Neoliberali States, Networks, Peoples (Antipode Book Series)

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Author: Kim England | Kevin Ward

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England: Neo-liberalization 1405134316_1_pretoc Final Proof page i 1.3.2007 6:49pm Compositor Name: SJoearun

Neoliberalization

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Antipode Book Series General Editor: Noel Castree, Professor of Geography, University of Manchester, UK Like its parent journal, the Antipode Book Series reflects distinctive new developments in radical geography. It publishes books in a variety of formats – from reference books to works of broad explication to titles that develop and extend the scholarly research base – but the commitment is always the same: to contribute to the praxis of a new and more just society.

Published Neoliberalization: States, Networks, Peoples Edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism: Cleaners in the Global Economy Edited by Luis L. M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod David Harvey: A Critical Reader Edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism: Activism, Professionalisation and Incorporation Edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi Threads of Labour: Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers’ Perspective Edited by Angela Hale and Jane Wills Life’s Work: Geographies of Social Reproduction Edited by Katharyne Mitchell, Sallie A. Marston and Cindi Katz Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth Linda McDowell Space, Place and the New Labour Internationalism Edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills Spaces of Neoliberalism Edited by Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore

Forthcoming Cities of Whiteness Wendy S. Shaw The South Strikes Back: Labour in the Global Economy Rob Lambert, Edward Webster and Andries Bezuidenhout Decolonizing Development: Colonial Power and the Maya Joel Wainwright

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Neoliberalization: States, Networks, Peoples Edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward

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ß 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd blackwell publishing 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of Kim England and Kevin Ward to be identified as the Authors of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 1 2007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neoliberalization : states, networks, peoples / edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward. p. cm. — (Antipode book series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3431-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-1-4051-3432-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Neoliberalism. 2. Free enterprise—Social aspects. 3. Economic development—Social aspects. 4. Capitalism—Social aspects. 5. Comparative economics. I. England, Kim, 1960II. Ward, Kevin, 1969HB95.N428 2007 338.9-dc22 2006032841 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10.5/12.5pt Sabon by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in Singapore by COS Printers Pte Ltd The publisher’s policy is to use permanent paper from mills that operate a sustainable forestry policy, and which has been manufactured from pulp processed using acid-free and elementary chlorine-free practices. Furthermore, the publisher ensures that the text paper and cover board used have met acceptable environmental accreditation standards. For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: www.blackwellpublishing.com

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In memory of: Graham Ward (16 August 1946 – 23 November 2002) Judith Ward (15 November 1987 – 4 July 2003)

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Contents

List of Figures

ix

List of Plates

x

List of Tables

xi

List of Contributors

xii

Preface

xvi

1 Introduction: Reading Neoliberalization Kevin Ward and Kim England Part I

‘‘Mainstream’’ Economic Development and its Alternatives

Introduction to Part I 2 Competing Capitalisms and Neoliberalism: the Dynamics of, and Limits to, Economic Reform in the Asia-Pacific Mark Beeson 3 Neoliberalizing the Grassroots? Microfinance and the Politics of Development in Nepal Katharine N. Rankin and Yogendra B. Shakya

1

23 25

28

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CONTENTS

Part II Within and between States and Markets: the Role of Intermediaries

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Introduction to Part II

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4 Learning to Compete: Communities of Investment Promotion Practice in the Spread of Global Neoliberalism Nicholas A. Phelps, Marcus Power, and Roseline Wanjiru 5 Temporary Staffing, ‘‘Geographies of Circulation,’’ and the Business of Delivering Neoliberalization Kevin Ward

83

110

6 Neoliberalizing Argentina? Pete North

137

Part III States and Subjectivities

163

Introduction to Part III

165

7 Neoliberalizing Home Care: Managed Competition and Restructuring Home Care in Ontario Kim England, Joan Eakin, Denise Gastaldo, and Patricia McKeever 8 Spatializing Neoliberalism: Articulations, Recapitulations, and (a Very Few) Alternatives Catherine Kingfisher 9 Co-constituting ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’: Political Projects and Globalizing Governmentalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand Wendy Larner, Richard Le Heron, and Nicholas Lewis

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195

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10 Conclusion: Reflections on Neoliberalizations Kim England and Kevin Ward

248

Bibliography

263

Index

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Figures

Figure 3.1 Recent regulatory and programmatic changes in Nepal’s rural financial sector Figure 5.1 CIETT’s member federations

65 125

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Plates

Plate 3.1 A microfinance ‘‘centre meeting’’ where rural women receive micro-loans and disciplinary training in banking and self-reliance, Deuri Village, Nepal, 2002

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Plate 3.2 Homogeneous micro enterprises? Residents of Deuri village (including microfinance clients) selling processed grain products in the weekly open market, Deuri Village, Nepal, 2002

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Plate 4.1 Raffles City Tower – home to the Singapore Economic Development Board

101

Plate 4.2 National Bank of Kenya Building – home to the Investment Promotion Centre, Kenya

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Plate 5.1 Staffing companies: the agents of new economy assets

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Plate 5.2 2003 Executive forum

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Plate 5.3 IT services summit

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Plate 5.4 Healthcare summit

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Plate 6.1 Pickets mass to defend the Bruckman occupied factory, Buenos Aires, March 2003

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Plate 6.2 A memorial to the ‘‘disappeared,’’ San Telmo, Buenos Aires

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Plate 7.1 Personal support worker helping with the basic activities of daily living

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Plate 7.2 Quality of care versus cost-saving

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Tables

Table 1.1 From philosophy to practices: details of neoliberalism Table 3.1 Institutional (re)configuration of the financial sector of Nepal

4 56

Table 5.1 CIETT’s imagining of the global market for temporary staffing

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Table 6.1 A short history of Argentina’s political economy

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Contributors

Mark Beeson: Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of York, England (formerly Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of Queensland, Australia). His research interests center on the political economy of East Asia. He is the author of Regionalism, Globalisation and East Asia: Politics, Security and Economic Development (Palgrave, 2006). He is also the editor of Contemporary Southeast Asia: Regional Dynamics, National Differences (Palgrave, 2004), and Bush and Asia: America’s Evolving Relations with East Asia (Routledge Curzon, 2006). Joan Eakin: Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include the sociological dimensions of work-related health and safety, prevention and rehabilitation, and qualitative research methodology. Her recent research on provincial return-to-work policy has been transformed into a satirical theater production, Easy Money (described in Moving Population and Public Health Knowledge into Action: A Casebook of Knowledge Translation Stories. Ottawa: Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2006). Kim England: Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington, USA. Her research interests focus on local labor markets and women’s paid employment, caring labor, the home as a paid workplace (foreign domestic workers and paid home health care workers), and politics and ethics of fieldwork. She is the editor of Who Will Mind the Baby? Geographies of Child-Care and Working Mothers (Routledge, 1996).


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CONTRIBUTORS

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Denise Gastaldo: Associate Professor, Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests consider gender, health promotion, power relations in health care, international health, and critical social theory. She is the co-editor of Paradigmas y disenõs de investigacioń cualitativa en salud. Una antologıá iberoamericana [Paradigms and designs in qualitative health research: An Ibero-American anthology] (Universidad de Guadalajara Press, 2002). Catherine Kingfisher: Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Lethbridge, Canada. Her research interests include personhood, neoliberalism as a cultural system, poverty policy, and language and discourse. She is currently researching the impact of the New Zealand Experiment on southern Alberta. She is editor of Western Welfare in Decline: Globalization and Women’s Poverty (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) and author of Women in the American Welfare Trap (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Wendy Larner: Professor of Human Geography and Sociology, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, England. Her research interests include political economy, governmentality, economic geography, and social policy. She is co-editor (with William Walters) of Global Governmentality: New Perspectives on International Rule (Routledge, 2004), and author of a wide range of journal articles and book chapters. Richard Le Heron: Professor of Geography in the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has recently co-edited books on Knowledge, Industry and Environment (Ashgate, 2002) and New Economic Spaces: New Economic Geographies (Ashgate, 2005). His research interests include the geographies of agri-food regulation, governance and governmentality, and the development of socio-scientific knowledge in the context of globalizing economic processes. Nicholas Lewis: Lecturer in the School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Recent research examines industry-scale governance and projects of industry creation in New Zealand. He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship exploring these themes in the wine, fashion, and export education industries. He has particular interests in how industries are mobilized in neoliberal programs of government and in the promotion of the new economy.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Patricia McKeever: Professor, Faculty of Nursing, and Co-director of the Health Care, Technology, and Place Training Program, University of Toronto, Canada. A health sociologist, her research interests focus on children who have disabilities or chronic illnesses and the places where they receive health and social support services. She has written on a range of topics that focus on home care and children with disabilities. Pete North: Lecturer in the Department of Geography, University of Liverpool, England. His research interests focus on social movements and localization as a challenge to globalization. He is the author of Alternative Currencies as a Challenge to Globalisation? (Ashgate, 2006) and Money and Liberation: The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements (University of Minnesota, 2007). Nick Phelps: Reader in the Department of Geography, Southampton University, England. His research interests cover issues relating to multinational enterprise and economic development, the political economy of inward investment attraction, and the political economy of edge urban development. He is co-editor (with P. Raines) of The New Competition for Inward Investment (Edward Elgar, 2003) and co-author (with N. Parsons, D. Ballas, and A. Dowling) of Post-Suburban Europe Planning and Politics at the Margins of Europe’s Capital Cities (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2006). Marcus Power: Lecturer in the Department of Geography, Durham University, England. His research interests include geographies of (post)development, post-colonialism and geopolitics, audiovisual geographies, and the politics of cultural identity and post-socialist transformations in Southern Africa. He is the author of Re-thinking Development Geographies (Routledge, 2003). Katharine N. Rankin: Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Program in Planning, University of Toronto, Canada. Her broad research interests include feminist perspectives on development, comparative market regulation, financial restructuring, planning history and theory, South Asia. She is the author of The Cultural Politics of Markets: Economic Liberalization and Social Change in Nepal (Pluto Press and the University of Toronto Press, 2004). Yogendra B. Shakya: Research and Evaluation Coordinator, Access Alliance Multicultural Community Health Centre, Canada. His research addresses development politics, rural credit reform, gender planning, and immigrant issues.


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Roseline Wanjiru: Doctoral Student, School of Geography, University of Leeds, England. Her research focuses on the current problems and prospects of the clothing and textile industry in Kenya. Kevin Ward: Reader in Geography, School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester, England. Co-author of a number of books including Spaces of Work: Global Capitalism and the Geographies of Labour (with Noel Castree, Neil Coe, and Michael Samers; Sage, 2003), and Managing Employment Change: the New Realities of Work (with Huw Beynon, Damian Grimshaw, and Jill Rubery; Oxford, 2002) and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. His research interests focus on state spatiality, the politics of urban development and social reproduction, and labor market restructuring.

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Preface

Were you in New Orleans in March 2003, at that year’s Association of American Geographers (AAG) conference? Or perhaps you were in Philadelphia in March 2004, Denver in March 2005, or Chicago in March 2006, at those years’ Association of American Geographers conferences? If you were at any of these events you might have been struck by the large number of panels and paper sessions that were organized on or around the theme of ‘‘neoliberalism.’’ The same could be said about the last few conferences of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers. Academics working on issues that, on first glance at least, seemed largely unconnected, such as the restructuring of the UK healthcare sector and the policies pursued in the name of ‘‘development’’ in South West Mexico, have suddenly found themselves part of a much larger conversation, one that some at least have found deeply problematic (Castree 2006). No one appears to have been immune. The great and the good, those gatekeepers of the discipline, faculty and postgraduates alike, have set about analyzing, dissecting, and unpacking the term, and what it might mean for their own area of expertise. Reflecting on her attendance at just such a panel at the 2003 AAG, Wendy Larner (2003: 509) asked, ‘‘what was this thing called neoliberalism that everyone was talking about?’’ Uncomfortable with how the term was being used, she cautioned those working on its further explication to take care. She contended, referencing similar concerns voiced by Gibson-Graham (1996) over the conversations and discussions around the term ‘‘globalization,’’ that those who talked and wrote about neoliberalism risked naturalizing ‘‘it.’’ To avoid this, which was both intellectually and politically imperative, Larner (2003: 512) pleaded that those of us working

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on its excavation and refinement should ‘‘overcome the fear and hopelessness generated by monolithic accounts of the ‘neoliberal’ project.’’ In areas such as cultural geography, development studies, political ecology, and urban political economy, between which there have not always been too many conversations in the past, suddenly there was common ground. Neoliberalism brought together those of us – and we include ourselves – working in apparently, at least on face value, different areas of the discipline. And, of course, reflective of the times in which we live and work, the dialogue over neoliberalism was transdisciplinary. It involved geographers engaging with work produced in cognate disciplines, such as anthropology, economics, gender studies, planning, political science, and sociology. It was in this academic context that the two of us were thrown together. We met, for the first time, in May 2002, at a Worldwide Universities Network workshop on neoliberalism, organized by Jamie Peck of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Adam Tickell of the University of Bristol. This event took place against the backdrop of the quintessential English university town of Bristol, a setting that provided a fine context in which to mix academic and social performances. The workshop brought together a range of different types of geographers and geographies. The focus was on exploring the possibility that some of us might begin collaborating on understanding the different aspects of neoliberalism. We are not sure what else came out of this twoday event, but after jointly chairing a session, at the request of the organizers, we continued our dialogue for some months, and decided to organize a panel session at the 2003 AAG – one we guess that might have prompted Wendy Larner’s (2003) editorial! After this our conversations continued. At this time, much of the human geography work on neoliberalism that can now be seen had not yet appeared. We had to look outside the discipline for guidance, primarily to anthropologists, development economists, political scientists, and sociologists. Four of these guides – political scientist Mark Beeson, sociologist Wendy Larner, anthropologist Catherine Kingfisher, and anthropologist/planner Katharine Rankin – agreed to become involved in our book. We met again in September 2003 at the annual conference of the RGSIBG, and confirmed a book plan and structure. We finally landed our contract with the Antipode Book Series at Blackwell in the autumn of 2004. Of course, since we began this academic conversation the work published, in human geography and beyond, on neoliberalism and neoliberalization has grown tremendously. It seems at times that it is almost impossible to pick up a copy of a geography journal without at least one


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article making reference to neoliberalism or neoliberalization. In addition to standalone pieces, there have also been a number of special editions of geography journals on aspects of neoliberalism, such as what it has meant to practicing development professionals (Bondi and Laurie 2005), for our understandings of nature and the environment (McCarthy and Prudham 2004), and for the state of economy and society in South and Latin America (Perreault and Martin 2005). This is in addition to the first systematic foray into analyzing neoliberalism geographically, where the emphasis was on urban and regional state formations in Western Europe and North America (Brenner and Theodore 2002a). At the same time, those working on unpacking neoliberalism from outside of human geography have continued to pursue a set of interrelated interests. A couple of examples will suffice. Political scientists and sociologists have explored neoliberalism in the context of other related debates, such as those over the path dependency of state for nations, economic and political growth trajectories, and the interrelationship between citizen, gender, governmentality, and power. During the three months over which we wrote this preface, never mind the introduction and conclusions, as we passed versions between our two e-mail boxes, so we incorporated more into our arguments, and associated bibliographies. Of course, the growth of work on neoliberalism and neoliberalization, as it perhaps expands in a manner not too dissimilar to the processes that it seeks to explain, makes our job as editors both harder and easier: harder because we now have to engage with all the work that has been published in the past few years, from different theoretical standpoints, using different methods in different parts of the world. Not wishing to impose structure and coherence where none exist, nevertheless, summarizing the state of research in this rapidly expanding and diversifying field has proved a challenge. Easier, of course, because there is now more written on the subject, which means we have a richer set of work upon which to draw. There is, of course, also more disagreement over what is meant by the term ‘‘neoliberalism’’ and how best to conceptualize and to study ‘‘it,’’ if we can even think of ‘‘it’’ as an ‘‘it.’’ Is it a cultural, economic, political, or social formation, or all four? Is it a hegemonic project? Is it a set of governmental technologies? Or is it a set of experiments, without common objective, largely disconnected, and malleable in the extreme? Does it constitute less, more, or a new form of state regulation? Do those working out of the political economy tradition, who stress governance, or those working out of the governmentality tradition and drawing on the work of Foucault, offer the best way of analyzing neoliberalism? Or is some theoretical rapprochement between these two epistemologically,

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methodologically, and theoretically different approaches possible, and desirable? The contributing authors to this edited collection try, in their own ways, to address some of these issues, as well as dealing with other intellectual challenges they set themselves during the course of their own chapters. They do so from different theoretical vantage points, writing about different parts of the world, often using different methodologies to write about neoliberalism. For one of the referees of this collection this ‘‘difference’’ was a problem. For others, however, this ‘‘difference’’ was a positive feature of the proposal. Perhaps not surprisingly, we err on the side of the latter. In the producing of the collection we have accrued some intellectual debts, and it is time to acknowledge these. Thank you to the four referees who commented on the collection proposal. Together with the authors we have done our best to attend to your concerns. Three of you gave the proposal the ‘‘thumbs up.’’ One of you didn’t. We hope that in reading the finished product we convinced three of you that you were right and one of you that you were wrong. Noel Castree, as the editor of the Antipode Book Series, and then of the journal itself, supported its conception and oversaw its delivery. At the same time he too was drawn to intervene, to set out his thinking on neoliberalism and neoliberalization. Throughout the writing of the book he has done what all good editors – and overworked academics – do: stayed out of the way. Thanks Noel! Jacqueline Scott at Blackwell did a great job of encouraging us to submit without applying too much pressure, so thanks to her and her colleagues, Angela Cohen and Arnette Abel, all of whom have been admirably thorough and patient throughout the production process. It was important to both of us to publish as part of the Antipode Book Series. As the home for radical geography, the journal has published a lot of the work by geographers on neoliberalism. It was our hope that this collection would continue this intellectual lineage, and that once published it would sit comfortably alongside other books recently produced on the subject. The authors are also due our thanks. All have been a joy to work with. They commented on each others’ chapters in a positive and engaging manner, making the production of this volume a truly collective endeavor. We hope they like the final product. Closer to home, our debts largely lie with our respective family members. For Kim the thanks go to Mark and to her son Owen; for Kevin the thanks go to Colette and to his son Jack. All four in their own ways offered advice, encouragement, and support. And Kim’s parents, Mariel and Stan, provided excellent editing assistance. As feminist economist Nancy Folbre (2001: xii) comments, ‘‘the invisible hand of the market depends on the invisible heart of care.’’

