mark a fundamental feature of most (though not all) Although many of the Tolai I worked with would have Tolai’s ways of life and sense of being. If I had wished to been unfamiliar with the term, many others frequently spend a couple of years ripping quotes from their used it and railed against it. Like other Western-derived context and ignoring inconvenient truths, then I academic concepts, such as ‘culture’ or ‘the market’, it suppose that I too could have found enough material in was certainly a phrase that came up in conversations my field-notes to write a perfect ethnography of this and meetings at Matupit village, unlike other such type, describing the Tolai as exotic space-people concepts whose use allegedly demonstrates a greater inhabiting an entirely separate universe from my own. commitment to taking the native point of view But Papua New Guinea is also a country where the seriously, such as ‘perspectivism’ or ‘ontology’. Now, of effects of the political and economic trends that are course, the absence of these phrases as local emic terms now characterized as neoliberalism are abundantly should not be taken in and of itself as evidence of their apparent not only to Western political scientists and inapplicability, but again the question must be asked: anthropologists keen to impose their epistemological why should neoliberalism in particular be ruled out of straitjackets on their unwilling native victims, but also order by anthropologists committed to taking the to the allegedly unwilling and ontologically separate native point of view more seriously than any other indigenous victims of their epistemological anthropologists in the discipline’s history when it is imperialism. In the past twenty years, Papua New clear that it addresses central concerns of contemporary Guinea has seen all of the policies characteristic of the Tolai life? It is somehow suggested that in order to neoliberal era pressed upon it by more powerful focus on the aspects of Tolai life or cosmology that are neighbours such as Australia, or by international bodies radically different from our own, we need to avoid such such as the International Monetary Fund and the World concerns, as if even acknowledging them amounts to a Bank. Moves have been made to register customary denial that such radical difference is possible. Yet the land as a prelude to buying and selling it, state Tolai with whom I worked seemed to have no trouble industries have been privatized, increasing freedom has in asserting that they possessed a worldview that was in been given to foreign companies to extract natural many respects totally incommensurate with mine, resources, and the provision of state services has been whilst at the same time remaining profoundly drastically reduced in order to impose fiscal discipline. concerned by neoliberalism and its effects. If it was And all of this has had many of the same predictable possible for them to simultaneously hold a belief in the consequences as in other parts of the world in which necessity of conducting particular kinds of gift these policies have been pursued. Increasing numbers exchange in order to enter into relations with tubuan flock to squatter camps on the edge of major cities, a spirits alongside a belief that their lives were being gap has emerged between a small growing economic altered by political and economic changes that also elite and an increasingly impoverished grassroots that affected people in other parts of the world, then surely would have been unimaginable even a generation ago, it shouldn’t be beyond our capacity to take our and a cynical discontent with the institutions of informants seriously that we listen to both sides of that political rule marks a contrast with the heady optimism equation. Of course, they didn’t believe that the secret of independence thirty-odd years ago. Within two years preparations and ritual revelation of the tubuan at of the 1999 riots in Seattle that many in the West view mortuary ceremonies were somehow symbolic as the start of the current wave of protests against representations or critiques of neoliberalism. But neoliberal globalization, protests also rocked Papua neither did they believe that practising tubuan rites New Guinea as students demonstrated against somehow meant that these political and economic privatization and land registration and demanded that changes were irrelevant to their lives. the World Bank be kicked out of the country. In many Indeed, my Tolai friends had no difficulty in respects these were far more significant protests against claiming that whilst tubuan rituals and the circulation neoliberalism than the Seattle riots, leaving four dead, of tabu that underpinned it were part of a very real leading to the PNG Union Congress calling a world of spirits that stood in stark opposition to any general strike, and delaying land registration by several Western secular rationalist worldview, the way that years. But they are today largely forgotten not only by these phenomena operated at the start of the the Western media but also by many anthropologists, twenty-first century was simultaneously tied in with for whom taking seriously the worldviews of these global economic trends. For the Tolai this didn’t Melanesians does not extend to paying much attention have to be an either/or choice, even if some

