Putting Neo-Liberalism in Its Place(S) Living With/In and Without Neo-Liberalism

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Putting neo-liberalism in its place(s) Living with/in and without neo-liberalism

John Clarke

Abstract: This article explores some concerns about the concept of neo-liberalism, suggesting that it has been stretched too far to be productive as a critical analytical tool. Neo-liberalism suffers from promiscuity (hanging out with various theoretical perspectives), omnipresence (treated as a universal or global phenomenon), and omnipotence (identified as the cause of a wide variety of social, political and economic changes). Alternative ways of treating neo-liberalism as more contingent and contested are considered. These emphasize its mobile and flexible character, stressing processes of contextual assemblage, articulation, and translation. The article concludes by wondering whether the concept of neo-liberalism is now so overused that it should be retired. Keywords: assemblage, articulation, authority, globalization, neo-liberalism

Neoliberalism seems to be everywhere. —Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell Neoliberalism seems to mean many different things depending on one’s vantage point. — Aihwa Ong

This article starts from the puzzles identified by think of the relationship between neo-liberalism these quotations. They point to what I think of and space. For Ong (2006), it creates the condi- as the core problems of neo-liberalism as a con- tion for critical reflection on how to think—or cept: it is omnipresent and it is promiscuous. rethink—neoliberalism as an analytic category. There may be a third: that neo-liberalism is om- In the course of the article, I will take up these nipotent, but we will come to questions of power as central issues for considering the “transla- later. I am intrigued by the two quotations in tion” of neo-liberalism. But first, let me offer a part because of what work the word “seems” to word of warning about the article. It is deliber- be doing in each of them. It opens up a moment ately conversational in approach. It forms part of critical distance. For Peck and Tickell (2002), of a long-running conversation centered on the the critical distance concerns precisely how to question of neo-liberalism. This is sometimes a

Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 51 (2008): 135–47 doi:10.3167/fcl.2008.510110 136 | John Clarke conversation with myself, sometimes with mulation directly or being more connected to friends, and sometimes with people with whom what Jessop might call their “societalization” in I feel less comfortable. It represents one more different regimes that attempt to organize and attempt to wrestle with puzzles that continue to reorganize time and space. It is this analytic fo- trouble me in analytical and political ways (e.g., cus that marks their difference from a set of Clarke 1991, 2004a, 2004b). approaches to neo-liberalism that views the concept through a Foucauldian analytic of governmentality. Here neo-liberalism marks the rise of Promiscuous neo-liberalism technologies of governing populations that construct “economic” logics of calculation and in- The question of what we might mean by neo- vite people to become “self-governing” (e.g., Ong liberalism is a difficult one. The answers to this 2006; Rose 1999). Such conceptions of neo- question are various, divergent, and overlapping. liberalism as governmentality link sites and tech- The simplest answer is, perhaps, David Harvey’s nologies as diverse as the management of security view of neo-liberalism as the political/ideologi- or the constitution/regulation of a global space, cal project of a class seeking to change the bal- the rise of NGOs (non-governmental organiza- ance of power in global capitalism and create new tions) as a mode of governance in and of civil means of capital accumulation (Harvey 2005). society, through the economization of the cal- The attraction of this answer is that it is simple, culating self (as entrepreneur, as consumer, as it is evident everywhere, and applies to a variety prudential risk taker, etc.), to the rise of thera- of economic and social phenomena, from ex- peutic technologies of the self.1 tensive land dispossession through to the new Although I have sketched these as three differ- flexibilities of capital or to the dismantling of ent answers (see also Barnett 2005; Larner 2000), the social state (in societies of the North/West). the boundaries between them blur and are tra- A related answer would perhaps stress the versed, as is usually the case with boundaries. political–ideological dimensions more emphat- From all three perspectives, some of the same ically, pointing to the dismantling of earlier po- trends or tendencies are visible, even if they are litical settlements and their forms of institu- made to mean slightly different things. For ex- tionalization (welfare states, forms of citizenship, ample, the much-cited renaming of an unem- corporatist settlements between capital and labor, ployed person claiming unemployment benefit Atlantic Fordism, etc.). These changes create as a “job seeker” by the UK’s Conservative gov- new ways of thinking, new political formations, ernment can be read as (a) evidence of the sub- and new institutional forms that can be charac- ordination of social policy to the power of terized as neo-liberal because they involve both capital and the liberation of the market; (b) evi- the direct expansion of the scope and reach of dence of trying to create a new “economized” or corporate capital, and the indirect “economiza- “market centric” rhetoric in displacing social tion” of areas of social