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1 Introduction: Reading Neoliberalization Kevin Ward and Kim England Ideologically, the novelty of the present situation stands out in historical view. It can be put like this. For the first time since the Reformation there are no longer any significant oppositions – that is systematic rival outlooks – within the thought-world of the West; and scarcely any on a world scale either . . . What limitations persist to its practice, neo-liberalism as a set of principles rules undivided across the globe; the most successful ideology in world history (Anderson 2000a: 17). The dilemma we all face as citizens is that, with few exceptions here and there . . . neo-liberalism has swallowed up the world in its clutches, with grave consequences for democracy and the physical environment that can be neither underestimated nor dismissed (Said 2000: 1). There has everywhere been an emphatic turn towards neo-liberalism in political-economic practices and thinking since the 1970s (Harvey 2005: 2).

Perry Anderson, Edward Said, and David Harvey. Three of the most well-regarded social scientists of their generation. Each has written about the origins, rise, and consequences of neoliberalism for different parts of the world. Tying it into wider discussions of globalization, American Imperialism, imperial hegemony, and Empire, these three public standard bearers of the Left have each provided insightful accounts of the current phase of capitalism. Was this convergence by three eminent thinkers not enough to get most scholars (those for whom this book is the primary, but hopefully not the exclusive audience) interested in neoliberalism, then surely the changes under way around


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us should be. Rising inequalities of different types of capital – cultural, economic, environmental, social, and political – between as well within nations are frequently cited as tangible indicators of the imprint of neoliberalization. Wounds run deep and provide points of connection and alliances across space, across particular issues, even across perhaps otherwise disparate social groups, in ways that undermine the claims of those who remain committed to Margaret Thatcher’s famous assertion ‘‘there is no alternative’’ (TINA) (MacEwan 1999; Harvey 2005). Neoliberalism as a ‘‘radical-theoretical slogan’’ (Peck 2004: 403) might have its limits, but it does serve to unite. It offers a reference point, against which those who oppose it can define themselves, as Harvey (2006) has argued, for example as in the ‘‘another world is possible’’ maxim of the anti-capitalist-globalization movement, initially coined by the World Social Forum to capture its commitment to build alternatives to the free-market economics espoused by the World Economic Forum. As Susan George (2001: 4) put it (referring to Davos, Switzerland where the WEF meets annually): ‘‘Homo davosiensis wants all the resources, all the wealth, all the power and all the freedom to extend his ascendancy across time and space’’ (see Beneria 1999, for a feminist analysis of the Davos man). Neoliberalism – in spirit if not in words – also binds together those with a stake in its continued reproduction. Government ministers, venture capitalists, the chief executives of multinationals, the largest owners of the media, the officials in international institutions: all are involved in practicing neoliberalization (Bourdieu 1998; Harvey 2006). The consequences of the actions of the ‘‘transnational capital class,’’ as Leslie Skair (2000) terms them, can be seen around the world: on the streets of the poorest cities of the global South, in the former coalmines of Eastern Europe, and in the Latin American rural villages decimated economically by the slump in the global price of coffee. And yet, it remains politically important to constantly draw attention to the links between those in positions of power and the inequalities witnessed in geographically dispersed yet socially interconnected areas of the world. Neoliberalism does appear to have become the ubiquitous political commonsense condition of recent years – used in all but name on the Right and used quite deliberately by those on the Left. Its widespread usage has led the sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Loı¨s Wacquant (2001) to describe neoliberalism as a new ‘‘planetary vulgate.’’ Certainly now more is known about the personalities, the places, and the institutions involved in the transformation of neoliberalism from the ‘‘abstract intellectualism of Hayek and Friedman to the state-authored restructuring



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projects of Thatcher and Reagan’’ (Peck and Tickell 2002: 41) and beyond, to what many consider, despite the protestations of Anthony Giddens (2000), to be neoliberalism with a friendly face – the Third Way of Britain’s Tony Blair, Gerhard Schro¨der in Germany, Australia’s Mark Latham, and Ricardo Lagos in Chile (see Larner, Le Heron, and Lewis, this volume, for a discussion of the Third Way in New Zealand). These developments suggested to us that the current moment provides an opportunity to take stock of what is known about neoliberalism in its many geographical configurations, to examine differences and similarities between how neoliberalism has been introduced, resisted, and challenged in particular contexts. And in turn, it offers the possibilities of reflecting on the meaning and usefulness of grand abstractions, such as ‘‘neoliberalism.’’ The two of us thought this would be a worthwhile exercise, in both political and intellectual terms. As the book’s title indicates, we make a distinction between neoliberalism as an end-state and neoliberalization as a process, consisting of a multiplicity of openings and closures. Adam Tickell and Jamie Peck (2003: 165) describe neoliberalization as being ‘‘contradictory, having the capacity to bring forth countertendencies, and as existing in historically and contingent forms . . . analyses of this process should properly focus on change – on systems and logics, dominant patterns of restructuring and so forth – rather than on binary and/or static comparisons between a past state and its erstwhile successor.’’ This collection, then, is intended to expose neoliberalization in all its variants, all its guises, all its hybrid formations, in all its subject-forming strands. Increasingly, standard textbook definitions of neoliberalism are not hard to find, nor are accounts of how ‘‘it’’ went from the ideological wilderness to the political mainstream (see our summary in Table 1.1). Most writers refer to it as an economic and political orthodoxy marked by commitments to policies of free trade, privatization, deregulation, and welfare state retrenchment (MacEwan 1999; Peet and Hartwick 1999; Campbell and Pedersen 2001; Brenner and Theodore 2002a; Peck and Tickell 2002; Harvey 2005). The majority of accounts of the emergence of neoliberalism tend to focus on the reforms delivered by University of Chicago-educated economists in Latin America; or detail the structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There are of course exceptions, such as the account offered by Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004). He documents the reforms pursued in the American South as a means of offering an alternative account of the rise of neoliberalism. As he puts it, ‘‘the material matrix of real neo-liberalism is the American South . . . The Chicago School provided


Table 1.1


From philosophy to practices: details of neoliberalism

. A new expansion in time and space of the market: although there has been a global-scale market economy for centuries, neoliberals find new areas of marketization. This illustrates how neoliberalism differs from classic market liberalism. Adam Smith would not have believed that a free market was less of a free market because the shops are closed in the middle of the night: expansion of trading hours is a typically neoliberal policy. For neoliberals a 23-hour economy is already unjustifiable: nothing less than a 24-hour economy will satisfy them. They constantly expand the market at its margins. . The emphasis on property, in classic and market liberalism, has been replaced by an emphasis on contracts. In the time of Adam Smith, property conferred status in itself: he would find it strange that entrepreneurs sometimes own no fixed assets, and lease the means of production. . Contract maximalization is typically neoliberal: the privatization of the British railway network, formerly run by one state-owned company, led to 30,000 new contracts; most of these were probably generated by splitting services, which could have been included in block contracts. (A fanatic neoliberal would prefer not to buy a cup of coffee, but negotiate separately for each microliter.) . The contract period is reduced, especially in the labor market, and so the frequency of contract change is increased. A service contract, for instance for office cleaning, might be reduced from a one-year to a three-month contract, then to a one-month contract. Contracts of employment are shorter and shorter, in effect forcing the employee to reapply for the job. This flexibilization means a qualitatively different working life: many more job applications spread throughout the working life. This was historically the norm in agriculture – day labor – but long-term labor contracts became standard after industrialization. . Intensifying assessment, a development especially visible on the labor market, also intensifies market forces. Even within a contract period, an employee will be subject to continuous assessment. The use of specialized software in call centers has provided some extreme examples: the time employees spend at the toilet is measured in seconds: this information is used to pressure the employee to spend less time away from the terminal. Firms with contracts are also increasingly subject to continuous assessment procedures, made possible by information technology. For instance, courier services use tracking software and GPS technology to allow customers to locate their packages in transit. This is a typical example of the new hyper-provision of business information in neoliberal economies. . New transaction-intensive markets are created on the model of the stock exchanges – electricity exchanges, telephone-minute exchanges. Typical for neoliberalism: there is no relationship between the growth in the number of transactions and the underlying production. . New forms of auction are another method of creating transaction-intensive markets. Radio frequency auctions are an example. They replaced previous methods of allocation, especially licensing – a traditional method of allocating (Continued )


Table 1.1

.

.

.

.

.

.


(Continued )

access to scarce goods with no clear private owner. The complex forms of frequency spectrum auctions have only been developed in the past few years. Neoliberals now see them as the only valid method of making such allocations: they dismiss all other methods as ‘‘beauty contests.’’ Artificial transactions are created, to increase the number and intensity of transactions. Large-scale derivative trading is a typically neoliberal phenomenon, although financial derivatives have existed for centuries. It is possible to trade options on shares: but it is also possible to create options on these options. This accumulation of transaction on transaction is characteristic of neoliberalism. New derivatives are created to be traded on the new exchanges – such as ‘‘electricity futures.’’ There is no limit to this expansion, except computer power, which grows rapidly anyway. Automated trading, and the creation of virtual market-like structures, is neoliberal in the sense that they are an intensification of ‘‘transaction for transaction’s sake.’’ This expansion of interactivity means that neoliberal societies are network societies, rather than the ‘‘open societies’’ of classic liberals. Formal equality and ‘‘access’’ are not enough for neoliberals: networks must be used to create links to other members of the society. This attitude has been accurately labeled ‘‘connectionist.’’ Because of contract expansionism, transaction costs play an increasing role in the neoliberal economy. For instance, all those 30,000 contracts at British Rail had to be drafted by lawyers, all the assessments had to be done by assessors. There is always some cost of competition, which increases as the intensity of transactions increases. Neoliberalism has reached the point where these costs threaten to overwhelm the existing economy, destroying any economic gains from technological change, although this does not mean the system won’t survive, but merely that another solution will need to be found. The growth of the financial services sector is related to these neoliberal characteristics, rather than to any inherent shift to service economies. The entire sector is itself a transaction cost: it was almost nonexistent in the centrally planned economies. In turn, it has created a huge demand for office space in the world’s financial centers. The expansion of the sector and its office employment are in direct contradiction of propaganda about ‘‘more efficiency and less bureaucracy’’ in the free market. The speed of trading is increased. Online market data is expensive, yet it is now available free with a 15-minute delay. The markets move so fast that the data is worthless after 15 minutes: the companies can then give it away, as a form of advertising. Day-traders buy and sell shares in minutes. Automated trading programs, where the computer is linked direct to the stock exchange system, do it in seconds, or less. It is this increased speed that has led to the huge nominal trading volumes on the international currency markets, many times the gross world product on a yearly basis. (Continued )


6 Table 1.1



(Continued )

. Certain functions arise which exist only inside a neoliberal free market – ‘‘derivative professions.’’ A good example is the profession of psychologicaltest coach. The intensity of assessment has increased, and firms now regularly use psychological tests to select candidates, even for intermediate-level jobs. So ambitious candidates pay to be trained how to pass these psychological tests. Competition in the neoliberal labor market itself creates the market for this service. . The creation of sub-markets, typically within an enterprise. Subcontracting is itself an old market practice, but was usually outside the firm. It is now standard practice for large companies to create competition among their constituent units. This practice is also capable of quasi-infinite extension, and its promotion is characteristic of neoliberalism. A few companies even required each individual employee to register as a business, and to compete with each other at the place of work. A large company can form literally millions of holdings, alliances, and joint ventures, using such one-person firms as building blocks. . Supplier maximalization: this extends the range of enterprises that compete for each contract. The ideal would be that every enterprise competes for every contract offered, maximizing competition and market forces. In the case of the labor market, the neoliberal ideal is the absolutely flexible and employable employee, who can (and does) apply for every vacancy. In reality, an individual cannot perform every kind of work – but there is a real development toward non-specialized enterprises, especially in the producer services sector. In neoliberalism, instead of the traditional ‘‘steel tycoon’’ or ‘‘newspaper baron’’ there are enterprises which ‘‘globally link people and knowledge, and cultures’’ or ‘‘advise and implement solutions to management issues.’’ Source: Treanor (2005: np)

an economic rationale and intellectual gloss to what was, and remains for the majority, a backward, conservative and impoverished economic condition’’ (Nederveen Pieterse 2004: 2). And then, of course, there are other accounts that argue for multiple developments and trajectories, in geographically discrete but increasingly interconnected places, in which the origins of neoliberalism cannot be reduced to the mere exporting of policies and programs from the US ‘‘diffusion centers’’ of New York and Washington (Wacquant 1999). Despite these differences in the accounts of what we might think of as the historical geographies of neoliberalism (Peck and Tickell 2002; Harvey 2005), there is some agreement over baseline definitions, at least regarding the philosophical and programmatic underpinnings of neoliberalism (see, for example, the well-known and frequently cited pieces by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia 1997; and Susan George 2001).




7

Based on the Ricardian notion that countries, cities, and regions prosper when they specialize in producing goods and services for which they have the greatest comparative advantage, neoliberalism is ‘‘the doctrine that economic growth is maximized when movement of goods, services and capital, but not labor, are un-impeded by government regulations’’ (Peet 2001: 330, summarizing MacEwan 1999). We accept that this is a rather abstract definition, and, for instance, does not explicitly address issues such as the cutting of public expenditures on social services, the elimination of the concept of ‘‘public goods,’’ and the restructuring of the welfare state. However, these sorts of basic definitions are a useful starting point even if they seem more appropriately the stuff of neoclassical economic textbooks than of the empirical-cum-theoretical explications of contemporary neoliberalization. Remaining for the moment in the wholly abstract, neoliberalism, with its deepest roots in Adam Smith and newer roots in the work of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, also has clear philosophical underpinnings. For instance: Neo-liberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs (Treanor 2005: np).

Of course, in its translation into actually existing neoliberalism (Brenner and Theodore 2002a; K. Mitchell 2004) this philosophy becomes something ‘‘more complex, diverse, contested and open to interpretation than is often recognized’’ (Campbell and Pederson 2001: 3). Moreover, we agree with the political scientists Deborah Johnston and Alfredo Saad-Filho’s (2005: 1) contention that ‘‘[n]eoliberalism straddles a wide range of social, political, and economic phenomena at different levels of complexity’’ (see Table 1.1; see also Peet and Hartwick 1999). In Table 1.1 we detail the foundational principles underscoring efforts to intensify and expand the market, by increasing the number, frequency, repeatability, and formalization of transactions (Harvey 2005). For many of us this is the stuff of dry textbooks. We recognize it, though, when the philosophy is translated into policy, in the form of the ‘‘liberalization,’’ the ‘‘privatization,’’ and the ‘‘re-regulation’’ of markets. The way these policies are restructured requires increased auditing and


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evaluating – in other words, the mundane practices that Larner (2003) writes about, and these are as important in the becoming and accomplishment of neoliberalization (see Ward, this volume). There is evidence of this all around the world. The details are important and may suggest differences, but there are also similarities, discursively and materially, in the ‘‘restructuring’’ of markets for currency, energy, public services, transportation, and so on. These ‘‘neo-liberal policy fixes’’ (Peck 2001a: 448), while subject to critical scrutiny on their own terms, have only just begun to be elements in a wider study of the ‘‘pervasive metalogic’’ (Peck and Tickell 2002: 36) that appears to be at work. Once we move away from these basic philosophical and programmatic definitions of neoliberalism it becomes much harder to find definitional consensus (a theme we pick up later in this chapter and one explored by a number of the contributors). There almost appears to be an inverse relationship between the volume of scholarship produced on neoliberalism and the agreement over exactly what it means! Perhaps this is not that surprising. As academics from a range of social science disciplines (and increasingly the humanities) have pushed, prodded, and cajoled, asking the term ‘‘neoliberalism’’ to do more work for them, so we have become more attuned to its vagaries, its variations, its multiples. At the same time as the empirical gaze of geographers has widened to include analyses of neoliberalism and, for example, cities (Brenner and Theodore 2002b; N. Smith 2002; Hackworth 2004; L. Smith 2004; Leitner, Peck, and Sheppard 2006), citizenship (K. Mitchell 2004), development (Rankin 2004; Bondi and Laurie 2005), nature (Mansfield 2004; McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Bakker 2005), and sexuality (Hubbard 2004), so there has been a parallel movement around decoding the various meanings and understandings of neoliberalism. In particular, critical human geographers, including contributors to this collection, have already provided a series of geographically attuned accounts of the historical geographies of neoliberalism and, in doing so, have challenged a range of assumptions over the meanings of, and relations between, ‘‘cores’’ and ‘‘peripheries,’’ ‘‘north’’ and ‘‘south,’’ ‘‘center’’ and ‘‘margins’’ (for example, M. Power 2003; Rankin 2004; also see Rankin and Shakya, and Phelps, Power, and Wanjiru in this volume). These insights trouble otherwise excellent analyses in which space, place, and, particularly, geographical relationships are often absent (see, for example, MacEwan’s [1999] otherwise splendid account). Thinking through the nature of the spatial relationships and how the movements of neoliberal ideas, policies, and programs ‘‘do not necessarily flow in the directions expected,’’ Wendy Larner (2003: 510) has




9

argued that ‘‘[d]evelopments in the ‘periphery’ may be as significant, if not more so, as those in the ‘core’ in explaining the spread of neoliberalism.’’ Reflecting on Larner’s methodological and empirical challenge, and other scholarship on geopolitical transformations that troubles ‘‘core/periphery’’ relations, Jamie Peck (2004: 403, original emphasis) seeks to capture a sense of relationality in claiming that ‘‘the state project of neoliberalism was not constructed solely in the global North, nor exclusively in the South, but both.’’ Examining the relational geographies of neoliberalization is one of the central objectives of this edited collection. Our choice of empirical cases reflects this. Thinking relationally about neoliberalization demands that each of the studies be read not as an island of neoliberalism but rather as open and relationally produced (Massey 2005). As we explain in each of the book’s three section prefaces, the examples – cities, regions, nations – in the chapters that follow this one are the products of relations that spread way beyond them. In recognizing the relationality of space we point out an intellectual and a political need to think about connectivities. That is, to build through imaginations and practices a means of resisting the creative destruction of neoliberalism. In terms of this book’s empirical material we can understand the ‘‘in here’’ accounts of East Asia (Beeson, this volume), Nepal (Rankin and Shakya, this volume), Argentina (North, this volume), and Ontario (England, Eakin, Gastaldo, and McKeever, this volume), to name just four, as products of current and past ‘‘in heres’’ from around the world. Distant places are implicated in our ‘‘here,’’ wherever that ‘‘here’’ is, as Massey (2005) argues. We return to this point in the book’s conclusion, in light of the material presented in the chapters. Elsewhere in the social sciences, scholars who provide accounts of what Matt Sparke (2006: 1) calls the big ‘‘N’’ of neoliberalism increasingly stress the role of space, place, and geography. Anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (2002), for example, document the changing state spatialities through detailed ethnographic studies; while economists Ge´rard Dumeńil and Dominique Le´vy (2005: 9) have recently argued that ‘‘neo-liberalism refers to new rules of functioning capitalism, which affect the centre, the periphery, and the relationship between the two.’’ Also demonstrating sensitivity to the importance of space, the international relations scholar Alejandro Cola´s (2005: 75) has demanded that academics of varied disciplinary stripes: identify different moments in the global spread of neoliberal programs, and to distinguish between the various ways in which these policies were


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implemented by states with very different capabilities and locations in the hierarchy of the international system.