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anthropologists seem to believe that being able to see neoliberal political and economic trends would be to that the same phenomenon has different aspects and deliberately ignore what was important to our potentialities when viewed from different angles should informants in order to preserve a preconceived picture be an intellectual leap too far for our indigenous of pure cultural or ontological alterity. informants. I remember on one occasion attending a The flow of tabu shells across the Pacific and the mortuary rite for a well-respected public servant, consequent trade of tabu as a cash can be marked by the mass exchange of tabu and the raising of seen as one example of the increasing international several clans’ tubuans that often marked these events. exchange of that were previously not traded on The man sat next to me was himself a former senior the market. It’s perhaps no coincidence that whereas public servant now fallen on hard times with an this trade was apparently unimaginable in the 1950s excellent and colourful English vocabulary. We sat and and 1960s, it swiftly emerged in the late 1990sand2000s discussed at length the various relationships between during the era of rapid economic liberalization. Of different clans that were marked by the exchange of course, the emergence of this trend does not in and of tabu or the presence of particular named tubuans.All itself demonstrate neoliberalization – it is possible to of this could easily have formed the basis for a imagine that it might have emerged under different description of how Tolai kinship systems worked as circumstances in the 1960s. But the wider neoliberal self-contained systems of reciprocity in which the restructuring of the and the relations between clans that were made through the emergent social divisions that accompanied that exchange of tabu were also relations with a world of process are certainly part of the picture that explains spirits that existed outside of Western scientific rational the particular negative evaluation of that trend. The epistemologies. And to an extent such a picture would so-called Big Shots find themselves running a state that not have been untrue. What my friend Tony told me, he in the neoliberal era has fewer resources to spread to doubtless believed to be true, and it represented a supporters and the wider community, leading to a worldview radically different from my own in growing lack of trust between the two sides. In the interesting ways. But it would have been a partial election of 2002, the local MP, a man called Sir John picture, misleading in what it deliberately left out, Kaputin, originally from Matupit, and one of PNG’s rather like those photos of indigenous ceremonies that elder statesmen, lost the seat that he had held since have been carefully cropped to leave in the five people independence by the widest margin of any constituency in feather headdresses and to leave out the fifty other in the country. Many of his former supporters told me participants in David Beckham T-shirts. For in order to that his fate was sealed when he came to Matupit and construct this picture, I would have had to deliberately refused to commit the funds that were necessary to ignore what Tony said at the end of this description rebuild a school in the village, explaining that times when he turned and pointed to Sir Rabbie Namaliu, a had changed and they could no longer expect to be, as Tolai and former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, he put it, ‘spoonfed’ by him or by the government as switched from the local Tolai language to English, and they had in the past. Sir John’s response was entirely remarked to me, ‘but when this man comes and throws consistent with the response of politicians around the around the tabu that he has bought with money, that’s world who either desire to or are forced to manage a not custom, that’s a fucking pastiche’. state with ever-shrinking social responsibility, and of After the event, I chatted with Tony about what he course it has echoes with the ever more vicious attacks meant. I heard a familiar story about how tabu and by on ‘welfare dependency culture’ and ‘the something for implication the custom that it underpinned had nothing society’ that have characterized the past changed in recent years; that whereas until recently it twenty-odd years of British politics. But it was felt was largely only possible to gain tabu through keenly as an insult aimed by a man who had left them participation in customary ritual, now the emerging behind and now wanted to blame them for the failings business and political elites, so-called Big Shots like Sir of a political system that he was administering. And it is Rabbie, could fly to Vanuatu and buy the shells in bulk within this context of denigration of the Big Shots who with US dollars and come back to pay impoverished manage a neoliberal state that deliberately increasingly Tolai a meagre to string them into tabu.As withdraws from care of its citizens’ welfare that the (1999: 207) has observed, it is