and political life (public democratic, welfarist, or citizen-centered institu- functions to be either privatized or “run like a tions; or (c) an instance of a governmental tech- business,” for example). This view would focus nology for producing subjects who understand rather more attention on the political and ideo- themselves as “entrepreneurial” or “willing selves” logical levels of analysis, and would be especially (Maasen and Sutter 2007). concerned with processes of state reform or trans- It might be that these boundaries are both formation, and about the spatial and scalar re- blurred and traversed by the question of eco- structurings with which it is associated (e.g., nomics. Although the economic is clearly at the Hartmann 2005; Jessop 2002; Peck 2004). centre of political economic analyses of the ref- Despite their different emphases, these two ormation of capital, it mutates in the second ver- views are linked by a foundation in political econ- sion to include questions of neo-liberalism as omy, whether addressing forms of capital accu- “economic discourse” (Peck 2004: 394), whereas Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 137 some Foucauldian work locates the discursive we might remember the difficult work that was and governmental “economization” of social and needed to “unlock” the oppressive and over- political life as a key feature of neo-liberalism whelming weight that the concept of globaliza- (Brown 2005; Rose 1999). There are two points tion carried—and the sense of inevitability that to be made here. On the one hand, these are was associated with it (Massey 2004a; see also not exactly the same “economic”: one refers to a Barnett 2005). But if it is not everywhere, is neo- material substructure of forces, relations, and liberalism merely the new colonialism, articulat- interests (which may be more or less directly ex- ing metropolises and peripheries in new forms pressed in political and ideological forms); the of ruling at a distance? How to understand the other refers to a view of the “economic” as those complicated spaces of neo-liberalism has been practices, relationships, and forms of organiza- the subject of much critical discussion in geog- tion that are discursively constituted as eco- raphy that has explored its uneven expansion, nomic through governmental work. This issue its variegated “local forms,” and its hybridity. is both a focus of coincidence and analytical For example, Peck argues that: frustration. On the other hand, we might take this coincidence not as the effect of bad theoret- “While neoliberalism may have begun life as a ical work, but as indicating something trou- North Atlantic intellectual movement, its muta- bling about both the central and problematic tion into a variegated and internationalized state character of “the economic” in contemporary project over the past thirty years has been asso- transformations. I realize this is a rather weak ciated with a profoundly transnational process formulation—but I am not sure I can reconcile of ‘social learning’ which has established new the epistemological, theoretical, and political circuits of neoliberal economic and legal exper- divergences between Marxism and Foucauldian tise, new material connections between finan- analysis here (if ever…). They will, however, con- cializing and globalizing economies and new tinue to haunt the concept of neo-liberalism. forms of connection around neoliberal norms” (2004: 402).

Omnipresent neo-liberalism I have argued elsewhere that neo-liberalism is a political–cultural project that aims at transna- “There has everywhere been an emphatic turn tional hegemony, in which different places are towards neo-liberalism in political-economic invited, seduced, and compelled to join (Clarke practices and thinking since the 1970s. Deregu- 2004a). Peck points to the strange “doubling” of lation, privatization and withdrawal of the state general and particular in this process: “Each from many areas of social provision have been and every neoliberal transition, in this sense, is all too common. Almost all states, from those distinctive though each also remakes the relation- newly minted after the collapse of the Soviet ship between the part (an actually existing neo- Union to old-style social democracies and wel- liberal case) and the whole (the abstraction that fare states such as New Zealand and Sweden we might provisionally term neoliberalism-in- have embraced, sometimes voluntarily and in general)” (2004: 395). But this “neoliberalism-in- other instances in response to coercive pres- general” is itself a profoundly practical spatial sures, some version of neo-liberal theory and imaginary: each specific neo-liberal transition is adjusted at least some policies and practices ac- (further) evidence of a neo-liberal world, which cordingly.” (Harvey 2005: 3) adds to the isomorphic pressures on other places to “conform.” I have some trouble with the view that every- For me, this also suggests the importance of where is neo-liberal even if the local forms vary the different modes of insertion into “global” somewhat. This view risks making neo-liberalism neo-liberalism that are experienced by different the next-generation “globalization” concept, and regions, nations, and more local places. It also 138 | John Clarke suggests the importance of the transnational re- Omnipotent neo-liberalism lations through which such insertions are con- ducted.