To acknowledge the gains to be wrought from dialogues across disciplines, this volume brings together scholars from anthropology, critical health studies, planning, political science, sociology, and of course geography to present a number of particular theoretical and empirical accounts of neoliberalization. This, we hope, makes for a distinctly rich set of individual chapters, each of which, as part of a rigorous ‘‘group’’ analysis, challenges the very usefulness of ‘‘big abstractions’’ such as neoliberalism (Larner 2003; Sparke 2006). Empirically, the book moves away from the UK and the US – the selfproclaimed and often-cited ‘‘first generation’’ centers of neoliberalism’s production and dissemination – to address the peripheries within the ‘‘global North,’’ as well as so-called ‘‘second generation’’ centers in the ‘‘global South,’’ through which the different contributors question the usefulness of these distinctions. Theoretically, this necessitates a dispatching of the binaries and dualisms that permeate much of the literature on the geographies of neoliberalism: to talk of ‘‘North’’ and ‘‘South’’ is to fail to think relationally, to fail to see the uneven development of neoliberalism, both temporally and spatially, as interconnected, and to fail to understand how the spatial categories themselves are in need of explanation and unpacking, as opposed to being a takenfor-granted part of the explanation. As Gillian Hart (2002: 817) argues forcefully: instead of simply reading patterns of path-dependent development off historical legacies, one must focus on ongoing practices, processes and struggles. The past, in this view, is not simply a site of historical explanation, but a terrain of struggle – the meanings of which are mobilized and manipulated by forces contending in the present.

In the third section of this introduction we detail what we mean by neoliberalism before then turning to the book’s three overarching themes – states, networks, peoples – to establish a map for reading the individual chapters. These three themes run throughout the edited collection, appearing in the chapters in the context of particular studies. The book is divided into three sections – ‘‘Mainstream’’ Economic Development and its Alternatives; Within and between State and Markets: the Role of Intermediaries; and States and Subjectivities – so our themes are not used to divide up the book. Rather, the three themes of states, networks, and




11

peoples are important ways of opening up the notion of ‘‘neoliberalization’’ for closer scrutiny. We hope they offer a means of telling similar and connected stories from particular cases. So the organizing of the material in this way is theoretically informed, in that it recognizes the relationality of the places studied in the different chapters. And we don’t understand the terms as mutually exclusive: of course, states are peopled and networks can consist of peoples and states. Finally, the conclusion returns to some of the more abstract issues bound up with any analysis of neoliberalism. Although the contributors to this collection all see some intellectual and perhaps political purchase in using the term, it is nevertheless important that we don’t lose sight of the limits of ‘‘big abstractions,’’ such as neoliberalism, in explaining what are a complex and a differentiated set of tendencies. We believe it is intellectually vital to hold on to what is to be gained in naming economic, cultural, political, and social change as ‘‘neoliberal,’’ while at the same time subjecting the term itself to close critical scrutiny (Barnett 2005; Castree 2006; Sparke 2006).

Neoliberalism: Ideology, Policy and Program, State Form, Governmentality According to James McCarthy and Scott Prudham (2004: 276), ‘‘defining neo-liberalism is no straightforward task.’’ We couldn’t agree more. Neoliberalism has been used in many ways to refer to a whole range of things, outcomes, and processes. The title of this sub-section is intended to suggest the myriad ways that neoliberalism is used in scholarship across the social sciences. Here we outline four different understandings of neoliberalism, picked because they are identified in the various contributions to this book. 1. Neoliberalism as an ideological hegemonic project: This understanding refers to the places and the peoples behind its origins that are involved in its apparent uptake in geographically discrete but socially connected parts of the world. In this work political (and indeed cultural) dominance is exercised through the formation of class-based alliances – elite actors, institutions, and other representatives of capital – at a variety of spatial scales, who produce and circulate a coherent program of ideas and images about the world, its problems, and how these are best solved. All of these are, of course, informed by gendered and racialized power hierarchies.


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Certainly, hegemony is not only about political and economic control; it is also the capacity of the dominant group to project its own way of seeing the world so that those who are subordinated by it accept it as ‘‘common sense,’’ even ‘‘natural.’’ This is not just about imposition, but also about ‘‘willing consent’’ by those being subordinated, so that ‘‘common sense’’ becomes how the subordinate group lives their subordination. From this perspective, for example, it is possible to understand ‘‘globalization’’ as simply the ‘‘international face of neo-liberalism: a worldwide strategy of accumulation and social discipline that doubles up as an imperialist project, spearheaded by the alliance between the US ruling class and locally dominant capitalist coalitions’’ (Johnston and Saad-Filho 2005: 2; see also Meiskins Wood 2003; Harvey 2005, 2006). 2. Neoliberalism as policy and program: This understanding refers to the transfer of ownership from the public to the private sector, and in the process often involves a reworking of what these categories might mean (including what they mean for communities and households often left to fill the gaps, all of which is again over-determined by social relations of difference). It is possible to distinguish between four elements of this use: the context to which the policy is a response, the logic underpinning the policy, the agencies and institutions involved in the doing and evaluation of policy, and the intended audiences for the policy. Generally, policies involve replacing state ownership with private ownership, the logic underpinning this transformation being that transferring ownership to the market creates a more efficient system. Examples include policies pursued under the banners of ‘‘deregulation,’’ ‘‘liberalization,’’ and ‘‘privatization.’’ Those involved in authoring and orchestrating this shift include not just nation-states, but also a whole range of agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, with the audiences international rather than domestic (Cammack 2003). 3. Neoliberalism as state form: This understanding refers to the quantitative and qualitative restructuring of nation-states, involving redrawing the boundary between civil society, market, and state. Conceived of in this way, neoliberalism is the ‘‘rolling back’’ and the ‘‘rolling out’’ (Peck and Tickell 2002) of state formations, with the reconfiguration of the scalar, spatial, and temporal selectivities. According to Peck (2001a: 446), ‘‘the embrace of neoliberalism lead states to denigrate their own capacities and potentialities, to restructure and to cut themselves, to engineer their own ‘reform’




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and downsizing’.’’ This has involved, so the argument goes, a redrawing of where the state starts and stops – its edges – as well as a reorganization of its internal spaces and its institutional architecture (Fourcade-Gourinchas and Babb 2002). The redrawing and reorganization of which, of course, has different implications according to hierarchies of gender, race, and so on. Feminist scholars have exposed the state as a set of gendered (as well as raced, heterosexed, and ableist) institutions with spatialized social practices that differently situate and impact women compared with men (Fraser, 1989; Watson and Pringle 1992; Mitchell, Marston, and Katz 2003). 4. Neoliberalism as governmentality: This understanding refers to the ways in which the relations among and between peoples and things might be imagined, assembled, and translated, to effect coordination at a distance (Larner and Le Heron 2002). Both the economy and the state are involved in the construction of autonomous, responsibilized ‘‘neo-liberal subjects’’ (Rose, 1996). Through ‘‘privatization and personalization, neoliberal govern(mentality) aims at transforming recipients of welfare and social insurance into entrepreneurial subjects, who may be motivated to become responsible for themselves. Such a project of transformation may be based either on a social work model of helping, training, and empowering, or on a police model of governing every aspect of life’’ (Ren 2005: np). In addition, conceiving of neoliberalism as a spatial imaginary, in and through which peoples and places are understood in particular forms and subjects, opens up room to address neoliberalization’s possible regressive and progressive elements. Understanding neoliberalism as a process, as a journey even, involves acknowledging successes and failures, intended and unintended consequences, and that the end results of policies and programs are not defined by design, nor inevitable, but are open to all manner of manipulations. While there is much that distinguishes these four definitions and understandings of neoliberalism, in epistemological, methodological, and ontological terms, there are also points of overlap and of connection. It is in these spaces of engagement that some of the most interesting scholarship is just beginning to be done. For example, the work on the possibilities of a fruitful engagement between political economy and poststructuralism in understanding neoliberalization is suggestive of this, although even this has not been without its critics. To some, these two approaches are irreconcilable. As Clive Barnett (2005: 8) put it:


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They imply different models of the nature of explanatory concepts; different models of causality of determination; different models of social relations and agency; and different normative understandings of political power.

To others, there is more that is positive in this burgeoning engagement around neoliberalization (Larner 2003; Peck 2004). The possibilities of working through epistemological differences as a means of producing ‘‘more grounded accounts of how political-economic transformations are embodied in, mediated by and productive of widely varied political, cultural and economic geographies’’ (Spark 2006: 3) is one that many appear committed to. And so are we. We return to these issues in this book’s conclusion. While we take the view that these two theoretical positions are not entirely commensurable (after all, it is hard not to agree with some of Barnett’s [2005] objections), we hope you will forgive us if for now we take an open stance, one that acknowledges the potential insights that might be generated through bringing into dialogue those on issues of governance and governmentality. If the current political moment is one of ‘‘profound experimentation,’’ as Larner (2003: 512) argues, then we think it is appropriate that we experiment with our own theorizations of neoliberalization. That is certainly the spirit in which this book has been produced.

The Collection: States, Networks, Peoples This collection aims to stress the complexity and contingency of neoliberalism, through examining the processes of its enactment (neoliberalization) rather than the discovery of a regularized form and content. The contributions reflect the multiple and overlapping geographies of neoliberalization. Such a geographical complexity demands a set of contributions that differ in terms of the scale of analysis, the methodologies deployed, the substantive issues explored, and the disciplinary backgrounds of those performing the studies. This is an interdisciplinary volume of chapters, with contributions by anthropologists, critical health studies scholars, geographers, planners, political scientists, and sociologists. The collection consists of studies of ‘‘local’’ experiments and ‘‘global’’ restructurings, and of ‘‘local’’ restructurings and ‘‘global’’ experiments, with chapters troubling the nature of the relationships between the spatial adjectives and the processes that they purport to describe. There are chapters in which ethnographic and semi-structured




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interviews are a central part of the analysis through to those in which the empirical material is gleaned from a close reading of media articles, policy documents, and political speeches. As we have already explained, we emphasize three themes that appear in the individual contributions – states, networks, and peoples. Often the chapters deal with one or more of these themes in the context of their specific geographical or thematic focus.

States Neoliberalization is, if nothing else, a process of state restructuring. Empirical evidence from individual nations, as well as a small but growing number of comparative analyses, speaks to the possibilities of detecting similarities in how different nation-states have been qualitatively reorganized – inside and out – in recent years (O’Neill 1997; Peck 2001a; Jessop 2002a; Brenner, Jessop, Jones, and MacLeod 2003). Although this might once have been understood as a process of state withdrawal and less state intervention, this understanding is increasingly called into question. For instance, John Campbell and Ove Pederson (2001: 3) point out that ‘‘neo-liberalism does not so much involve deregulation as re-regulation of economic activity. . . [and] . . . states are much less incapacitated by the rise of neo-liberalism than is often appreciated . . . states can block, adapt to, mediate, and in some cases even reverse neoliberal tendencies’’ (Campbell and Pederson 2001: 3). This constitutes qualitative rather than quantitative (as in a decline in state functions) restructurings of the state, in which the state is very often the author (Harvey 2004, 2005). This process of restructuring is only made possible through the activities and programs of the states themselves. They are implicated in their own reworking, meaning it is: important to identify different moments in the global spread of neoliberal programs, and to distinguish between the various ways in which these policies were implemented by states with very different capabilities and locations in the hierarchy of the international system (Cola´s 2005: 75, emphasis added).

Moreover, any restructuring is necessarily geographically uneven. ‘‘Roll back’’ and ‘‘roll out’’ neoliberalisms coexist, within and across individual nations (Peck and Tickell 2002). The qualitative restructuring of the relationships that exist between states, civil societies, and markets


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means different things for different groups in the same society. For example, writing about welfare reform and the global feminization of poverty, Catherine Kingfisher (2002: 7) put it thus: while welfare restructuring is often described in terms of a ‘‘shrinking’’ or ‘‘rolling back’’ of the state, shifts in the level of state funding and interference are, in fact, selective, and certain sectors, such as the police or the military – or particular arms of the welfare bureaucracy – may, in fact, expand.

The sort of domestic shift in emphasis under neoliberalization described by Kingfisher is replicated internationally (Peck and Tickell 2002; Cammack 2003; Tickell and Peck 2003; Johnston and Saad-Filho 2005). Kingfisher (2002: 8) goes on to argue that it is vitally important that critical scholars, working on the process of neoliberalization, ‘‘keep the state clearly in view.’’ To fail risks taking at face value the claims of those who would wish to argue that neoliberalization is synonymous with a quantitative reduction in the state. In the context of this argument – and the wealth of empirical evidence tracing the changing role of different national state formations – a number of the chapters in this book document the different ways the process of neoliberalized state restructuring matters. For example, in his chapter on the Argentinean crisis of 2001, Pete North draws attention to the historical role of the state in Argentina, and how its formation always rested on different understandings of its role. Neoliberalism, as introduced through the programs of the International Monetary Fund, closely resembled some already existing practices. Accordingly, to understand where Argentina is today, it is important not to conceptualize neoliberalism as something imposed from outside the country. This may or may not have been the case in other countries in the region (Taylor 2002, 2003), but the ways in which neoliberalization shaped the development trajectory of Argentina reflected a series of compromises between national and regional elites, as well as the influence of international agencies and institutions. In a second example, in their chapter on the provision of home care under the restructuring of the Canadian welfare state, Kim England, Joan Eakin, Denise Gastaldo, and Patricia McKeever explore the introduction of managed competition by the province of Ontario. They show how the material practices of actually existing neoliberalizations are replete with contradictions and unevenness despite the touted smooth delivery seemingly promised by ‘‘fast policy transfer’’ and importing ‘‘best practices.’’




17

In both these chapters the authors reveal the relational geographies at work. The case studies highlight how the past is in the present and how other places are implicated in the accounts.

Networks If neoliberalism is everywhere, as Peck and Tickell (2002) have argued, then how has this been achieved? The second theme running through this edited collection is networks: of ideas, knowledge, technology, trade, money, people, policies, and programs. For instance, as part of the expansion and deepening of neoliberalization, people and states involved in its production and performance have formed policy and practitioner networks that stretch across boundaries and borders. Programs that can be constructed, however tangentially, as ‘‘delivering’’ are often dis-embedded from their particular geographical and institutional context, made mobile, and introduced elsewhere. Running through much of the recent work on neoliberalization has been a concern to explain its apparent appearance in geographically distanced places. This concern unites many of the different theoretical standpoints, out of which work on neoliberalization is being produced. The emphasis is on how ‘‘to constitute, link by link, the long chain of institutions, agents and discursive supports’’ (Wacquant 1999: 321). And Wacquant is not alone in making this plea. Others writing on neoliberalization have argued for a ‘‘more careful tracing of the intellectual, policy and practitioner networks that underpin the global expansion of neo-liberal ideas’’ (Larner 2003: 510), or for the need to ‘‘track actual patterns and processes of neo-liberal restructuring’’ Peck (2004: 396). And outside the academy, the political activist Susan George argues that the omnipresent nature of neoliberalism has been accomplished through ‘‘a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centers, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly’’ (George 2001: 9). Alejandro Cola´s (2005) distinguishes between three international network aspects of the emergence of neoliberalism, in and through which previous conceptualizations of ‘‘core’’ and ‘‘periphery’’ have been reworked. The first he terms the transnational dimension, which he uses to refer to the emergence in the 1970s and 1980s of a trans-Atlantic network of policy makers. Often referred to through the shorthand of the Washington Consensus (Williamson 1994), this network of idea brokers, policy makers, and practitioners advocated a range of economic


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and social policies aimed at liberalizing markets. The second aspect he identifies was the simultaneous undermining in the 1970s of the Left in the global North – the ‘‘core’’ – and of non-capitalist forms of development in the global South – the ‘‘periphery.’’ While the precise details matter and differ from one country to another, it is possible to detail the neoliberalization of governance structures and political systems. And, we would add, the implications of these reforms have been to trouble the very notions of ‘‘core’’ and ‘‘periphery’’ as understood in some traditional geopolitical accounts, supporting our own argument for a relational understanding of neoliberalization. Cola´s’ third international dimension of neoliberalization is the roles played by the international financial institutions (IFI) and the use of structural adjustment programs (known today as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers) in the ‘‘periphery.’’ Acknowledging the important roles played by the ‘‘unholy trinity’’ (Peet et al. 2003) of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the WTO, Cola´s nevertheless reminds us that neoliberalization is not simply something that is imposed on the ‘‘periphery’’ from the ‘‘center.’’ Rather, he argues that ‘‘developing countries are not hapless victims or passive objects of global neoliberalism; they are, like other states, populated by classes and social forces with their own interests and strategies’’ (Cola´s 2005: 78), engaging with neoliberalization with their own ‘‘local’’ agendas and contexts in mind. Echoing the work by Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth (2002) on a range of Latin American states, and Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004) on the US, the emphasis is on the networks within. This is a corrective to those accounts that appear to conceptualize neoliberalism as something that is external and imposed, as if it is a process that is authorless and without origins, springing fully formed and unimpeded from one location to another, with no relational sense of space. In two of the chapters in this collection – those by Katharine Rankin and Yogendra Shakya, and Kim England et al. – the emphasis is on examining the means through which particular policies have ended up being introduced in the way they have, and with the effects they have, in specific places. This process of ‘‘fast policy transfer’’ (Jessop and Peck 2001) means that neoliberalization is actively produced in different places at the same time through the existence of strong diffusion channels and distribution networks. To ensure policies succeed, those involved in the production and reproduction of neoliberalization work hard to normalize it as a means of auditing, evaluating, and measuring success (M. K. Power 1998). Neoliberalism is experienced, performed, and practiced on a day-to-day basis by those who do the care work




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or the development work that authors write about in their chapters, and by the chief executives with whom Kevin Ward spoke in his chapter on the internationalization of the temporary staffing industry. As David Wilson (2004: 773) explains it: ‘‘Neoliberal governance, then, is not prior to situated individuals or collectivities but creations from their ongoing initiatives within deeply textured social and political life.’’ In light of this stance, with neoliberalization understood as something that is produced in and through human actions performed in geographically discrete but deeply intertwined and interconnected places, the possibilities can be opened up for resisting and reworking neoliberalism.