the denigration of the Big Shots’ tabu and their capacities that ceremonial exchange items measure that involvement in custom begins to make sense. make them valuable, and for most grassroots Tolai the Later, Tony explained to me that the very ability of capacities measured by Sir Rabbie’s store-bought tabu Big Shots to buy up custom was the result of an increasing are morally dubious. Hence the circulation of tabu and gap between the rich and everyone else, something revelation of tubuans is of course much more than a that he explained was the consequence of the PNG symbolic representation of neoliberalism. But, equally, government opening up the country to foreign business to ignore the ways in which even events such as this and failing to look after its citizens as it did before. Tony become sites for the moral evaluation and rejection of himself used the term ‘neoliberalism’ several times in

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015 Debate 923 the course of this conversation. But even Tolai without REFERENCE terms like this in their vocabulary are aware that Strathern, M. 1999. Property, substance and effect: the problems they face are part of a global trend. A few anthropological essays on persons and things.London: years ago, the East New Britain Provincial Government Athlone. announced plans to set up a tabu bank that would allow villagers to convert stocks of tabu into cash on the basis Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social of a report they commissioned from a management Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Principal consultancy funded by the Australian Aid Agency. The Investigator of the European Research Council rationale for this is classic neoliberalism. The stocks of Advanced Grant project ‘Overheating’, and President of tabu held by grassroots villagers represents a potentially the European Association of Social Anthropologists monetizable resource that could be converted into (EASA). His latest book is : an intellectual money that could then fund small business development biography (Pluto, 2015). and greater prosperity. It is the same rationale that lies behind the neoliberal proscription of registering and James Laidlaw is Professor of Social Anthropology at privatizing customary land so that it can be alienated the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s and borrowed against to fund small business. Of course, College. His most recent book is The subject of virtue: the end result of this process is more likely to be a mass an anthropology of ethics and freedom (Cambridge of landless impoverished squatters, and most of my Tolai University Press, 2014). friends were equally opposed to the tabu bank, fearing that it would to an even greater intensification Jonathan Mair is Lecturer in Buddhism in the of the growing tabu gap as poor villagers were forced Department of Religions and Theology, University of to sell their tabu to buy food or pay hospital fees, with Manchester. From 2012 to 2014 he was Mellon-Newton the tabu ending up in the hands of those who could Fellow at the Centre for Research in the Arts, afford it, like Sir Rabbie. One of my Tolai friends Humanities, and Social Sciences, University of I discussed this with told me that he was sure the same Cambridge, where he led an interdisciplinary project thing was happening in Africa: that the government under the title ‘Speaking Ethically Across wasn’t helping them anymore and was forcing them Borders’. to sell their custom to the Big Men. Like Tony, this was a man who of course took his own custom seriously, Keir Martin is Associate Professor in Social being very active in the tubuan society. Unlike Tony, Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He completed he may not have used the word ‘neoliberal’, but his Ph.D. in 2006 after two years of fieldwork in East like him, he knew that the practice of custom did not New Britain Province, Papua New Guinea, working exist in a vacuum separate among the Matupi community in the aftermath of the from the problems and issues of poverty, land-grab, volcanic eruptions of 1994. He is the author of a privatization, and a shrinking state. The question monograph, The death of the Big Men and the rise of the that strikes me is, if he is capable of being concerned Big Shots (Berghahn, 2013), and a number of published about the impact that neoliberal restructuring articles covering issues of contested transactions, social has had on the world in which he lives without movements, land tenure, tourism, and possessive giving up his belief in tubuan spirits as a part of that individualism. world, then why on earth do a handful of anthropology professors maintain the illusion that the best way to Soumhya Venkatesan is Senior Lecturer in take him seriously is to refuse to listen to his concerns? Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is the organizer of the annual meetings of the Group for The full discussions following this presentation can be Debates in Anthropological Theory at Manchester found on http://www.jrai.net. since 2008 and also edits the debates for publication.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 21, 911-923 C Royal Anthropological Institute 2015