“South East Europe” forms such a “node” There is little in the present for which neo-lib- where the processes and practices of insertion eralism cannot be held responsible. As I was look complicated, multiple, hesitant, and ambig- preparing this article I encountered the follow- uous—as are the ways in which they are locally ing list of sites, institutions, processes, and prac- articulated. This brings me to recent arguments tices that were identified as neo-liberal (and I by Aihwa Ong discussing how to think about do not think the list is exhaustive): the complicated distribution of neo-liberal governmentality. Ong is concerned with how neo- states, spaces, logics, techniques, technologies, dis- liberalism “is reconfiguring relationships between courses, discursive framework, ideologies, ways of governing and the governed, power and knowl- thinking, projects, agendas, programs, govern- edge, and sovereignty and territoriality” (2006: mentality, measures, regimes, development, ethno- 3). This involves a different view of neo-liberal- development, development imaginaries, global ism’s “unevenness.” Rather than seeing it as a forms of control, social policies, multiculturalism, “tidal wave” that rolls across all places (emanat- audit cultures, managerialism, restructuring, re- ing from the dominant metropoles), Ong treats form, privatization, regulatory frameworks, gov- neo-liberalism’s spread by examining it as an ernance, good governance, NGOs, third sector, assemblage of technologies, techniques, and subjects, subjectivities, individualization, profes- practices that are appropriated selectively, that sionalization, normalization, market logics, mar- come into uncomfortable encounters with “lo- ket forms of calculation, the destatalization of cal” politics and cultures, and that are mobile government and the degovernmentalization of the and connective (rather than “global”): “It there- state fore seems appropriate to study neoliberalism not as a ‘culture’ or a ‘structure’ but as mobile That’s an impressive list, even for an omnipres- calculative techniques of governing that can be ent and promiscuous concept. It returns me to decontextualized from their original sources a double question, concerning what is, and what and recontextualized in constellations of mu- is not, neo-liberal. If everything is neo-liberal, tually constitutive and contingent relations” then Bondi and Laurie are right that “there is (2006: 13). no uncontaminated form of, or space for, polit- I find Ong’s insistence on treating neo-liber- ical resistance” that can be seen as remaining alism as a mobile assemblage helpful. The forms, “wholly outside neo-liberalism” (2005: 399). But sites, mechanisms, and practices of such mobil- we might want to draw a distinction between ity are critical–not least for how transnational the presence of neo-liberalism almost every- institutions, practices, agents, and “traveling where, and whether it is everywhere dominant. knowledges” come to work on new sites. Rather All sorts of things—especially discourses or ways than assuming a neo-liberal core or essence that of thinking—can be found almost everywhere, is everywhere the same (and from which diver- but that is not necessarily an index of their gences might be measured), she captures some- power. Rather, we need to ask: Do they form the thing of the diversity of specific forms and dominant or organizing principle for the places formations of neo-liberalism. It locates the po- and sites where they appear? This brings me back litical and governmental work of neo-liberalism to practices of articulation and assemblage. in practices of articulation, dis-articulation, and I want to suggest that adding the adjective re-articulation that are, for me, central to pro- “neo-liberal” to a site, process, or practice might cesses of rule, domination, and hegemony conceal two different political relations. The (Clarke 2004a). In the process, this restores the first, most obvious, one is that this site, practice, issue of spaces, sites, forms, and resources of or process is the effect or consequence of neo- contestation, resistance, and recalcitrance. liberalism: it would not exist without neo-liber- Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 139 alism. The second meaning identifies the neo- for other institutions, practices, and discourses: liberal articulation of a pre-existing site, pro- allowed to function but in more confined spaces, cess, or practice. Whether we treat neo-liberalism with narrowed scope (residual versions of the from the standpoint of capitalist regimes of ac- “social” or “welfarism,” perhaps; Clarke, 2007). cumulation, or as a version of liberal governmen- Appropriation points to a more active process tality, most of its political work involves prac- that some have described as cooption or incor- tices of de- and re-articulation: reorganizing poration. For example, Kothari (2005), writing principles, policies, practices, and discourses into about the politics of development, argues that new configurations, assemblages, or constella- the neo-liberal agenda “co-opted the ‘alterna- tions (Li 2007a). To take a couple of examples, tive’ critical discourses” of development. As a both development as a set of relations and pro- consequence: cesses centered on power, and managerialism as a way of organizing power in organizations, have “Forms of alternative development become in- longer histories than can be encompassed by stitutionalized and less distinct from conven- neo-liberalism (see e.g., Clarke and Newman tional, mainstream development discourse and 1993; Kothari 2005; Pollitt 1993; Sharma forth- practice. … This strategy of appropriation re- coming). So how does neo-liberalism rearticu- duced spaces of critique and dissent, since the late them into new formations? Articulation inclusion and appropriation of ostensibly radi- here might be understood as referring to their cal discourses limited the potential for