Peoples The third and final theme that runs through the book is that of peoples. Neoliberalization is an embodied process. Indeed, a large number of differently located bodies, socially and spatially, are involved in the production and promotion of neoliberalization. Neoliberalization from this perspective includes understanding it as purposefully embodying the seemingly insulated domain of elites – corporate managers, policy makers, and politicians – and authorless conventions and documents, all of which apparently flow around the world unimpeded. It also underscores how different kinds of bodies are involved in, and are constitutive of, matters of micro-political struggle. Humans and nonhumans make up the networks in and through which neoliberalization is diffused, as new technologies make communication from one part of the world to another easier (Larner 2003), opening up the space for both ‘‘progressive’’ and ‘‘regressive’’ pursuits in relation to neoliberalization, as, for example, in the case of the World Social Forum. Moreover, Majone (1989) contends that ‘‘rule intermediaries’’ – analysts, consultants, and speculators who make sense of new political orthodoxies – often do so while hiding behind the construction of the economically rational actor, be it a person, a city, or a nation-state. These bodies can also be understood as citizens and as subjects (neoliberal subjects even), especially through the work that has sought to understand neoliberalization through the lens of governmentality (Kingfisher 2002; Ren 2005; Sim 2005). In their chapter in this book, Wendy Larner, Richard Le Heron, and Nicholas Lewis challenge the coherence of the neoliberal project, arguing that any accomplishment of subject-formation occurs through a diverse series of political projects which have not, and may


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not, coalesce into a coherent, integrated political settlement comparable to the postwar Keynesian Welfare State. In his chapter, Kevin Ward documents the roles played by senior executives of the largest temporary staffing agencies, and the trade industries that represent their interests, in the making of flexible labor market norms. Other chapters also document the embodied nature of neoliberalization, from Catherine Kingfisher on the homeless Aboriginal men of Woodridge’s downtown who become, in eyes of those who would deliver neoliberalism, out of place, to the investment promotion officials in Nick Phelps, Marcus Power, and Rosaline Wanjiru’s chapter involved in the competition for foreign direct investment (FDI). While it is possible to identify a range of different bodies involved in neoliberalization, some ‘‘matter’’ more than others, because they have greater ‘‘wiggle room’’ due to a range of macro and structural factors, and have more resources – cultural, economic, social, etc. – on which to draw. Bourdieu (1998: 2) argues: The . . . [neo-liberal] programme draws its social power from the political and economic power of those whose interests it expresses: stockholders, financial operators, industrialists, conservative or social democratic politicians.

Outside of this elite cadre, this Homo davosiensis, these state officials and multinational managers, are all the low-paid service workers (who are disproportionately women and racialized minorities) and child laborers who bring the political project to life, to make it real. In some cases the task at hand is to challenge neoliberalism, to question the very existence and inevitability of neoliberalization. In other situations, such as those outlined in Pete North’s chapter, the emphasis is on working within neoliberalization, through the pursuit of different types of economic and social strategies. In North’s case, community and workplace resources have been used to envision a version of the future that is constrained neither by neoliberalization nor by having to be couched as its alternative. Instead, the groups have attempted to realize their future through strategies such as non-monetary exchanges and progressive coalitions.

Conclusions [N]eoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time (McChesney 1999: 7).




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In recent years there has been an upsurge of work in human geography on neoliberalization. Working on a whole range of substantive areas – citizenship, crime, labor markets, migration, the environment, urban redevelopment, welfare reform – and from across the spectrum of epistemological and methodological stances, geographers have set about writing about neoliberalization. For some, the challenge has been to reveal the etymology of the word: its histories and its geographies. Others have sought to unpack it, to consider whether it should be regarded as something that does the explaining (an explanatory concept) or that needs explaining (descriptive concept) (Barnett 2005). For others still, the focus has been on exploring its policy and programmatic implications. In these examples, and there are many, and no doubt there are more still to come, studies of environmental politics or urban renewal, for example, are useful on their own terms as well as saying something about the wider neoliberalization processes. While some raise concerns about the value of this work (Barnett 2005; Castree 2006), it is nevertheless prevalent in human geography, and in cognate disciplines, and in many cases the insights that have been wrung out of single or multiple cases have deepened our understandings of the wider system of which they are part. In this introduction we have attempted to establish the basis for the rest of the book, providing the reader with some signposts of what to look for in, and among, the specifics of individual chapters. From this overview we hope it is clear that once we move away from the most basic of definitions there is very little agreement over (i) what is meant by ‘‘neoliberalism’’; (ii) what status ‘‘neoliberalism’’ has in the intellectual vocabulary; and (iii) what extra conceptual purchase academics gain when using the term ‘‘neoliberalism.’’ As we have worked on this collection it has become clear to us that as the use of the term escalates, so do the number of ways it is used and the meanings invested in it. For some (Larner 2003; Castree 2006), this proliferation reveals the fundamentally problematic nature of using grand abstractions, of seeing similarities where none exist. According to some who hold this view, neoliberalism is already being asked to do too much. If the intellectual purchase that neoliberalism might offer is to be retained, then, so it is argued, it should not be asked to explain everything everywhere. Going further, an argument has been made that, in and of itself, neoliberalism adds very little to understanding particular events, which are held to be contingent and context-specific. In generalizing – or connecting the general to the specific – very little is actually gained theoretically. While we would not agree in total with these viewpoints, they do


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nevertheless act to caution those of us writing on neoliberalism to ensure that we are precise when we use the term, and to be clear on how using it adds value to other ways of making sense of particular phenomena. With these issues in mind, nevertheless, the two of us remain convinced that using the term neoliberalization provides a useful means of bringing into dialogue a range of academics working on different issues, in different parts of the world, and using different methods. We started the book not in the belief that the chapters would provide the different pieces of a single ‘‘neoliberal jigsaw.’’ Rather, we thought that each would, on its own terms, be revealing, and that alongside each other, points of connection and disconnection and relational geographies would become clear. All of which would speak to the ongoing scholarship about neoliberalization. We leave you, the reader, to judge whether we have been successful in this intellectual endeavor.



Part I ‘‘Mainstream’’ Economic Development and its Alternatives





Introduction to Part I

Neo-liberalization is . . . ‘‘the extension of market rule and disciplines, principally by means of state power’’ (Tickell and Peck 2003: 165).

Underpinning much of the work on neoliberalization, as we explored in the introduction to this book, is the relationship between state, market, and civil society. This relationship has existed for many centuries in much of the world, and has always been one that is best understood as necessary and antagonistic. As Polanyi (1944: 57) wrote so lucidly: [c]ontrol of the economic system by the market is of overwhelming consequence to the whole organisation of society: it means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system.

Of course, both state and market are highly variegated – there is no, nor has there ever been a monolithic state or market. As Hudson (2001) makes clear, there is no market without state intervention. And, of course, states need markets. What lies at the core of neoliberalization, so it’s been argued (Peck 2001a, 2004; Brenner and Theodore 2002b), is the reworking of this relationship. Not the end of the state, not even an absolute rolling back, but rather the replacement of one historically and geographically specific state formation with another. So, in very general terms, what we have witnessed in a growing number of countries around the world has been an inverting


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of the terms of this relationship. ‘‘Markets,’’ and all that accompanies them, have been introduced into the state, pushing at the external edges and the internal demarcations. This has been demonstrated to matter in all manner of ways, from how the state internally is organized through to the conditions under which state workers labor, from the criteria against which its performances are evaluated through to the types of economic development programs it pursues. It is to the last of these that the two chapters in this first part of the book attend. Focusing on the nature of economic reforms, and their consequences, in two specific geographical contexts, Mark Beeson, and Katharine Rankin and Yogendra Shakya both stress the particularities of their findings and how they have wider resonance. In both chapters, the authors recognize the relational nature of space. They draw our attention both to the ways in which the past continues in the present and that the present in one place is the product of relations with the present in distant places. For Beeson, his argument is that the organization of economic activity retains distinctive characteristics that are deeply embedded in the societies and political practices of the East Asian parts of the Asia-Pacific. State-led economic development remains the mainstream in the region, and there is little evidence that this situation is set to change, at least in the foreseeable future. That is not to say, however, that the imprint of neoliberalization, in the form of the programs advanced by Anglo-American nations and the international financial institutions, is not evident. It is. Rather, given the particular political economic development trajectories of the countries in this region of the world, neoliberalization a` la East Asia will be very different from other members of its ‘‘ideological family.’’ This is perhaps not surprising. As Peck (2004: 403) has argued, ‘‘neoliberalism . . . cannot . . . exist in pure form, but only manifests itself in hybrid formations.’’ Nevertheless, ideas and modes of organization associated with neoliberalization are becoming more influential, and, as such, the terms under which future reforms are mediated are also likely to morph. Future neoliberalization might find a more receptive ‘‘local’’ economic, social, and political context precisely because of the particular forms of development pursued in the region in the past, although successive waves of neoliberal restructuring are also likely to foster not insignificant opposition by workers and those of the Left (Chang 2005), the expression of which will depend on the political expedience of ruling parties. Rankin and Shakya also explore the economic development component of neoliberalization, through examining the politics around


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microfinance in Nepal. Like Beeson, the authors focus on how neoliberalization articulates with national and subnational political–cultural formations, transforming the rules of the game and the lives of people in some cases, while at the same time generating spaces for critique and alternative imaginaries as its contradictions are revealed. Rankin and Shakya, too, examine neoliberalization at work in a country in which economic development has been state-led. Clearly different in many ways from the East Asia-Pacific nations detailed in Beeson’s chapter, nevertheless there are discernible parallels between all the countries in terms of the stated end-objective being to replace the state-led by the market-led model of economic development. In the example of Nepal, Rankin and Shakya focus on the mainstreaming of microfinance as a technique for achieving this shift. They examine how it has been embedded into the economy on the foundations of an older and ideologically contrary apparatus of ‘‘development finance.’’ Unpacking the details of this shift, which, like most of its kind, is found to be partial, uneven, and made up of inconsistencies, Rankin and Shakya consider the roles played in this process by three sets of stakeholders, each anchored at different geographical scales: state institutions, donor agencies, and local and international nongovernmental organizations. Those the authors spoke to revealed how the process of neoliberalization attempts to make the world conform, taking root through a myriad of routes, as we shall see in the next part of this book, in particular in national-institutional contexts. Rankin and Shakya agree with John Clarke (2004b: 30), who argues that ‘‘neo-liberalism tells stories about the world, the future and how they will develop – and tries to make them come true.’’ Yet, Rankin and Shakya, concurring with the argument advanced by Beeson in his chapter, reveal how the life world is shaped by all manner of forces and projects, which obstruct the construction of an absolute and closed neoliberal project. They argue that acknowledging these alternatives and possibilities offers other, more progressive, imaginaries of the world in which we all live. The future of the places in which they conducted their fieldwork is connected to decisions made elsewhere, to the headquarters of the major funding agencies, for example, and this demands a need for a relational politics of responsibility (Massey 2005).



2 Competing Capitalisms and Neoliberalism: the Dynamics of, and Limits to, Economic Reform in the Asia-Pacific Mark Beeson

The ‘‘Asia-Pacific’’ region occupies a distinctive place in the history of capitalist expansion generally and the consolidation of neoliberalism in particular. Depending on how the region is defined – and, as we shall see later in this chapter, this is not uncontentious – the Asia-Pacific region contains a number of countries that have been enthusiastic advocates of neoliberal reform, as well as many countries that have either actively resisted neoliberalism, or that have developed alternative forms of capitalist organization in which market mechanisms are less prominent. The ‘‘Anglo-American’’ economies like the United States, the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have generally favored a much more marketoriented economic system than their counterparts in East Asia, where governments have played a prominent role in actually controlling the impact of market forces (Zysman 1983; Weiss and Hobson 1995; Whitley 1999). Consequently, the Asia-Pacific contains a number of competing forms of capitalism, which makes this region a major site of contestation about the appropriate sorts of regulatory frameworks within which economic activity occurs. To understand the significance and nature of this contestation it is necessary to say something about some of the most economically



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important and politically significant countries of this highly diverse region, and the specific historical circumstances that have shaped such disparate outcomes. Although the primary focus of attention in this chapter is the economies of East Asia, it is important to recognize at the outset that the United States exerted a powerful influence on the overall international order within which East Asia’s postwar development has occurred. As we shall see, despite the US’s strategic dominance it has not easily been able to encourage or impose the sort of neoliberal order it has promoted so assiduously (Mastanduno 2000). On the contrary, East Asian nations have generally responded to and actually mediated market forces or neoliberalism in highly distinctive ways. The key historical interactions that have shaped capitalist development in East Asia are briefly mapped in the first section of this chapter, before it moves on to a more detailed consideration of some of the most important countries of the region and their distinctive patterns of economic organization. Particular attention is paid to Japan and China; not only are they the largest economies of the region and the most influential political actors, but their respective experiences exemplify much that is distinctive and at odds with an increasingly pervasive neoliberal model. The central argument of this chapter has two interconnected parts. Firstly, I argue that the organization of economic activity retains many distinctive features that are deeply embedded in the societies and political practices of the East Asian parts of the Asia-Pacific. Secondly, however, I maintain that ideas and modes of organization associated with neoliberalism – understood here as the privileging of market forces in public and private sector activities1 – are becoming more influential. China’s integration into the wider global economy, and the profound domestic changes this is generating, is the most dramatic example of this trend. But Japan is also undergoing a major process of economic restructuring, one that is having a concomitant impact on the ideas and values that have shaped both Japanese society and the array of political and economic relations that are associated with the ‘‘developmental state’’ Japan pioneered. And yet, despite these important long-term changes, there is a continuing desire on the part of many East Asian governments to continue ‘‘managing the market’’ and the impact of neoliberalism, albeit on a regional rather than simply a national basis. If successful, East Asian regionalism might stand as an exemplar for other regions, and a refutation of the idea that convergence inevitably produces a global ‘‘convergence’’ in public policy.


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The Asia-Pacific in Historical Context The idea of the Asia-Pacific highlights the contested and socially constructed nature of regional identities (Dirlik 1992). This is a potential problem for political elites anywhere that may wish to impose or encourage the adoption of uniform economic structures and regulatory environments in order to facilitate economic activity and reduce ‘‘transaction costs.’’ It is an especially acute dilemma in the Asia-Pacific region, however, because such an entity not only has little resonance with many of the elites of the putative region (to say nothing of the mass of the individual nationally demarcated populations), but the arbitrarily conceived region contains countries that have profoundly different views about how states, societies, and markets should be organized. This remains an issue that shapes interactions between the various countries of the region. When seen in historical context, the artificiality of the Asia-Pacific, the potential contradictions and tensions it contains, and the persistence of difference in economic structures and political practice that distinguishes it, becomes more explicable. It is important to remember that the East Asian parts of the Asia-Pacific have been incorporated into the expanding global economy relatively recently, generally under fairly traumatic circumstances. China and Japan highlight the very different ways countries can respond to the historical challenge of capitalist expansion, initially from Western Europe, and more recently from the United States (Moulder 1977). In China’s case, European imperialism inaugurated a ‘‘century of shame,’’ internal collapse, and the eventual turn to communism. In Japan’s case, although the accommodation of ‘‘Western’’ economic, political, and strategic challenges sparked a domestic transformation, Japan’s response was much more successful in that it remained independent, maintaining the array of distinctive political and economic relationships that would eventually underpin what Chalmers Johnson (1982) famously described as the developmental state. The significance of the developmental state, in which the state – or more accurately in Japan’s case, technically competent, bureaucratic elites – plans the course of national development in the ‘‘national interest’’ cannot be underestimated. Despite the problems that the Japanese economy experienced during the 1990s (Katz 1998), the influence of the developmental state model across the region has been immense (Woo-Cumings 1999). While not all other countries may have had the requisite ‘‘state capacity,’’ especially non-corrupt, competent planners,




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or the favorable historical circumstances to replicate Japan’s success, the planned approach to economic development stands in stark contrast to the idealized neoliberal model. In reality, of course, even the ‘‘small’’ states favored by neoliberals play a critical role in providing the basic legal and regulatory frameworks upon which any form of capitalism depends. The key point to emphasize is that in much of East Asia there has not been the sort of normative aversion to state activism that has become so prominent in the Anglo-American economies. As a consequence, the way that capitalism has been realized historically in East Asia has been distinctive and – despite some fundamental commonalities – quite different from other parts of the world. The fact that such differences have become socially and institutionally embedded has given a degree of path-dependency to development in the region, which means that neoliberal ideas and practices have been powerfully mediated by contingent regional factors, too (Beeson 2002). Before considering the implications of this in any detail, however, it is necessary to explain why a state-led approach to development has persisted for so long in East Asia. The key comparative question to ask about East Asia is: Why do neoliberal ideas seem to be making major inroads into former bastions of state-led development and more interventionist styles of economic management at this particular moment of history? While the dynamics are complex and multifaceted, one of the most important factors is only indirectly connected to questions of economic reform. The geopolitical context in which initially Japan, and latterly a subsequent generation of developmental states, emerged in East Asia was dominated by the Cold War. The idea of an East Asian, let alone an Asia-Pacific region was foreclosed by the bipolar nature of the post-World War II order. Consequently, the sort of liberal economic order that the United States successfully institutionalized in much of the West, either directly or through the auspices of new, influential international financial institutions (IFIs) like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and what would become the World Trade Organization (WTO), did not take hold in the same way in East Asia (Latham 1997). The ideologically fractured nature of East Asia during the Cold War and the concomitant privileging of security issues by the US meant that not only did the US assist the emerging capitalist economies of the region with their reconstruction and development, but in the context of the geopolitical stand-off with their communist adversaries, the Americans were prepared to tolerate, but not condone, an array of mercantilist, state-dominated practices (Beeson 2005). Crucially, this provided a


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relatively insulated political space in which the frequently authoritarian elites of the region could concentrate on economic development with little fear of external criticism. As a result, the institutions and practices that the US created and championed in the aftermath of World War II did not have as much influence in East Asia as they did in Western Europe. At one level this was simply because countries like China remained communist and were thus out of the American-led sphere of influence. But even those countries that were allied to the US were not pressured to impose potentially difficult or destabilizing reforms. On the contrary, the US tolerated East Asian-style state intervention if it meant the successful development of capitalist allies. Indeed, the US actively supported the generally authoritarian regimes that oversaw economic development in much of East Asia (Cumings 1997). The key points to stress from this truncated historical background are that, first, a very different form of political and economic organization has developed and persists in much of East Asia; second, the geopolitical environment in which East Asia’s erstwhile ‘‘miracle’’ economies took off has changed profoundly. The end of the Cold War and the acceleration of a range of processes associated with ‘‘globalization’’ fundamentally altered the context within which East Asian economies operate. Not only is the US now free from its Cold War constraints and able to pursue its own national and international goals and reformist agendas, but the way formerly discrete national economies are integrated into the wider global economy is forcing a reassessment of public policy settings across the region. Before assessing the impact of these changes and the extent of pro-market reform, however, it is necessary to explain what is distinctive about East Asia and what is stopping neoliberalism making further inroads into this part of the world.

Capitalism in East Asia Japan and China are the two largest economies in the East Asian region, although China has only recently achieved this status as a consequence of its remarkable economic expansion since the 1970s (Hale and Hale 2003). Japan has been a crucial source of investment for the region, and China’s sheer size, its expanding market, and its concomitant strategic significance mean that both countries will be central determinants of East Asia’s future trajectory. The original reason that East Asia attracted so much attention was Japan’s unparalleled economic transformation in




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the postwar period, which saw it rapidly move from wartime devastation to become the second largest economy in the world. The story of Japan’s postwar reconstruction has been told many times and there is no need to add to this vast literature here (but see, for example, Johnson 1982; Tabb 1995), but a couple of aspects of ‘‘the Japanese model’’ are worth emphasizing as they remind us that there is nothing inevitable about the style, course, or end-point of the developmental experience.2

Japan: Managing the market A number of features of Japanese-style capitalism are fundamentally at odds with the economic ideas and assumptions that dominate in the Anglo-American countries (see Hart 1992; Berger and Dore 1996; Vogel 1996). Not only is there is a strong tradition of radical and Marxist thinking in Japanese economic thinking (Morris-Suzuki 1989), for example, but more fundamentally perhaps, the history and structure of economic development in Japan have also entrenched very different patterns of relationships between key actors in business, government, and the bureaucracy. Importantly, these embedded relationships acted as crucial intermediaries, mediating external geopolitical pressures and giving a distinctive, contingent character to seemingly global forces. Indeed, despite the best efforts of the Americans when they occupied Japan in the postwar period, it is revealing that they were unable to erase the earlier patterns of business–government cooperation that had resulted in the self-conscious creation of large business conglomerates in the prewar period (Johnson 1982). The willingness to ‘‘interfere’’ in market processes and to self-consciously plan the course of economic development has been one of the defining qualities of the developmental state. It is noteworthy that competition, which has frequently been seen as the normatively desirable cornerstone of ‘‘efficient’’ market economies in the West, has traditionally been looked upon with great suspicion in Japan and in other parts of Asia that have followed Japan’s lead (Encarnation 1992). The market is something that should be ‘‘governed’’ (Wade 1990), rather than allowed to dictate economic and even social outcomes. At one level this is an expression of the guiding rationale of the developmental state: economic development is not something that simply ‘‘happens’’ as a consequence of the fortuitous, unplanned influence of market forces, but is a result of policymakers intervening to direct or guide economic outcomes. The notion of comparative advantage – a


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central tenet of orthodox economics, which suggests that individual countries should exploit their endowments and do what they are ‘‘naturally’’ best at – is comprehensively refuted by the historical experience of development in most of East Asia. Japanese planners, in defiance of the conventional Western economic wisdom, and lacking any relevant ‘‘natural’’ advantages, set out to create a comparative advantage in a range of manufacturing industries that ultimately provided the backbone of its industrial economy, and underpinned its post-World War II growth spurt. The fact that Japan developed a presence in key strategic industries like shipbuilding, chemicals, car-manufacturing, and electronics, which ultimately provided the backbone of its sophisticated industrial economy, is largely a consequence of the collaborative and planned efforts of Japanese bureaucrats and business elites. In its heyday, the Japanese developmental state was instrumental both in transforming the structure of the Japanese economy and in underpinning the particular social accommodation that provided benefits for much of Japan’s population. At an elite level, a tight nexus of political, economic, and bureaucratic actors developed a highly effective set of relationships with which to guide economic development. At a mass level, the general pay-off was rapidly rising living standards and – for a privileged minority, at least – the guarantee of lifetime employment. Compared with the neoliberal alternative, which generally advocates a more ruthless approach to ‘‘downsizing,’’ such outcomes may seem appealing; but it is important not to take too rosy or uncritical a view of some of the alternatives to the neoliberal model, either. The ‘‘iron triangle’’ between business, government, and the bureaucracy ultimately degenerated into a corrupt and self-serving pattern of behavior that invariably served elites at the expense of the general population (Beeson 2003c). Paradoxically, the same elite-level networks that provided such a crucial channel of communication between state planners and the business elites they sought to direct during the development phase, eventually became mechanisms for graft and cronyism. Public funds have been routinely diverted to favored business elites for projects with little, if any, public benefit (McCormack 1996). Japan’s notorious ‘‘money politics’’ has been fueled by kickbacks from the selfsame business cronies, while bureaucrats have been parachuted into lucrative retirement positions as a consequence of their connections (Curtis 1999). To put this in theoretical terms, what we have seen in Japan has been an erosion of the sort of ‘‘embedded autonomy,’’ or institutional independence, that Peter Evans (1995) took to be a crucial part of effective state-led development. Once the developmental state




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has achieved its original purpose, there seems to be a real risk that it will degenerate into a self-serving elite network that is primarily concerned with its own, rather than the national interest. Nevertheless, given the undoubted success of the Japanese economy for the first three or four decades after the war, why would Japan’s planners or the more general population wish to abandon such a successful model and move toward a more market-oriented model? The answer to this puzzle is a complex mix of the structural, the agential, and the ideational. The key actors are to be found both in and outside Japan. Most obviously, Japan’s dependence on the US strategically and economically – especially the lucrative North American consumer markets – has made it especially vulnerable to American political pressure (Hughes and Fukushima 2004). As Japan’s economy grew, and as Japanese exports poured into American markets, the US initiated a long-running series of bilateral trade negotiations designed to open Japan up to American exports and liberalize the Japanese economy as a whole (Schoppa 1997). While these negotiations may not always have had the dramatic impact that the Americans hoped, it is clear that they have contributed to a gradual erosion of Japanese trade barriers and a greater integration of Japanese-based economic activity with that of the rest of the world. The structural changes that have seen Japan move toward the market model are multifaceted. On the one hand, the general restructuring of the international political economy that has seen multinationals from Japan and elsewhere become outward looking and mobile (Ruigrok and van Tulder 1995) has subtly changed the orientation of what were formerly unambiguously ‘‘Japanese’’ firms. While it is important not to overstate this, as there are important continuing differences in the way that companies from different countries organize themselves (Doremus, Keller, Pauly, and Reich 1999), foreign competitive pressures have forced many Japanese companies to shift production offshore, or to raise finance in international bond markets. Indeed, the migration of Japanese firms and the steady liberalization of the financial sector have fundamentally changed the internal relationships and structures of the formerly discrete ‘‘Japanese economy’’ (Pempel 1999). The tight relationships that were so central to the operation of the Japanese economy have begun to erode and the sense of national orientation and commitment has also diminished. Such changes have also undermined the efficacy of the developmental state. When firms can borrow freely in international capital markets, and when the Japanese finance sector lobbies for greater liberalization, the policy tools that allowed Japanese


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planners to guide the course of development simply no longer work: the state can no longer use the promise of access to scarce finance to cajole the private sector into behaving as it might wish (Leyshon 1994). Japan has been vulnerable, perhaps uniquely so among the developed economies, to pressure from the US. It was America that insisted that Japan allow its currency to appreciate during the 1980s, an initiative that failed to address its intended target – America’s trade deficit with Japan – but which ultimately led to the ‘‘bubble economy’’ in Japan (Wood 1992). The greatest significance of the bubble economy – which saw a massive rise and fall in the value of Japanese shares and real estate – as far as this discussion is concerned, is that it undermined the performance of the Japanese economy and confidence in the bureaucratic elites charged with managing it. In such circumstances, the ideational consensus that had already taken hold across the AngloAmerican economies about the superiority, if not the inevitability, of neoliberalism as the preferred mode of public policy became more prominent in Japan. It is difficult to overstate just what a transformation has occurred in the way the ‘‘Japanese model’’ is now viewed (see, for example, Porter, Takeuchi, and Sakakibara 2000), potentially paving the way for a transformation of public policy along neoliberal lines. The crucial difference between Japan and countries like the US and Australia, however, is that while the rhetoric of neoliberal-style reform may be endlessly invoked, its application is uncertain and partial. There are powerful vested interests that continue to benefit from the existent order: unemployment rates remain comparatively low in Japan despite the economic slowdown, and significant market-oriented reform would undoubtedly further erode job security. Similarly, while the iron triangle might not be what it once was, it has not disappeared and is still capable of frustrating reformist efforts. Administrative reform, for example, which is central to any meaningful change in the developmental state, has been excruciatingly slow and frequently cosmetic (Carlile 1998). In short, many Japanese benefit from the old order and resist the untried and potentially disruptive neoliberal model (Lincoln 2001). Compounding the embodied obstacles to change is the comparative lack of political leverage among the domestic champions of liberalization (Tilton 1998). The divisions between Japan’s relatively inefficient, highly protected domestic sector and the highly competitive, exportoriented sector are becoming entrenched as the latter move offshore (Katz 1998). The Japanese experience suggests a number of things about the potential impact and significance of neoliberalism. First, the Japanese




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model demonstrated that – in particular historical circumstances, at least – not only are there major alternatives to the sort of market-dominated model promoted by the US and the IFIs, but that it can be highly successful and widely emulated. The second point to make is quite different, though: once the state’s ability to manage the ‘‘national economy’’ is eroded by long-run structural changes in the international political economy, which affect the way local firms and financial institutions are articulated with ‘‘external’’ economic forces and actors, then there is an inevitable diminution of the capacity and legitimacy of the state as a consequence. In Japan’s case, this means that many of the policy tools, like directed credit, that worked in a discrete, relatively insulated national economy are no longer effective. More fundamentally, the diminished reputation and seeming incompetence of Japan’s bureaucratic elites has undermined their authority. This last factor is vital, because for decades Japan’s developmental state was seen as legitimate and competent. Once this status was undermined, especially as a consequence of the poor performance of the Japanese economy and revelations about corruption within the ranks of Japan’s ruling elites, the potential for an ideational shift to an alternative model is clearly greater. Indeed, the third point to make about the Japanese experience is that it is testimony to the highly institutionalized and embedded nature of the old order that so little has changed. In other words, even if advocates of neoliberal reform among some of Japan’s business, academic, and even bureaucratic elites could win the ideational or technical battle about the optimal form of economic organization – which remains highly debatable – there would still be powerful institutional obstacles to its implementation.

China: Embracing the market That China should be the focus of inquiry into the extent of neoliberalism’s possible impact is remarkable, given its history and its continuing status as a nominally ‘‘communist’’ country. Indeed, it is only as a consequence of major geopolitical turning points like China’s rapprochement with the US in 1972 and the ending of the Cold War in 1989 (Yahuda 1996) that a discussion of the possible impact of neoliberalism on China makes any sense at all. But China has a particular significance in contemporary debates about economic reform for a number of reasons, not the least of which being its former status as one of the last major alternatives to what is now a seemingly ubiquitous capitalist


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system. Because China accounts for around a fifth of the world’s population, whatever happens there is crucially important. The fact that China’s transformation into a market economy has been far more successful, better planned, and much less traumatic than in the Soviet Union is also important for comparative purposes. Even if there are still questions about the extent of market-oriented reform in China, its embrace of ‘‘the market’’ as opposed to state planning as the most effective route to economic development is a transformation of world historical significance. True, much of the rhetoric of socialism remains, but the reality is that more and more economic activity in China is moving from the public to the private sector. In this regard Susan Strange (1997) is surely correct to observe that for all the continuing importance of, and debate about, different forms of capitalism (Coates 2000; Hall and Soskice 2001), it is the fact that economies are capitalist at all that is the significant point. In other words, the similarities between broadly market-oriented economies are greater than their differences from nonmarket economies. Seen in the long-run evolution of economic systems there is a degree of ‘‘convergence’’ in economic systems (Beeson 2002), and it is this that makes neoliberal ideas potentially influential on a global scale over the longer term, even if a focus on specific varieties of capitalism is important in the shorter term. Thus, examining the way that capitalism is realized in different locations at different times reminds us of a couple of possibilities. First, contingent factors will shape the precise form that any systemic form of economic organization will take: ‘‘Chinese socialism’’ was very different from the Soviet Union’s, so it should come as no surprise that ‘‘Chinese capitalism’’ retains distinctive local features. Second, capitalism and neoliberalism are not synonymous, despite the increased influence of the latter. The state’s desire to retain as much control as possible over market forces, which has been such a distinctive characteristic of East Asia, remains important, even if it appears to have been steadily eroded. However, we should not presume that such processes constitute a one-way street or are impervious to change: the very size of China in particular means that it will inevitably exert an influence on the rest of the world in the future. Indeed, so large and significant has the Chinese economy become that it is already having an impact on interest rates, the cost of key commodities like oil, and even ‘‘First World’’ house prices (Economist 2005). The story of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) embrace of the market has been told in detail elsewhere (see, for example, Lardy 1992; Shirk 1994), and it is sufficient to highlight some of the more




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important aspects of this change that are significant here. Two points are particularly worth noting briefly. First, while there had been some significant economic development under Mao Zedong, the prospect of accelerated economic development through integration into the global capitalist economy was attractive to China’s political elites because it legitimized the Communist Party of China (CCP) (White 1993). The second point to make is that prior to the economic opening instituted under Deng Xiaoping in 1978, domestic institutions had prevailed over economic forces, allowing the CCP to maintain control of the national economy. Once the reform process was embarked upon, however, international economic integration may have helped to accelerate dramatically the pace of economic development, but it was at the cost of diminished control over what became an increasingly internationalized economy (Shirk 1996). Although China’s decision to embrace the market and an international order dominated by the established capitalist powers has clearly accelerated economic development, like Japan before it, China’s elites have discovered that once the process of structural opening and integration is begun, there is an inevitable diminution of political control and change in the nature of ‘‘the Chinese economy’’ itself. Put differently, while there are clear benefits to be derived from overseeing rapid development as far as the ruling elites are concerned, it is difficult to control such processes once capitalist dynamics are unleashed. Whereas Japan has deliberately tried to limit foreign investment and the degree of foreign ownership of its economy, especially during its high-growth developmental stage, China has welcomed foreign direct investment and it has grown enormously as a consequence. However, foreign ownership, especially when combined with a more general move to reduce the size of the public sector and encourage private enterprise, is fundamentally altering the structure of the Chinese economy. Privately owned companies are now estimated to account for about 60 percent of China’s overall GDP, but state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still employ something like 35 percent of the urban workforce (Economist 2004a). More importantly in the long term, perhaps, wholly foreign-owned enterprises not only accounted for more than 55 percent of China’s exports in 2003, but they are notoriously poor at transferring technology to the host nation (Gilboy 2004). China’s industrialization may be rapid, but it is highly dependent on external economic actors. Managing such a structural transformation would be a challenge for any government, but for one that is nominally communist and with a claim to represent the interests of the proletariat, it is especially acute.3


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What is of greatest significance in the context of this discussion is that, like Japan, China’s transformation has structural, agential, and ideational components. Significantly, however, China’s communist rulers have taken the advice of the major international financial institutions about the best ways of integrating their economy into the wider world. In Nicholas Lardy’s (1999: 209) view, ‘‘it would be difficult to overstate the impact of China’s interaction with the World Bank and the IMF.’’ The IFIs have assumed an especially important role in promoting neoliberal ideas across the East Asian part of the Asia-Pacific, especially following the economic crisis of 1997/8 (Beeson 2003b). In China there has been an important internal debate about the impact and merits of globalization and the most appropriate ways for China to respond to its manifold challenges (Garrett 2001). This is not to suggest that such ideas are necessarily uncritically adopted, as the widespread continuing opposition to neoliberal ideas in parts of East Asia reminds us (see Beeson and Islam 2005), but when combined with more subtle, structural effects, they clearly have the potential to be highly influential (Woods 1995). Like Japan, China’s economic leaders discovered that once China became involved in the international financial system through its extensive borrowings from the World Bank, and especially through its activities in international bond and equity markets, its bureaucratic elites have been socialized into the informal norms and practices of the global financial sector (Lardy 1999). The extent of China’s embrace of the market can be seen in a number of revealing and significant ways. The impact of the IFIs, for example, is not limited to guidance and as agents of socialization. One of the most important manifestations of China’s acquiescence both to broadly neoliberal reforms and to the influence of the IFIs was the decision of China’s elites to seek membership of the World Trade Organization. This institution was established and is dominated by the major capitalist powers and is a key instrument for the promotion of economic liberalization, which required China to make fundamental and far-reaching legislative changes that were designed to lock-in market-oriented reforms. Not only did such reforms entrench a general move away from direct management of the economy through the elimination of formerly powerful planning agencies (Fewsmith 2001), but they also required China to revise the PRC Constitution to create a nondiscriminatory trade and investment regime (Potter 2001). In addition to such high-profile institutional reforms, attitudes among significant sections of the Chinese population are being transformed; something that suggests the process of reform is irreversible.