chal- “internal” composition (innovative ways of lenge from outside the mainstream to orthodox thinking and doing, with new ways of ordering, development planning and practice… .As these legitimating, and exercising power) and their approaches were adopted they were embedded “external” configuration with other institu- within a neoliberal discourse … and became in- tions, policies, and politics. I think this view of creasingly technicalised, subject to regimes of the “neo-liberalization of things” is more useful, professionalisation which institutionalized not least because this conception of articulated forms of knowledge, analytical skills, tools, tech- formations (internal and external) enables an un- niques and frameworks.” (Kothari 2005: 438–9) derstanding of why they might be sites of contradiction, strain, antagonism, and ambivalence. This view of co-optation hints at the discursive and political work of articulation—taking existing discourses, projects, practices, and imaginar- Neo-liberal cohabitation ies and reworking them within a framing neo- liberal conception of development and its place By cohabitation I mean to identify the problem in the world. Just as Kothari points to the incor- of how neo-liberalism lives with “others” in the poration of alternative/critical approaches to world. As a political–cultural project it must development, and work on “difference” points to find ways of engaging with other projects, seek- the reworking of radical politics of difference ing to displace, subordinate, or appropriate them. into a normalized model of the individual con- Most attention has been focused on the work of sumer citizen (Richardson 2005), so other would- displacement—the exclusion, marginalization, be transformative political projects have been or residualization of other projects, discourses, appropriated and reworked through a neo-liberal and ways of imagining the world and life within frame. Dagnino (2006), writing about struggles it. There are also the processes of subordination over citizenship in Brazil, points to the “per- and appropriation. Each of these terms accounts verse confluence” between key organizing ideas for the continued place of alternative political– and principles of social movements and neo- cultural projects in a neo-liberal dominated or liberal politics, especially those of “participation” directed assemblage. Subordination points to and citizenship, which were centrally articulated the allocation of secondary or subsidiary roles by radical movements: 140 | John Clarke

“There is thus a perverse confluence between, struggle with three problems: the variations of on the one hand, participation as part of a proj- neo-liberal discourses, technologies, and inter- ect constructed around the extension of citizen- ventions; the changing repertoire of neo-liber- ship and the deepening of democracy, and on alism over time; and the effects of strategies of the other hand, participation associated with appropriation/articulation. For example, Peck the project of a minimal state that requires the tackles the first of these questions—about how shrinking of its social responsibilities and its to “chart this fluid, multidimensional and hy- progressive exemption from the role of guaran- bridized historical geography” (2004:403). I tor of rights. The perversity of this confluence quote his argument at some length since it poses reflects the fact that, although pointing to op- a set of difficult problems: posite and even antagonistic directions, both projects require an active, pro-active civil society… “As a composite ideological structure, neoliberal- “A particularly important aspect of the per- ism cannot be reduced to any one of its constit- verse confluence is precisely the notion of citi- uent elements. The state project of neoliberalism zenship, which is now being redefined through was not constructed solely in the global North, a series of discursive shifts to make it suitable nor exclusively in the South, but in both. Neo- for use by neo-liberal forces. This new redefini- liberalism is not solely an expression of free- tion, part of the struggle between different po- market libertarianism, nor is it just an outgrowth litical projects, attests to the symbolic power of of neoconservative moral authoritarianism, but citizenship and the mobilizing capacity it has it reflects both. Neoliberalism is not only a reac- demonstrated in organizing subaltern sectors tionary response to fiscal and debt crises, nor is around democratizing projects. The need to it merely a handmaiden of financialization and neutralize these features of citizenship, while corporate globalization, but it is both. Neoliber- trying to retain its symbolical power, has made alism-in-general is a loose and contradiction- its appropriation by neo-liberal forces necessary” laden ideological framework that is evolving not (Dagnino 2006: 158f.; emphasis in original). only through conflict with the ‘external’ social worlds that it encounters but also through vac- Dagnino talks about the political frustration and illating tensions between its own authoritarian confusion resulting from the “apparently shared and libertarian moments and constituencies. … discourse” (2006: 162) in ways that are echoed So, neoliberalism does not, and cannot, exist in by Bondi and Laurie’s observations about the pure form, but only manifests itself in hybrid “sense of uncertainty, ambivalence and perplex- formations. Even the Bush and Blair projects, ity about the politics of the processes we were located as they are within the neoliberal ‘heart- observing and analyzing” (2005: 394). This “con- land,’ are appropriately characterized as hybrids, fusion” emerges precisely at the point of appro- and as such they are no ‘less hybrid’ than the priation, articulation, and transformation exer- neoliberalizing regimes of Chile or Mexico. Yet cised by the neo-liberal re-framing of existing the fact that a range of critical analysts, many of radical, alternative, and contestatory discourses. them working within different theoretical and Neo-liberalism is marked by a capacity to bend political traditions, continue to draw attention these words (and the political and cultural imag- to the shared neoliberal features of these hybrids inaries they carry) to new purposes. points to the importance of developing adequate accounts of neoliberalism-in-general, without succumbing to the fallacies of monolithism, Looking for the heart of neo-liberalism functionalism or convergence thinking. How- ever, the observation of family resemblance pre- Of course, neo-liberalism is heartless—both supposes the existence of a (neoliberal) family; metaphorically and analytically. Attempts to de- the naming of hybrids presupposes a more than fine a core or essential neo-liberalism have to trivial degree of neoliberal content. In the absence Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 141 of a more careful mapping of these hybrids-in- the original formations of liberalism (or “pos- connection, the concept of neoliberalism remains sessive individualism” to use Macpherson’s seriously underspecified, little more in some cases [1962] phrase). But this is now extended to the than a radical-theoretical slogan” (Peck 2004: incorporation of previously excluded categories 403). of individuals (previously understood as possessed by others, or by forces, drives, passions, There is much here to reflect on (without even or even traditions beyond their control). But engaging with the problems of biological-genetic this conception of personhood is also extended conceptions of families and resemblances). But to other entities—corporations, enterprises, and we may want to take up the concern with inter- even markets—as agentic beings. This idea of nal contradictions, the hybridizing effect of ex- personhood allows for boundaries to be drawn ternal encounters, and the problem of identify- (as it did in earlier liberalisms). At least three ing a core for a composite ideological structure. categories of person are visible in contemporary These problems are exacerbated by the relation- governmental discourse: established “inde- ship between spatial differences and temporal pendent” persons, people who might be “em- differences in neo-liberalism’s career. In trans- powered” to become independent (through national relations, for example, each specific techniques of self-development), and the “resi- local/national instance of neoliberalism in prac- due” requiring containment and control. Third, tice is going to be located in relation to “previ- the calculating framework of efficiency is linked ously existing neoliberalisms” in other places to,but not the same as, market logic. It estab- and other institutions. Equally, Ong stresses the lishes norms and ways of calculating value. These innovative character of neoliberalism (e.g., as in- are typically “economic,”and often expressed in novative spatial administration; 2006: 19) and fiscal calculations. But they are also linked to notes that the practice of articulation itself in- questions of personhood in terms of evaluating serts a specific temporal dimension to neoliberal “subjects of value” (Smith 1997) as “hard work- governmentality (Ong 2006: 17). As a result, neo- ing” producers,“responsible” consumers,“effec- liberalism cannot be seen as having a static core tive” parents, and so on. Finally, the question since it is consistently drawn into new entangle- of authority is central to the lexicon of neo- ments as it tries to colonize the world. liberalism (and is one critical site for its articu- But what might give these different appro- lation with other political projects, not least priations their neo-liberal character or form? I conservatism and neo-conservatism). Forms of want to suggest that the coherence is provided authority are multiple—the authority of the by the combination of a logic of market ration- market, of the consumer, of the family/house- ality, a conception of personhood (centered on, hold, of corporations (and the “business com- but not exclusive to, human individuals), a cal- munity”). Much has been made of the shift to culating framework of efficiency, and a view of “private authority” (Slaughter 2004), but it may authority as a fundamental political and social be more important to explore the blurring, in- bond. Each of these brings a distinctive inflection terweaving, and fusing of different forms and to thinking about the ordering and governing sites of authority in neo-liberal political and gov- of societies. The market logic seeks to establish ernmental projects. universalizing principles of ordering human af- I realize there is nothing particularly new fairs (through market relations, or, if necessary, about these four elements, nor are they individ- through market-mimicking processes: see many ually unique to neo-liberal ways of thinking of the reforms of public services under the New and doing. It is their combination and interplay Public Management, for example). The second that marks the distinctiveness of neo-liberalism, works on a model of the self-possessed and self- and it is their co-existence that enables neo- possessing independent individual, borrowed liberalism’s flexibility in processes of appropria- from the white adult male figure so central to tion/articulation. Each can operate as a point of 142 | John Clarke articulation with other