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Significantly, opponents of ‘‘globalization’’ generally, or market-oriented reform in particular, are ‘‘outside policymaking circles and have little impact on Chinese policy’’ (Garrett 2001: 417). Indeed, many Communist Party officials are no longer concerned with attempting to reconcile the precepts of communist ideology with the ‘‘contradictions’’ of the market but are, instead, frequently using their positions to ‘‘informally’’ privatize state assets and turn themselves into entrepreneurs (Ding 2000). The fact that capitalists have now been invited to join the CCP is indicative of the new, more ‘‘pragmatic’’ attitude to economic development, famously captured in the Dengist aphorism: ‘‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’’ Certainly the rising educated and increasingly wealthy young generation in China’s rapidly developing southeastern provinces seems to have taken to the capitalist road with alacrity, and is more concerned with designer labels than Party ideology (Economist 2004b). That ‘‘communist’’ China could so rapidly have embraced capitalism is testimony to the pervasiveness of, and – it has to be acknowledged – the effectiveness of, market-oriented reform. Clearly, China’s opening up and adoption of increasingly market-oriented rather than state-planned practices have been central to its rapid development of late. While it is important to acknowledge that such processes were initially driven by internal political forces, rather than external systemic factors (Pearson 1999), the extent of the transformation and the self-reinforcing nature of the process once in place are hard to exaggerate. This is not to say that ‘‘China’’ will rapidly become a variant of Anglo-American capitalism, however. The size of China, the limited impact reforms have had on economic practices and living standards in the West, the continuing importance of agriculture, the persistence of powerful vested economic and political interests that are, if not hostile, then intent on ensuring that capitalism has Chinese characteristics, all suggest that neoliberalism will continue to have an uneven impact. There are other constraints that could make the adoption of market-oriented reform and China’s integration into the international system problematic, too: the nonnegotiable nature of Taiwan, coupled with a rising tide of nationalism and China’s continuing wariness of American hegemony could all conspire to make continuing integration into the global capitalist economy more of a geopolitical than a technocratic issue (Sheng 1999; Deng 2001). Most fundamentally, perhaps, there is a potentially insurmountable environmental obstacle to China’s continuing economic development: if China were to achieve First World living standards, it would ‘‘approximately double the entire world’s human resource use and


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environmental impact’’ (Diamond 2005: 373). China’s existing problems with soil degradation, water shortages, and air pollution mean that it is faced with colossal, possibly irreconcilable internal development challenges that may ultimately spill over its borders with unforeseeable consequences.

Regionalism and Neoliberalism The two most important economies of East Asia have, therefore, been significantly affected by their integration into the international political economy. This is especially true of China, which has made a major transition from a centrally planned, state-dominated economic system to one increasingly predicated on market mechanisms – all within the space of three decades. And yet, for all the significant restructuring that has taken place in China, Japan, and many of the other dirigiste economies of East Asia, there are still important and continuing differences in the way economic and even political activity is organized across much of the region. This is most obvious in ‘‘communist’’ China, but in much of the region relationships between government and business remain much closer than they do in the Anglo-American economies, and the state still plays a more prominent role in shaping economic outcomes (Gomez 2002). Such commonalities have the potential to fundamentally change how ‘‘the East Asian region’’ is understood. In the growing theoretical literature that seeks to make sense of regional processes, an important distinction is made between regionalism as ‘‘a conscious policy of states or sub-state regions to coordinate activities and arrangements in a greater region, and economic regionalization as the outcome of such policies or of ‘natural’ economic forces’’ (Wyatt-Walter 1995: 77, emphasis in original). While it has become increasingly commonplace to refer to ‘‘East Asia’’ as a distinct geographical area, the degree to which the idea of ‘‘East Asia’’ as a selfconsciously realized political entity or even as a source of identity is less certain. Although there has been a good deal of regionalization in East Asia, largely as a consequence of the activities of Japanese multinational corporations moving offshore, there has been much less political collaboration. The desire to shore-up national sovereignty and enhance state power has proved a formidable foil to the sort of sovereignty pooling and collaboration that is so characteristic of the European Union (Beeson and Jayasuriya 1998). In this context, regional forms of collaboration, institutionalization, and networking in both the private




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and public sectors play an increasingly important role in determining how ‘‘external’’ forces like neoliberalism are mediated. If neoliberalism is ‘‘the mobilization of state power in the contradictory extension and reproduction of market(-like) rule,’’ as Tickell and Peck (2003: 166) suggest, then the significance of East Asia is that it is widely associated with a particular form of market organization, one in which the state not only continues to play a prominent role, but in which it also seeks to mediate the impact of market forces. In other words, while all states may play a crucial role in providing the regulatory framework without which any form of capitalism would be impossible (Heilbroner 1985), what is distinctive about many East Asian governments is that they deliberately seek to ‘‘interfere’’ with market processes for a variety of social and political purposes in ways that are at odds with the neoliberal vision espoused by the US and the IFIs. This economic apostasy is not simply an ideological challenge to the dominant neoliberal model; it is also frequently seen as a source of ‘‘unfair’’ advantage in international economic competition. Perceptions about the competitive implications of different forms of economic organization become especially significant when the US judges that its chronic trade deficits with East Asia are a consequence of illegitimate interference in market processes, and has the power to press for reform (Mastanduno 2000). One of the enduring sources of tension between the United States and East Asia has been the US’s desire to try to shift the burden of economic adjustment onto its trading partners and competitors. Rather than making changes in its own consumption patterns or economic policies, American policymakers have tried to pressure first Japan and latterly China to either open up their markets or allow their currencies to appreciate in the hope that this would change the US’s economic relationship with the region. Not only has such bilateral leverage proved relatively ineffective, but the US has become increasingly dependent on continuing inflows of capital from Japan and China to underpin its deteriorating budgetary position (Ravenhill 2006). The inherent potential for a ‘‘clash of capitalisms’’ became apparent in the aftermath of the economic crisis that gripped much of the region in the late 1990s (Johnson 1998). However, it is important to recognize that ideational contestation over, and political tension about, the most appropriate form of capitalist organization pre-dated the crisis; the significance of the crisis was to provide the economic and political leverage with which the US and the IFIs could try to compel reform along more neoliberal lines (Bello 1998). As we have seen, the IFIs have been crucial mechanisms in the worldwide promotion of a more Anglo-American form of market order, one


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associated with the Washington Consensus. This well-known paradigm of trade and financial sector liberalization, privatization, and deregulation has never been enthusiastically embraced in East Asia (Beeson and Islam 2005), despite the existence of a number of organizations that were specifically intended to promote such an agenda. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is perhaps the most important example of institutional innovation with the express intention of pushing trade liberalization among the traditionally protectionist East Asian economies. While APEC’s consensual, technocratic approach and lack of organizational leverage may help to account for its minimal achievements and profile (Ravenhill 2001), it is also emblematic of a more fundamental disjuncture between the East Asian and Anglo-American members of the more broadly conceived Asia-Pacific region. Many of the East Asian members of APEC were far less enthusiastic about the pace and the extent of trade liberalization than were the Americans and Australians who were, of course, its principal champions. In short, ‘‘Asia-Pacific’’ institutions charged with promoting neoliberal reform were unable to definitively win the battle of ideas about economic policy, or overcome the institutionalized obstacles that inhibited reform. Although the promotion of financial sector liberalization initially made significant inroads in the region, in the wake of the financial crisis there has been some rethinking, and unprecedented moves designed to insulate the region as a whole from potentially destructive flows of mobile financial capital. In this regard, the financial crisis was a critical turning point in attitudes about wholesale liberalization and ‘‘deregulation.’’ As a consequence of the crisis, many of East Asia’s political and economic elites took the view that not only were highly mobile, volatile flows of capital the principal causes of the ‘‘contagion’’ that gripped one economy after another as ‘‘investors’’ fled the region (Winters 2000), but that despite the risks and questionable benefits as far as the region was concerned, the US was continuing to promote further liberalization because it suited the collective interests of ‘‘Wall St’’ to do so (Wade 2001; Beeson 2003b). In such circumstances there was both a groundswell of resentment about the sorts of neoliberal reforms that were being encouraged upon the region (Higgott 1998) and a determination to create new mechanisms and relationships with which to resist them (Webber 2001). The emergence of ‘‘ASEANþ3,’’ an exclusively East Asian regional grouping that includes Japan, China, and South Korea as well as the countries of Southeast Asia, is evidence of a region-wide reaction and resistance to external political and economic pressures (Beeson 2003a). While some of the major cooperative initiatives like




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monetary cooperation may be somewhat arcane and technical, they reflect a continuing desire on the part of East Asian governments to control the manner and pace of economic integration, a recognition of the growing importance of capital flows as opposed to trade (Dieter and Higgott 2003), and an unwillingness to simply ‘‘leave it to the market,’’ or – more accurately – the agencies and actors that have historically encouraged more radical neoliberal reform. It remains to be seen how such relatively embryonic regional processes will work themselves out. The scale of regional initiatives means that it is difficult to generalize about their effects. Indeed, it is important to recognize that there are growing numbers of supporters of neoliberal ideas within the region, partly as a consequence of long-run structural change and integration into the global economy, partly as a consequence of ideational contests in which key exemplars of Asian exceptionalism like Japan have diminished credibility (Ravenhill 2006). This truncated discussion of East Asian regionalism highlights a number of important aspects about the way in which market-oriented behavior has expanded globally. As I showed in the first section of this chapter, the historical circumstances in which parts of East Asia were drawn into the expanding capitalist system were unique, frequently traumatic, and overlaid on an existent array of institutionalized social, political, and economic practices. Paradoxically, however, such factors, especially when combined with the impact of major historical turning points like the decolonization process and the Cold War, have provided the basis for a sense of region-wide identity and mobilization (Stubbs 2002). While states have been critical determinants of the course of economic development across the region, the very nature of contemporary transnational or ‘‘global’’ processes means that individual nation-states may of necessity need to cooperate to respond to such challenges. This is most obvious at the level of corporate restructuring, but it is also clear that the actions of either hegemonic powers or influential intergovernmental organizations may not be easily resisted by individual nations. Regional cooperation provides one possible means of more effectively mediating material, political, and ideational forces.

Concluding Remarks When attempting to make sense of the expanding impact of capitalism generally or neoliberalism in particular, much depends upon where and when we direct our attention. When seen in a time frame of centuries


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rather than decades, it is East Asia’s rapid integration into the increasingly global capitalist system that is likely to prove of greatest significance in the long term (Braudel 1992). The reality that, to paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, there is no alternative to capitalism of some sort is one of the most distinctive and constraining features of the contemporary world order. And yet within that overarching, pervasive order there are significant and continuing differences in the way broadly capitalist systems are organized, and the way in which market forces are mediated. The so-called Washington Consensus is not universally admired and has not been adopted everywhere. Indeed, a substantial backlash against some of the major precepts of neoliberalism on normative and pragmatic grounds has forced a significant rethinking of the model to include things like social safety nets and greater accountability (Higgott 2000; Beeson and Islam 2005). The point to emphasize is that the precise way markets are realized depends upon a specific array of historically contingent social and political forces that determine the way economic activity is organized and the relative influence of market mechanisms. While market-based modes of economic organization may have become dominant across much of the world – for the moment, at least – what a particular focus on the status of neoliberalism suggests is that the precise form they assume may continue to deviate from the idealized neoliberal model in significant ways. What the East Asian experience suggests, therefore, is that capitalism continues to display significant variation across and within different regions. The precise historical circumstances that pertain in different regions will delimit the possible range of economic structures, practices, and relationships that are feasible in different parts of the world: it is not simply that there are substantial political and economic interests resisting AngloAmerican neoliberalism in Asia, but there are significant doubts about whether the sort of non-state, private-sector-dominated patterns of relationships that predominate in Western Europe could be replicated in East Asia in the short term even if there were a desire to do so (see Beeson 2001). In other words, in much of East Asia, where civil society and the private sector remain comparatively underdeveloped, there may be no alternative to major state intervention in promoting economic developmental and regulating economic activity. In such circumstances, neoliberalism will not only continue to be powerfully mediated by local political and social forces, but will continue to look rather different in East Asia from the ideal type so assiduously promoted by the Anglo-American nations and the IFIs they dominate.




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Notes 1 The basic tenets of neoliberalism have been captured by John Williamson’s (1994) idea of the ‘‘Washington consensus,’’ which provides a template both for neoliberal public policy and for an ‘‘appropriate’’ environment for private sector economic activity. The key ideas are now the familiar staples of much governmental rhetoric in the ‘‘west,’’ at least: small government, low taxation, deregulation, privatization, and enhanced competition. 2 It is important to note that Japan’s reconstruction was actively supported by the US, which saw it as the lynchpin of capitalist development in East Asia and as a bulwark to Soviet expansionism (Moulder 1977). 3 One of the central challenges facing the Chinese government remains reconciling the competing, possibly antithetical demands of successful integration into the global capitalist economy, while simultaneously paying lip service to a Marxist-inspired ideology that is increasingly flouted in practice (Ding 1994).



3 Neoliberalizing the Grassroots? Microfinance and the Politics of Development in Nepal Katharine N. Rankin and Yogendra B. Shakya

Development is one significant domain of neoliberalization that is too often absent from recent accounts in geographic scholarship. There has been ample attention given to the ways in which trade and conditional lending agreements have shaped the macro-regulatory environment in the so-called periphery, and to the resulting democratic deficits and social costs.1 But development itself has remained relatively unexamined as a vehicle by which many of those macroeconomic principles get transported to the rural hinterlands and into the daily lives of ordinary people. This chapter explores development as a terrain of neoliberalization, a place to observe the processes by which neoliberalism seeks to promote market-led approaches to development around the world. The significance of this approach lies in its rejection of neoliberalism as a singular and coherent ideology and its focus instead on how neoliberalism as a hegemonic project articulates with national and subnational politicalcultural formations – forming the necessary alliances, but at the same time generating spaces for critique and alternative imaginaries as its contradictions become increasingly apparent. Specifically, we consider the mainstreaming of microfinance as a technique for achieving a shift



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from state-led to market-led development. We examine how microfinance has been institutionalized in the case of Nepal, on the foundations of an older and ideologically contrary apparatus of ‘‘development finance,’’ and explore the shifting and contradictory roles in this process played by three sets of stakeholders operating at different spatial scales: state institutions, donor agencies, and local and international nongovernmental organizations.

Neoliberalism, Neoliberalization and the Politics of Microfinance Microfinance is an approach to poverty alleviation that has enjoyed widespread popularity since the 1980s. It draws on an innovation in financial intermediation popularized by the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, involving the substitution of ‘‘social’’ for economic forms of collateral and a system of financial management relying on the selforganizing capacities of poor, primarily women, borrowers in rural areas. The model has proliferated to over 80, mostly Third World, countries and is promoted by a wide range of development actors – from donors, to state planners, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), multinational banks, development ‘‘think tanks,’’ educational institutions, and individual scholars/consultants.2 Claims about the poverty-alleviating capacities of microfinance are nothing short of panacean. The 1997 Microcredit Summit, held in Washington, DC and attended by some 2,900 delegates from 137 countries, identified microfinance as ‘‘one of the great new chapters in human history’’ that ‘‘will allow tens of millions of people to free themselves and their families from the vicious cycle of poverty’’ (MSC 2004). At the 2002 Microcredit Summit Plus 5 Conference, US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil lauded the capacity of microfinance to ‘‘launch a virtuous cycle of growth and employment.’’ Deutsche Bank (2005) explained the creation, in 1998, of the Deutsche Bank Microfinance Development Fund (which has lent over three million US dollars in 18 countries to date) by claiming: Microcredit institutions are proving to be a revolutionary force in enabling families to rise from poverty. From the rural villages of Asia to the urban centers of the United States, small loans to emerging entrepreneurs create opportunities for self-employment and lives of dignity for millions (Deutsche Bank, www.cib.db.com/community/htm/db_microcredit_dev_ fund.html).