projects and discourses, tecting the forms of knowledge and power from and not all need to be in play in that process. contesting incursions, or merely from the skep- The elements have to be coherent, but that does tical gaze of doubtful publics (Clarke 2005). not mean an absence of contradictions (which However, this view of neo-liberal governmen- may explain why so many neo-liberal political tality as constructing itself as non-political and projects in specific national settings manage to non-ideological raises a problem that govern- be liberal and authoritarian?). This view of a core mentality analyses have with the question of of elements borrows in part from Catherine politics. The emphasis on the field of the gov- Kingfisher’s distinction between what she calls ernmental deliberately displaces the state as the the “preliminary grammar” of neo-liberalism central focus of analysis, but risks losing some- and its “disjointed, disjunctured articulations” thing of the political as well as administrative/ in particular places (2002: 50). She argues that governmental formation of states as contradic- “It is, in fact, only in the circulation of neolib- tory and contested formations. At the same time, eral related meanings and their articulation with subjects appear to be locked within the field of other meaning systems that neoliberalism takes governmental subjection—at best engaged in on its multiple and contradictory lives” (King- negotiating its complex terrain or folded into fisher 2002: 12). ethical or agonistic conflicts that are always al- This points to the capacity of neo-liberalism ready framed by the governmental rationalities to circulate: to be decontextualised and recon- in play (see e.g., Ong’s earlier (1993) analysis of textualised. It travels well, in part, because it is “cultural citizenship”). I doubt whether the field heteroglossic and multiple. It always has some- of government can ever be quite so all-encom- thing to offer and that something promises to passing or coherent. Instead, other rationalities, be universal, modern, and efficient. It has also political imaginaries, and projects occur that been successful at colonizing the transnational overflow the drive to incorporate, subject, and networks of transmission and translation. Neo- enmesh. These might be residual attachments liberalism expresses the conditions of its own that cannot be adequately incorporated or dis- flexibility and mobility. Ong argues that “Neo- placed, they might be appropriations that come liberalism can also be conceptualized as a new loose from their neo-liberal fixings (articulation relationship between government and knowl- always implies the possibility of re-articulation), edge through which governing activities are re- or they might be emergent projects shaped by cast as nonpolitical and nonideological problems forces and imaginings that cannot be contained that need technical solutions” (2006: 3). (Clarke, Newman, and Westmarland 2007). I do Here I want to argue that neo-liberalism not intend to develop this sketch of possibilities should be understood as the latest in a dishon- here, but it seems to me that thinking about a orable history of strategies of “depoliticization” singular governmentality must always be atten- of politics that attempt to conceal the problems tive to potential alternatives (see also Laurie, and conflicts of politics behind an appeal to Andolina, and Radcliffe’s [2005] discussion of forms of knowledge and varieties of technical indigenous knowledge). As Sharma argues in expertise (see e.g., Ferguson 1990; Rancière the context of NGO “empowerment programs” 2006). Perhaps the most interesting thing about for women in India: this history is the vulnerability of such depoliti- cizing strategies to challenge and contestation. “Perhaps a more productive question to ask is None of the ones that I know look like perma- what kinds of subjects are being produced by nently stabilized successes. De-politicization car- this use of empowerment and the resulting in- ries with it the possibility, and indeed threat, of crease in interfaces between subaltern women re-politicization. Such strategies usually involve and state agencies. Do women’s ‘expanding re- fairly anxious work devoted to maintaining their lationships [to state institutions and processes] non-political and non-ideological claims, pro- produce only active political subjects, or do they Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 143 also produce regulated, subordinated, and dis- tain, rework, or displace, but may not resolve). ciplined state subjects?’ (Brown 1995: 173). My Governmental interventions may also give rise to analysis of the MS program substantiates Chat- new antagonisms, contradictions, and crises— terjee’s (2004) claim that governmental pro- part of the disorderliness of governing (Cooper grams do not just produce bureaucratized and 1998). passive state subjects. In postcolonial contexts, these programs produce active, sometimes dis- sident, political actors who can provide the Translating neo-liberalism: Multiple ground for mobilizations of political society in and graduated sovereignties which marginalized subjects make claims on the state, negotiate entitlements, and contest so- For me, one of the most important features of cial hierarchies (Chatterjee 2004). Governmen- Ong’s recent approach to neo-liberalism has been talization does not depoliticize so much as it precisely its combination of issues of translation spawns a subaltern politics that may take new, with questions of sovereignty. Translation—like unexpected forms.” (2006: 81) articulation—puts an emphasis on discursive practices in a way that opens up analytical and As a result, I want to argue for a rather different political possibilities.3 Arguing for ethnographic view of the conditions of governmental innova- attention to how neo-liberalism is mobile, and tion as existing outside of, or beyond, the reach how translation into specific contexts works, Ong of the governmental. There are conditions, call indicates how working through the concepts of them problems, crises, issues, that become rec- articulation, negotiation, and translation makes ognized as needing to be governed, or governed possible a more open-ended and differentiated better. This clearly includes the possibility of pre- form of analysis: vious governance failures (Li 2007b). Here we might see neo-liberalism not just as the mutating “[A]rticulations also refer to discursive practices progeny of earlier liberalisms, but as govern- as ongoing negotiations of citizenship in condi- mental inventions demanded to address, recog- tions of displacement. Articulation as a con- nize, name, and manage problematic conditions ceptual temporality permits the exploration of that appear to be beyond the capacity of earlier claims as a contingent emergence within partic- modes of governing.2 ular assemblages of market rationalities, politics Despite the appeals of political economy, these and ethics. The stress on discursive negotiation are never just the problems and antagonisms of or translation of contradictory elements within capital accumulation. They are about social re- the space of conjuncture sidesteps a predeter- lations—and the turbulence of the social—in a mined opposition or adversary position among wider sense. Governmental innovation can be elements but maintains a conceptual openness thought of in terms of how to overcome crises, to unexpected possibilities and resolutions. … blockages, dislocations, and unruliness that are A context specific inquiry allows us to capture threats to “optimization.” Some of those appear how opposing interpretations and claims can and as “economic,” or are to be handled through do interrupt, slow down, deflect, and negotiate “economic logics”—but they have to be under- neoliberal logics and initiatives. The temporal- stood as social in the widest sense, and as politi- ity of transmission, translation and negotiation cal when they appear as movements and projects in this fluctuating space is fraught with politi- that demand not to be governed in the old way. cal complication, contingency and ambiguity.” Such a view of crisis and dislocation might en- (2006: 17) able us to understand “innovation” better, and might also point to the persistence of contradic- In many respects, this seems to connect closely tions, disorders, and antagonisms (which new with discussions about the emergent construc- governmental interventions may manage to con- tion of forms of governmentality in the space of 144 | John Clarke

South East Europe (Deacon and Stubbs 2007) Living without neo-liberalism: and it may be that Ong is correct in arguing that A thought experiment viewing such dynamics from outside the claus- trophobic framing of North/South might make I want to rescue a series of propositions from the processes of transmission, translation, and this ramble around neo-liberalism. These are recontextualization more visible (2006: 12). What what I think of as my temporary standpoints she develops is an orientation to these questions for worrying about neo-liberalism. They are tem- around sovereignty, arguing that sovereignty is porary, fragile, and vulnerable to collapse. But being reconstructed through new spatializing for the moment they may allow me to put to- practices that divide up territories in new ways, gether some almost coherent thoughts. They and govern them through differentiated and are linked by a concern with a set of words such differentiating means (see also Ferguson and as contradictions, construction, and conflict on Gupta, 2002; Sharma and Gupta 2007). These the one hand, and ambivalence, assemblage, innovations include sharing sovereign power and articulation on the other.4 with other authorities (supra-national agencies, First, it would be a good idea to think of the multi-lateral agencies and corporations; Ong social field with which neo-liberalism engages as 2006: 19). This produces a field of graduated a disorderly one, characterized by contradictions, and overlapping sovereignties that also differen- antagonisms, and contested political projects. tiate populations and subject them to different Neo-liberalism provides a political and govern- types of rule, allocate them to different citizen- mental repertoire for trying to intervene in such ship statuses, and so on. fields and direct them in particular ways. Sec- These questions of new spatial and scalar ond, such political and governmental projects organization—and their implication with ques- struggle to resolve, reconcile, contain, or displace tions of multiple, graduated, or overlapping contradictions and antagonisms (more or less sovereignties—seem to me to bear directly on successfully). As innovative strategies they may the issues of “making up places.” In particular, also generate new contradictions, antagonisms, we can see how both governmental and non- and dysfunctions. Third, innovative political and governmental organizations might be linked— governmental strategies have to be developed to although not always in harmonious ways—in the manage the contradictions, antagonisms, dys- working out of these processes. Such agencies functions—and even failures—of neo-liberal work as practices of transmission and transla- projects. Are these also neo-liberal? tion—connecting spaces and scales in innova- Fourth, neo-liberal