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K AT H A R I N E N . R A N K I N A N D Y O G E N D R A B . S H A K YA

In recognition of the diverse and expanding constituency of interest in this approach to poverty alleviation, the United Nations declared 2005 as the Year of Microfinance. The question for us is how to interpret this new development orthodoxy. Certainly in these ideological forms of representation, microfinance must be linked to neoliberalism, specifically the neoliberal view favoring markets as the desired mechanism for achieving not only growth and efficiency, but also freedom and justice. The basic tenets of neoliberalism are embedded within the idea of microfinance: setting markets free, putting people to work, deregulating institutions, achieving efficiency, and celebrating the self-reliance and resilience of the family unit. They are also embedded within its rejection of subsidized credit and other forms of state intervention underlying prior approaches to rural finance. As such, microfinance can be viewed as part of a broader trend in development to marketize rural livelihoods and formalize informal economic activities. In this regard, it is interesting to note how the ideas of two ‘‘Third World’’ champions of the small entrepreneur – Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, and Peruvian Hernando de Soto, author of The Other Path (1989) – were taken up by multilateral donors in the 1990s as gospel for fostering market forces and reducing public sector employment among the poor (see Bromley 1990 and Yunus with Jolis 1998).3 How, though, do the claims of microfinance articulate with the institutional frameworks for rural finance on the ground in specific national settings? We suggest that a full account requires a processbased reading of neoliberalism as captured in recent neo-Gramscian and neo-Foucauldian scholarship. John Clarke (2004a), for example, argues that neoliberalism must be viewed (and treated) as a hegemonic project, not as a seamless and universal ideology; to put neoliberal ideas into practice, legitimacy is sought within prevailing political-cultural discourse and the material networks of institutions, policies, and practitioners in a particular national setting. Peck and Tickell’s (2002) notion of neoliberalization similarly underscores the historically and geographically contingent processes through which neoliberal principles insinuate themselves into everyday life as ‘‘common sense.’’ Such a processual understanding implies problematizing accepted geographic accounts of neoliberalism, as emanating from North America and Western Europe, to recognize the significant role of networks in the periphery in expanding and institutionalizing neoliberal ideas (see also Burawoy 2000a; Boland 2001; Gupta and Ferguson 2002). As Larner (2000, 2003) has suggested, it also points to the significance of the programmatic technologies of




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Plate 3.1 A microfinance ‘‘centre meeting’’ where rural women receive micro-loans and disciplinary training in banking and self-reliance, Deuri Village, Nepal, 2002 (photograph, Yogendra B. Shakya)

neoliberalism, the subjectivities they promote, and the complex ways in which these articulate with the self-defined needs of individuals, social movements, and cultural groups. What emerges is not only discursively seamless core–periphery policy transfer, but also contradictory outcomes and assertions of counter-ideology, even from the most unlikely constituents. The question then becomes, what are the politically progressive and regressive possibilities within any given neoliberal configuration? Drawing on these literatures, we examine the processes through which microfinance has become embedded within development discourse and practice in Nepal and articulated with networks and peoples at national and subnational scales. Nepal is certainly typical of Third World states subject to the disciplinary regimes of donor aid. Its particular relevance for a study of development as a domain of neoliberalization lies in its geopolitically significant location between India and China – constituting one of the world’s most ideologically volatile borders. As a result, Nepal has always managed to attract donor aid disproportionate to its capacity to absorb and disperse it. Also owing to its geopolitical location, development in Nepal quickly became a terrain of ideological


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conflict – expressing particularly acute tensions between socialist and capitalist models of development and, more recently, the ideological shift from state-led to market-led planning. Meanwhile, the persistence of extremely uneven development and poverty throws the claims of microfinance (as much as any other popular development technology) in particularly sharp relief. The chapter begins by tracing how microfinance had to be institutionalized in Nepal on the foundations of a well-articulated network of institutions, regulations, donors, and practitioners that had, since the 1960s, been promoting ‘‘development finance’’ – an approach entailing active public sector investment in the delivery of rural credit. It chronicles the donors’ discursive rejection of this model in the 1980s and the new sets of alliances then constructed among donors and an emerging constituency of newly legalized NGOs in favor of the anti-statist and market-oriented microfinance approach. By exploring the debates animating these changes among state planners, Nepalese and international NGOs, we reveal neoliberalization as a highly variegated, uneven process involving a ‘‘heterogeneous ensemble’’ of actors having different, sometimes competing perspectives.4 Our approach thus illustrates not only the process of ideological reproduction entailed in neoliberalization, but also the contradictions, counter-tendencies, and, indeed, progressive possibilities that arise as neoliberal ideologies encounter particular institutional and cultural milieux. We draw on three methodological and analytical strategies. First, our institutional and narrative analysis is based on research spanning a 10-year period, from 1993 to 2003, allowing us to view rural finance as ‘‘always embedded’’ in historically contingent regulatory frameworks (Block 2003). Second, and related, our analysis gives particular scrutiny to the contradictory roles of state regulation in the neoliberalization of development. Notwithstanding its self-representation as a form of antiregulation, the market-oriented microfinance model requires a ‘‘rolling out’’ of new forms of state regulation to achieve its institutionalization (Peck and Tickell 2002). Finally, we contend that the case of microfinance in Nepal illustrates how gender analysis is crucial to understanding the neoliberalization of development. The point here is not simply to emphasize that women are the primary ‘‘targets’’ of microfinance programs. It is more crucially to illustrate how the engendering of rural finance has entailed a shift in the ideological construction of the beneficiaries of development – from citizens with social rights to entrepreneurs with capacities for local self-reliance. Microfinance can thus be viewed as a governmental technology producing the subjectivity of




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‘‘rational economic woman’’ as a site of self-governance under neoliberalism (Rankin 2001).

Foundation in Development Finance The role of microfinance as a neoliberalizing force becomes more starkly apparent when viewed in relation to the history of rural finance in the agrarian economies of the Third World. In Nepal, as in many developing countries, the microfinance concept was preceded by a generation of ideologically contrary ‘‘poverty lending’’ programs, harbored primarily in state-owned agricultural development banks, which reflected the Keynesian view that development should not be left to markets. These programs were spawned by development economists at the UN and other nascent multilateral development agencies wishing to emphasize the role of the state in capital formation and distribution (Adams and von Pischke 1992; Wade 1996). The basic mandate of poverty lending was to increase the supply of funds available for lending to ‘‘small farmers’’ (those rural farming households with incomes below a specified maximum), with recourse to subsidized interest rates and governmentfinanced loan guarantees. Underlying poverty lending programs was a view of farmers as social citizens with rights to credit, and of banks ‘‘not just as profit maximizers . . . , but as underutilized institutions to be activated for affirmative action, social engineering, and redistribution of wealth’’ (Pulley 1992: 7). The case of Nepal reveals how important postwar transnational donor networks were in orienting a generation of state planners to the Keynesian notion of ‘‘development finance.’’ In fact, many senior development economists at the Nepal Central Bank and the Agricultural Bank of Nepal (ADB/N) received their professional training in the former USSR and other Soviet-Bloc countries. These relationships were instrumental in institutionalizing the poverty lending concept at the national scale through a regulatory framework aimed at ensuring commercial banks engage in social protection and through two associated programmatic initiatives. Based on the Indian model, the so-called ‘‘Priority Sector’’ regulations required all commercial banks to invest 12 percent of their loans in certain Priority Sectors of the economy (designated as agriculture, service, and cottage industries), and 3 percent at subsidized interest rates, to the ‘‘Deprived Sector’’ – to individuals meeting poverty criteria.5 The Nepal Central Bank implemented the Priority Sector regulations by expanding the rural branch network of state-owned commercial banks


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and linking rural financial services with government ‘‘line agencies’’ (service delivery agencies) in a distinctively integrated approach to rural development (HMG 1994). The second major locus of poverty lending in Nepal emerged within ADB/N. Established in 1975, the Small Farmers Development Program (SFDP) provided support to targeted ‘‘small farmers’’ – in the form of subsidized credit and technical assistance. Donors, particularly those associated with the United Nations, played a major financial and conceptual role. The significant innovation of SFDP (simultaneous to, and independent of, Yunus’ Grameen Bank experiment in Bangladesh) was the delivery of credit through small groups, which were held collectively liable for loans to individual group members (Sharma 2003). By thus mitigating the need for the bank to collect collateral, the group system made it more financially feasible for SFDP to truly ‘‘reach’’ poor farmers. It is important to emphasize the ways in which these programs were gendered. On the face of it, ‘‘small farmers’’ is a gender-neutral designation, but, in practice, credit and technical assistance were commonly delivered to men, assumed to be the ‘‘heads’’ of discrete, harmonious family units. Recognizing the implicit gendering of this and other development approaches, a group of women researchers set out to document the implications for women and for development in Nepal. Their research generated the first official data on women in Nepal, and resulted directly in the institution of a number of women-targeted development programs – including the Production Credit for Rural Women (PCRW) established in 1982 (Acharya and Bennett 1981). For development economists at the Nepal Central Bank, this Status of Women study presented ‘‘efficiency’’ as grounds for including women in the development process: to alleviate poverty it was necessary to get ‘‘production credit’’ into the hands of women, so that they could earn money to invest in family welfare. The goal of PCRW, therefore, was to ensure that Deprived Sector credit would reach women borrowers. Here again, borrowers were formed into groups that could guarantee individual loans, generate savings, and undertake community development projects with the support of line agencies. There are three points to keep in mind in considering the criticisms aimed at these programs and the reforms they have undergone: a) donors operating in a climate of Keynesian economic orthodoxy played a catalytic role in consolidating a state-led approach to rural banking; b) however progressive the vision of PCRW, this initiative to reverse systemic gender bias remained at the margins of the rural financial system, with the bulk of resources flowing through SFDP and the




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state-owned commercial banks; and c) the state-led poverty lending schemes were established during the ‘‘Panchayat’’ system of localized governance (which was established in 1960 through a royal coup and lasted until the ‘‘People’s Democracy Movement’’ toppled it in 1990). Though decentralist in rhetoric and ‘‘developmentalist’’ in orientation (complete with ambitious ‘‘five-year plans’’), the Panchayat system, including the poverty lending programs it spawned, operated in a highly centralized, clientalist and bureaucratic fashion.

Contingencies of Neoliberalization: Negotiations over the Means and Ends of Governance In the 1980s, donors changed their tune and structural adjustment programs became the mechanism for bringing Third World economies into line with an ascendant neoliberal orthodoxy. With regard to the finance sector, the donors advocated stimulating capital formation by promoting competition and ‘‘increasing the number of financial instruments and markets through which domestic resources can be mobilized’’ (Fry 1988: 314). Given the legacy of state-led rural finance instituted with donor interventions born of a different economic orthodoxy, how has the official neoliberal orthodoxy articulated with the institutions and political commitments on the ground in peripheral states such as Nepal? How has neoliberalization transpired politically, through what institutional networks and within what sorts of discursive regimes? What, finally, have been the progressive and regressive political possibilities opened up in the articulation of national-scale institutional and regulatory regimes with contemporary donor-led financial restructurings circulating on a global scale? This section examines negotiations over the means and ends of governance in the debate surrounding rural finance by considering the perspectives of three key sets of actors operating at different spatial scales – donors, state planners, and local NGOs. Our discussion reveals not only what sorts of alliances the neoliberal hegemonic project has forged within the Nepalese ‘‘national populars,’’ but also what have been its sources of instability.

Donors: Neoliberalism as a hegemonic project In Nepal, the finance sector was an early and intense focus of the economic liberalizations spawned by donor conditionalities starting


56 Table 3.1



Institutional (re)configuration of the financial sector of Nepal

Institutions

1975

1985

1995

2003

State-owned commercial banks

2

2

2

2

Joint venture/private commercial banks

0

2

8

15

State-owned development banks (including the Grameen Bikas Banks/rural development banks)

2

2

7

7

Private development banks

0

0

0

8

Private rural/microfinance development banks (including apex banks Rural Microfinance Development Corporation and Small Farmers Development Bank)

0

0

2

6

Finance companies

0

0

33

57

Finance cooperatives (cooperatives authorized by Central Bank to perform limited banking activities)

0

0

9

34

Savings and credit cooperatives – SACCOS (cooperatives registered under the Cooperative Department)

–

6

343

2155

Financial NGOs – FINGOs (NGOs authorized by Central Bank to perform microfinance activities)

0

0

2

44

Sources: Nepal Rastra Bank (www.nrb.org.np); Centre for Microfinance (www. cmfnepal.org.); Sharma (2003)

in the mid-1980s (see Table 3.1). The shift from state-led to marketled development was achieved discursively through a rejection of poverty lending and other state-directed lending as forms of ‘‘financial repression’’ that introduce ‘‘nonmarket considerations’’ into decisions on credit allocation, and otherwise ‘‘frustrate’’ the development and efficiency of the financial sector (Killick 1993). Like those of many formerly developmental states, Nepal’s poverty lending programs had run into considerable fiscal troubles which got explained by a Hayekian condemnation of centralized market governance. The Priority Sector system was declared unsustainable. It has been ‘‘imposed on the banks,’’ as a World Bank evaluation put it, ‘‘to support the promise of the Government of Nepal to fulfill the basic needs of the Nepalese poor by the year 2000’’ (von Pischke, Bennett, and Goldberg 1993: 11). The interest subsidies of small farmer programs have been a particular source of angst amongst the donors. The argument is that subsidies




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neglect the needs of financial institutions – anthropomorphized as victims of too much state regulation (see Clarke 2004a: 99). They discourage prompt loan repayment – and the resulting defaults expand the public subsidy required to keep the system running. Development finance, it is argued, focuses on outreach at the expense of sustainability. In order to resonate with a generation of development economists, however, the case for ‘‘failure’’ had also to be made in terms of outreach. Donors thus claimed that outreach failures are committed when directed loans become ‘‘captured’’ by local elites or when subsidized credit is used for rewarding political patronage. Moreover, poverty lending also fails to achieve the intended outreach to the poor because it involves subsidies that perpetuate dependency on overextended governments and donors, and that inhibit the development of accountable and sustainable local institutions; the argument here is that credit subsidies actually disempower the poor and disadvantaged groups that poverty lending purports to help (IRIS 1998). The discursive nod to social objectives notwithstanding, in practice the aim was clearly to establish neoliberal modalities of rural credit. In the finance sector as a whole, donor conditionalities aimed to diversify the institutional landscape – by opening the banking sector to foreign direct investment, deregulating commercial banking, and – for the rural sector – promoting microfinance (see Table 3.1). Identifying the fiscal troubles of poverty lending as the result of failed outreach by unsustainable institutions plagued by too much regulation had created the conditions for microfinance becoming the ‘‘solution.’’ The received wisdom here is that in order to achieve both outreach and sustainability, planners would have to turn to the rationality of the market – to recognize that the poor are willing to save money and pay market rates for credit (Holt and Ribe 1992: 13). The model most avidly promoted by the donors in the early 1990s was a version of the borrower group mechanism developed by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Here members ‘‘self-select’’ to form groups of five, undergo a training in financial discipline, establish a savings fund, review one another’s loan requests, and then receive loans by rotation. From the lender’s perspective, [t]he group plays a role in reducing the cost of gathering information about the borrower, but its more important role is in motivating repayments through shared liability for default. Lenders can shift some of the loan processing and loan approval tasks onto groups because the groups have better access to information on the character and creditworthiness of potential borrowers (Rhyne and Otero 1992: 1564).


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The difference from the existing Nepalese poverty lending models (Small Farmers Development Program and Production Credit for Rural Women) is that the groups are smaller, much more closely monitored, and focused exclusively on savings and credit. Other features of Grameen ‘‘replications’’ promoted by donors include charging market rates of interest, keeping loan sizes small, and, in the most orthodox models, requiring borrowers to wear uniforms and chant slogans of financial and social discipline during attendance at weekly meetings. The scope for sustainability lies in the fast pace of expansion and low staff/client ratios (a minimum of 1 : 200). For donors seeking to introduce market discipline into rural finance, microfinance is considered to be a win–win approach to development: investors profit and the poor gain access to resources that allow them to help themselves (Singh, Dawkins-Scully, and Wysham 1997: 55–6). In Nepal the World Bank team cited above recommended banks be freed from Priority Sector lending requirements and allowed to concentrate on financial instruments that respond to market rather than social

Plate 3.2 Homogeneous micro enterprises? Residents of Deuri village (including microfinance clients) selling processed grain products in the weekly open market, Deuri Village, Nepal, 2002 (photograph, Yogendra B. Shakya)




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signals. It further recommended that the Nepal Central Bank promote a network of independent, financially viable microfinance institutions (MFIs) replicating the Grameen model. Other reforms to the rural financial system advocated by donors since the 1980s include: a) segregating rural finance from integrated community development programs for the sake of financial sustainability; b) establishing a regulatory framework authorizing Grameen Bikas Banks (a government-led replication of the Grameen Banks of Bangladesh), private development banks, private microfinance banks, and nongovernmental organizations (financial NGOs, or FINGOs) to undertake microfinance; c) establishing apex banks in the private sector to engage in wholesale lending to microfinance institutions; and d) privatizing state-owned development banks and commercial banks. Crucially, the shift from poverty lending to the new ‘‘financial systems’’ or ‘‘business’’ approach to rural credit was to be achieved through ‘‘new means of structuring relationships with the poor’’ (von Pischke et al. 1993: 5). Embedded in the microfinance model is a social identity through which to accomplish the desired restructuring – that of the woman entrepreneur with cultural propensities to invest wisely and look after her family and community. On a global scale donors and lenders have recognized that women are simply a lower credit risk than men and a more ‘‘efficient’’ venue for distributing the benefits of economic growth. Women are also more likely to comply with the strict disciplinary routines of the Grameen-based group system. Assertions of women’s ‘‘empowerment’’ notwithstanding, these rather instrumental motivations for targeting women suggest an ideological function for the regendering of rural finance.6 For microfinance represents a change in the specification of the subjects of development from ‘‘small farmer’’ (male) ‘‘beneficiaries’’ with social rights, to women ‘‘clients’’ with ‘‘responsibilities’’ to their families (see also Rose 1996). The dominant political rationality here is not about women’s rights to access finance capital; it is rather about how to draw upon women’s capacity to undertake local development. When poor women are constructed as responsible clients in this way, the onus for development shifts downward to the rural poor and citizenship manifests not through entitlement to state services (social rights) but through capacities for local self-reliance (Miller and Rose 1990).7 Among donors seeking to reform Nepal’s rural credit sector in the 1980s, then, discourses of financial sustainability and local self-reliance converge strategically in a political program to establish neoliberalism as an end in itself through the technology of microfinance. It is a


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technology emanating not from the centers of neoliberal ideological production in the core, but from the unlikely location of rural Bangladesh. Based on this blueprint the shift to prioritizing financial sustainability was to be achieved through a regendering of rural finance to align the (easily disciplined and family-oriented) subjectivities of women with the ‘‘needs’’ of financial institutions. In undertaking this shift, however, donors had to articulate a ‘‘soft form’’ of neoliberalism – one that embraces social objectives such as outreach and women’s empowerment. It is precisely the capacity of the neoliberal hegemonic project to assume such soft forms that explains not only its durability, as others have argued (e.g., Peck and Tickell 2002), but also its capacity to seize on anti-statist grassroots initiatives and expand them to the most peripheral regions of the capitalist system.