strategies realign—in tive ways. They also articulate different voices, contradictory and complex ways—formations claims, and forms of authority in representing of spaces, scales, and sovereignties. Fifth, neo- and regulating new places. Like Sharma, Ong liberalism involves articulating practices—ap- sees NGOs in particular as occupying an am- propriating other discourses, practices, and even biguous or ambivalent role in these emergent imaginaries and inflecting them. It enables us sovereignties—functioning as both agents of to grasp its flexibility and mobility. Sixth, neo- transmission and as agencies of representation liberalism therefore denotes a double process of and political-ethical claims-making on behalf articulation and assemblage: first, the articula- of marginalized, excluded, and exploited groups tion of things into neo-liberalism’s repertoire; (forms of “noncitizenship”). Both analytically second, the articulation of elements from neo- and politically, ambivalence seems an appropri- liberalism’s repertoire into specific/local assem- ate relationship to both states and non-state blages or constellations as part of political and governing. Located in the processes of manag- governmental projects to remake particular ing contradictions and antagonistic social rela- places. And finally, articulation always implies tions, it would be surprising if they were not the the possibility of re-articulation—the attachment site of ambiguity and ambivalence. of words, symbols, practices, policies, and so on Living with/in and without neo-liberalism | 145 to alternative voices, vocabularies, imaginaries, modified by conversations with colleagues at and projects. the workshop and at a subsequent PhD confer- As usual, I want to emphasize these proposi- ence on “Activism and the State of Neoliberal- tions because they imply a way of thinking about ism,” held in the Department of Sociology and neo-liberalism that reduces its density and to- Social Anthropology at the Central European talizing weight—and the analytical and political University in Budapest (22-23 June 2007). breathlessness that such weight induces. Keep- ing neo-liberalism “open” in these ways an- nounces the possibility of thinking about what John Clarke is Professor of Social Policy at the is not neo-liberal…and thus the possibility of liv- Open University, UK. His research and writing ing without neo-liberalism. What concepts would focuses on the processes of remaking welfare we need to use, or construct, in order to think and states. He is currently working (with Janet about the present without using the concept of Newman) on a book about the conflicts at stake neo-liberalism? If my description of its omni- in encounters between changing publics and presence, omnipotence, and promiscuity is cor- changing public services. rect,then perhaps we need terms that would E-mail: [email protected]. allow us to think better. Neo-liberalism—as a concept—feels overworked: a more welfarist or even compassionately conservative regime would Notes retire it. Instead, we keep on finding ways of making it do more work, and saving ourselves 1. Two special issues of Antipode devoted to neo- the trouble… liberalism in 2002 and 2005 mark the distance between these two conceptions. The first (34 [3]) deals with neo-liberalism in terms of political– Acknowledgments economic restructurings of scale and space. The second (37 [3]) treats neo-liberalism primarily This article was originally written for a work- as a set of governmental techniques, technolo- shop on “Transnational Governmentality in gies, and strategies of subjection in different sites South East Europe: Translating Neo-liberalism (linked by questions of knowledge and power). on the Sovereign Frontier—Concepts, Cases, 2. This slides past a whole set of problems about the analysis of contradictions, antagonisms, and Contestations,” held in Rabac, Croatia 1–3 June dysfunctions. But for some suggestive thoughts, 2007, funded by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and see the discussion by Katz (2005) on contradic- organized by Paul Stubbs. It was written while I tions between the economic and cultural politics was part of a three-month Maison des Sciences of neo-liberalism, Kalb (2005) on the antago- de l’Homme Programme International d’Etudes nisms generated by globalization flows, Gough Avancées “Comparing scales of citizenship: be- (2002) on the tensions between individualiza- tween legal and social representations,” at Co- tion and socialization in and around neo-liber- lumbia University Institute for Scholars, Reid alism, and Massey (2004b) on the production of Hall, Paris. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues the local as a potentially antagonistic field. in this program—Kathleen Coll, Evelina Dag- 3. Translation is growing in significance as a focus nino, and Catherine Neveu—for their efforts to of attention (see e.g., Czarniawska and Sevón, help me think better and for tolerating my ob- 2005; Djelic and Sahlin-Andersson, 2006; Lend- vai and Stubbs 2006; Morris, 2006). sessions. This article also reflects long-running 4. Because I think in alliterative threesomes, I conversations with Clive Barnett, Wendy Brown, could also offer uneven, unfinished, and unsta- Larry Grossberg, Wendy Larner, Janet Newman, ble (as descriptions of political and governmen- and Paul Stubbs. They are, of course, not re- tal projects); and transnational, translation, and sponsible for its faults (even in an era of respon- trajectories (as ways of marking the dynamics sibilization). Finally, my thoughts have been of changing formations). 146 | John Clarke

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