Nongovernmental organizations: Neoliberalism at the grassroots Donors wishing to promote the neoliberalization of rural finance in Nepal found an easy ally in a group of local NGOs established in the early 1990s following the reinstatement of parliamentary democracy. At this time, NGOs were authorized for the first time to undertake development activities free of direct oversight by the Queen’s social welfare commission. In fact, the microfinance concept was first introduced in Nepal by a few urban intellectuals and philanthropists who seized the opportunity created by the widening of domestic political space to open FINGOs. Many of these practitioners, all men, had career paths where they had been senior officials in the very state institutions that had designed the Priority Sector system in Nepal, but elected to retire in the early 1990s because they had become disillusioned with the capacity of poverty lending to serve the poor in the context of centralized state planning. They adopted a virulently anti-statist and pro-market view of rural finance, discredited welfarist models of banking (which include not only state-directed poverty lending, but also ‘‘credit cooperatives’’ comparable to the Canadian caisses populaire), and turned instead to the Grameen Bank as the model that could best promote ‘‘self-reliance’’ and financial sustainability. The founders of the early FINGOs were thoroughly committed to alleviating poverty in Nepal – in several instances turning down lucrative positions in donor agencies. But they set their sights exclusively on the ‘‘minimalist’’ Grameen model that would operate entirely outside the state sector.




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No longer beholden to the political imperatives of the state, the early FINGOs were able to court donor funding by building programs complying directly with donors’ prescriptions for market-led models. The precedent they set in institution-building also paved the way for the donors to ‘‘mainstream’’ the Grameen model during the rapid expansion of the microfinance sector after 1995. By placing conditions on donor aid, requiring adherence to ‘‘best practices,’’ sponsoring exchange visits and participation in microfinance training programs abroad, and funding hundreds of workshops in Nepal, the donors established the Grameen Bank as the hegemonic model of microfinance in Nepal. In 2003 we spoke to many local beneficiaries of these training programs – many of them staff of NGOs seeking to expand into savings and credit activities – who had indeed adopted the principle of financial sustainability as the unquestioned objective of microfinance. An equally common refrain among practitioners in the many MFIs that mushroomed rapidly after 1995 was an anti-statist discourse disparaging the use of subsidies and state interference in rural financial markets. There are two points to note here about the significance of networks for the neoliberalization of rural finance in Nepal. The first is that neoliberalization entails the forging of alliances between proponents in the imperialist centers of global power (in this case, multilateral and dominant bilateral donors) and ideologically sympathetic practitioners in the periphery. It is a process that is ordered by asymmetrical power relations, but that cannot be reduced merely to the exercise of power by the global over the local. Second, at the same time, the case of rural finance in Nepal points to the significance for the propagation of neoliberal ideology of networks among practitioners within peripheral Asian nations as a whole. We have already noted the Bangladeshi origins of the Grameen model. During the 1990s the chief institutional centers for training of practitioners in the ‘‘business’’ approach to rural credit were also located in Asia – for example, the Grameen Trust in Bangladesh and CASHPOR in Malaysia. The fact that these centers drew practitioners from both the core and the periphery, often funded by multilateral donors, further de-centers accepted geographical accounts of neoliberalism being exported to the rest of the world from the ‘‘heartlands’’ of North America and Western Europe. Local circuits of ‘‘grassroots neoliberalism’’ have thus been connected in wider circuits of information sharing, knowledge production, and policy formation (Shakya, forthcoming).


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State planners: Reconciling neoliberalism with an end of social protection There are also civil servants in senior administrative positions within the Nepal Central Bank, especially those trained post-1980 in North American management programs, who are sympathetic to the idea of infusing rural credit with neoliberal principles. Within the state, however, such potential allies of the neoliberal hegemonic project are only as strong as they are politically viable. Politically, the Central Bank is beholden to a Ministry of Finance expressing the ruling party’s ambitions for reelection. It is also staffed by a cadre of civil servants whose orientation in rural finance derived from pre-1980 training in countries of the Soviet Bloc or New-Deal America, and who are the proud architects of the Priority Sector system. In the early 1990s, these politics manifested in a Rural Credit Review conducted by the Nepal Central Bank, simultaneous to the World Bank evaluation. In it, Nepalese analysts articulated a different representation about the state of rural finance in Nepal and a different vision about its future, one which attempted to retain a social protection goal while also accommodating aspects of the donors’ programmatic prescriptions. Specifically, the Rural Credit Review advocated the Grameen approach to group borrowing and targeting women, but rejected outright regulatory reform by advocating dimensions of the Priority Sector concept (HMG 1994). The review maintained that the formal finance sector continued to fail the poor. Most significantly, it found that rates of formal-sector borrowing by smallholder households were higher in areas covered by Priority Sector programs. The Nepal Central Bank thus construed these findings as evidence of the need to retain Priority Sector regulations mandating rural credit delivery. The Rural Credit Review offered a political rationale for financial planners to support maintaining aspects of the earlier social protectionist vision of poverty lending, as a distinctively Nepali response to globalization. At a 1995 seminar on rural finance sponsored by the Nepal Central Bank, for instance, the Nepalese director of an influential research institute and former chairman of the National Planning Commission argued that banks must be held socially accountable lest economic liberalization benefit wealthy urban sectors at the expense of the rural poor (see Rankin 2001 for a more complete discursive analysis of the Nepalese response). Within the Nepal Central Bank, a senior officer in the Development Finance Department likewise explained to us in 1994 that Nepal’s path to economic liberalization must encompass




63

‘‘rural financing on a large scale’’ (Rankin 2001: 25). Such social protectionist sentiments are echoed in the text of a training manual that civil servants entering the Central Bank at the level of ‘‘Section Officer’’ were required to master. The manual, which was still in circulation through the 1990s, instructs trainees in the role the state must play in furnishing rural credit to the poor and identifies a role for rural finance quite contrary to the neoliberal orthodoxy put forth by donors: ‘‘Our endeavor must be to increase lending as a means for social and economic consciousness rather than just as loans per se’’ (Bista and Pradhan 1996: 16, cited in Rankin 2001: 26). Even the then-deputy governor of the Nepal Central Bank, an advocate of economic liberalization, defended a commitment to social protection at the national regulatory scale: The World Bank, IMF, the banks – they are all pushing me on the Priority Sector question. I had commitments there . . . Now there is a proposal to drop it entirely. I can agree to that only as long as we develop alternatives, like the rural development banks, to fulfill that function of rural lending (cited in Rankin 2001: 26).8

The competing justifications of the World Bank and Nepal Central Bank reviews in the early 1990s thus galvanized strong agreement among Nepalese planners (of varying ideological positions) around the need to embed social protection in financial regulation. Of course, given the imperialist relations of power within which the discussion about rural finance transpired, Nepalese planners had to make some accommodation to donor recommendations. This was achieved by taking steps to devolve rural credit delivery from commercial banks to government-owned, but autonomously managed, development banks (referred to as rural development banks or Grameen Bikas Banks) and private development banks modeled after the Grameen Bank, and to nongovernmental organizations undertaking savings and credit functions (FINGOs) – thus diversifying credit channels and promoting a competitive environment for lending to the rural poor. Planners with commitments to social protection have thus attempted to accommodate the (politically more potent) rationalities of neoliberalism by embracing ‘‘more market’’ as a means for achieving an end of social protection (Larner 1997). An influential planner at the Nepal Central Bank, for instance, argued in 1994 that the microfinance concept could work to ensure ongoing credit provision to the rural poor because it enables lenders to profit.


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Of course, these comments resonate with the World Bank team’s arguments that poverty lending had compromised, and microfinance would enhance, social outreach. The difference lies in the views of donors and state planners about the role of financial regulation. While the donors advocated dissolution of the Priority Sector system, state planners instead launched the Rural Financial Markets Development Scheme in the mid-1990s: Priority Sector regulations remained, but were rendered more ‘‘efficient’’ by reforms promoting some of the donors’ programmatic recommendations. Commercial banks (including the joint-venture banks allowed to enter the Nepalese financial markets from the mid-1980s) would stay linked to the rural sector, but were allowed to meet ‘‘Deprived Sector’’ lending requirements (to invest 3 percent of their loan portfolio to individuals meeting poverty criteria) by making loans and capital contributions to the development banks and FINGOs specializing in the provision of microfinance to poor, rural women (CECI 1996). From the point of view of state planners, then, neoliberalism had to be accommodated, but only to the extent that it contributed to social protectionist objectives. The latter were to be safeguarded nationally, even if concessions were made in the liberalization of the institutional landscape and the market orientation of rural credit programs. This shows that neoliberalization is not necessarily a smooth, monolithic process, as conventionally perceived. Even where the neoliberal hegemonic project finds allies, some of whom may be instrumental in articulating ‘‘soft forms’’ suitable to the poor and marginalized, it also encounters resistance by people and institutions seeking to promote ideologically contrary ends. For the case of rural credit in Nepal, the resistance is apparent in the ‘‘stickiness’’ of social protectionist regulations through the 1990s, when the donors first attempted to achieve neoliberalization through conditional lending.

Contradictions of Rural Finance – ‘‘Living within and against Neoliberalism’’ An important shift in the neoliberalization of rural finance occurred toward the end of the 1990s. If state planners had first responded to the microfinance movement by conceding only to programmatic reforms, now they extended neoliberal principles to the scale of financial regulation as well. If they first defended Priority Sector regulations as a necessary measure to embed social protections in financial market rules,




Regulatory changes

Introduction of Cooperative Act (1992). Unlike the Sajha Cooperative Act of 1984, this Cooperative Act allows for the creation of private cooperatives.

65

Programmatic changes First Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCOS) formed in 1994. Between 1994 and 2003, the number of SACCOS increased to 2,155. Of those, 34 have obtained license to engage in ‘‘limited banking activities.’’

From mid-1990s, the credit groups (subproject offices) of Small Farmers Development Program (SFDP) are being transformed into Small Farmers Cooperative Limited (SFCLs). Introduction of Development Bank Act (1995). Introduced partly to accommodate the creation of the Grameen Bikas Banks and other private development banks.

Introduction of Financial Intermediary Act (1998). Enable nonbanking institutions to engage in financial intermediation.

Between 1992 and 1995, five state-owned Grameen Bikas Banks (also referred to as rural development banks) were established to replicate the Grameen Banks of Bangladesh in Nepal. Nirdhan Utthan Bank, the first private rural (microfinance) development bank, established in 1998. Sixteen private development banks have been established between 1998 and 2003 as enabled by the Development Bank Act and Financial Intermediary Act. Creation of Rural Microfinance Development Centre (RMDC), the first apex microfinance bank, in 1998 to provide wholesale loans to FINGOs, Grameen Bikas Banks, development banks and finance cooperatives. Creation of Small Farmers Development Bank (SFDB), an apex development bank, in 2001 to provide wholesale loans to SFCLs (and other SFCL-like cooperatives).

Phasing out of Priority Sector Regulation (2001). The emerging private development banks are viewed as a replacement to PS.

Creation of first official financial NGO (FINGO) with license from Nepal Central Bank to engage in ‘‘limited banking activities’’ in 2000. By 2003, this number increased to 44. Many of the savings and credit groups formed through Priority Credit for Rural Women and Micro Credit Program for Women have been transformed into FINGOs.

Privatization of state-owned development banks (including the Grameen Bikas Banks) in process.

Figure 3.1 Recent regulatory and programmatic changes in Nepal’s rural financial sector Sources: Sharma (2003), Nepal Central Bank (2003; www.nrb.org.np), Centre for Microfinance (www.cmfnepal.org)

now they consented to growing donor pressure to re-regulate rural finance in a manner that would ‘‘free’’ commercial banks from commitments to rural lending and support a burgeoning nongovernmental sector of microfinance institutions. Figure 3.1 summarizes how rural


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finance has assumed an increasingly anti-statist, market orientation in recent years through both programmatic and regulatory reforms. It also illustrates how, in spite of its anti-statist claims, neoliberalization requires considerable state intervention in order to achieve a diversified and market-driven finance sector. Even as the neoliberal hegemonic project extends itself to the domain of state regulation, however, we suggest that its contradictions become increasingly apparent – not only to state planners, but also to actors at sub- and supranational scales of rural finance who occupy institutional locations from which it is possible to articulate explicit critiques of neoliberalism.

Accommodation of state planners We begin by considering how these changes are reflected discursively in the arguments and justifications put forward by state planners today. Do they represent a fundamental transformation in the political rationality of rural finance, or do the old social protectionist commitments still find expression? Our interviews in 2003 suggest that, while a neoliberal rationality thoroughly informs recent decisions and actions taken by Nepalese state planners with regard to rural finance, there are still threads of resistance and instability. On the one hand, we encountered narratives suggesting that the neoliberal hegemonic project has succeeded in colonizing state agencies. Many of these narratives centered on the ‘‘failures’’ of the Priority Sector system and the lack of ideological alternatives given existing imperialist relations of power. One of the very architects of the Priority Sector system reflected on how its ‘‘failures’’ derived from the idealism and naı¨vety of Nepalese planners: ‘‘we were trying to convert commercial banks into development banks. However, we failed. It’s like we were trying to transform a local cow into a genetically modified cow’’ (i.e., to make banks behave in an ‘‘unnatural’’ way). He quickly turned to a neoliberal interpretation of subsidies to analyze what went wrong, offering the frequently encountered metaphor, ‘‘giving subsidized credit is like handing out fish instead of fishing lines.’’ While the social protectionist rationality that he had formerly embraced might raise questions about whether some people will get disproportionate shares of fish because they can afford better fishing gear, or whether furnishing people with fishing lines might result in over-fishing, this planner had now adopted the neoliberal interpretation: ‘‘if we give people subsidies,’’ he explained, ‘‘then they will just become dependent, and commercial subsidies interfere with banks being able to compete on their own two feet.’’9




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Besides, went another common refrain, articulated here by a senior officer of the Small Farmer Development Bank, subsidies are no longer viable because donors have suffered ‘‘aid fatigue:’’ . . . like a cow who after a while experiences fatigue and stops producing milk . . . now they [donors] are putting their resources toward NGOs . . . since the emergence of democracy, a lot of new development organizations have been established and donor aid has to be diversified now.10

This planner is referring to the competitive force exerted on state institutions since the post-1990 liberalization of civil society, when financial NGOs began courting donor funding to build Grameen-style microfinance programs. If the Priority Sector concept fails, subsidies have counterproductive outcomes, and donor funding to national governments is less forthcoming, then it is almost as if there is no other choice than to ‘‘follow the wave [of the current economic orthodoxy],’’ as the senior planner at Agricultural Development Bank put it; ‘‘if we do not ride the wave, then we get left behind.’’ Resistance to the neoliberal hegemonic project resides primarily in representations of the politics underlying the neoliberalization process, particularly the notion that economic liberalization in Nepal has been entirely donor-led. In a discussion surrounding the 2001 creation of the private-sector Small Farmer Development Bank (to take over the financially unsustainable ‘‘small farmer’’ loan program of the state-owned Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal [ADB/N]), two of its senior officers wished to make it very clear to us: Officer A:

The innovation of this Small Farmers Development Bank . . . this has been accomplished by our own process of ‘‘Institutional Development’’ (pointing to a chart he had drawn sketching the transition from SFDP within ADB/N to SFCLs funded by SFDB). It was not enforced by others. It was our own innovation. Officer B: We should not miss this point. [SFDB] was not influenced by external factors but reflects our own innovation.

Similarly, three senior officials in the Nepal Central Bank and the ADB/N emphasized to us on separate occasions how Nepal had instituted the group borrowing system before its ‘‘discovery’’ by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. These forms of social intermediation, they argued, will continue to be practiced in Nepal irrespective of changing donor trends. The point is that Nepalese state planners themselves reject a


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donor-centric representation of neoliberalization as emanating from the imperialist core of the capitalist world system. Yet planners also recognize the meta-regulatory constraints on planning processes at the national scale, requiring that social protectionist objectives sometimes be met through market means. A Central Bank planner, who had formerly been Division Head of the Microfinance Department, conceded that the only real agency of state planners lies in the pacing of neoliberalization: What we negotiated with them [donors] was the timing and sequencing of the reforms. So in some of the sensitive areas, we said, okay, Priority Sector will phase out in five years, but then the Deprived Sector, that will remain for some time . . . for more than five years. And we will negotiate that later on . . . [Once strong microfinance institutions are established] then the Deprived Sector credit also will not be required.

Just as the Deputy Governor of the Central Bank had asserted 10 years earlier, the message here is that market liberalization is a perfectly acceptable mechanism for achieving social benefits, but until wellfunctioning markets have been adequately established, the state must continue to play a role in ensuring an equitable distribution of resources. Another subversive strain expressed by state planners has to do with the hypocrisies and contradictions of neoliberalism. Several planners commented to us about the unevenness with which neoliberal principles, especially subsidies, are applied in donor countries themselves. Another problem Nepalese planners raised about liberalized credit markets has to do with the costs of wholesale lending to financial institutions based in remote rural areas. One of the ADB/N senior officers pointed out to us that not all wholesale lenders are created equal. While the governmentbacked Small Farmers Development Bank must provide wholesale lending to small farmer cooperatives all across the country (committing staff resources to reach remote areas), the donor-funded Rural Microfinance Development Centre has merely to serve a few large, well-established MFIs based in Kathmandu (‘‘at the press of a computer button’’). The different levels of overhead cost are reflected in lending rates that disadvantage the cooperatives. Perhaps subsidies are in order to level the playing field, since abandoning the cooperatives is not a politically or morally viable option. It is within the small farmer cooperatives, federations of the former borrower groups of the Small Farmers Development Program, that social protectionist rationalities are most potently expressed in contemporary Nepalese rural finance. The model itself is based on the cooperative




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principle of collective decision making about the management of local resources. In the transition from Small Farmers Development Program borrower groups to autonomous cooperatives, moreover, ADB/N refrained from devolving the costs of restructuring to the rural poor – with, for example, a provision for loan write-offs. The cooperative model and the ‘‘pro-poor’’ policies of ADB/N embody forms of social solidarity and collective citizenship that directly challenge the assumptions of possessive individualism underlying orthodox neoliberal prescriptions. The significance of these approaches lies in their symbolic representation (however limited) of an older, now counter-hegemonic accommodation with capitalism that continues to destabilize neoliberalization.

Supra- and subnational sources of critique – after neoliberalism? The story would not be complete, however, without revisiting the role of donors and NGOs in reconstructing the terrain of rural finance in Nepal. Thus far we have been treating donors as a homogeneous group exerting a consistent and coherent neoliberalizing pressure. Through the mid1990s, when the World Bank and USAID dominated the transition from poverty lending to microfinance, this would have been an accurate representation. But once the orthodoxy of microfinance took hold, donor participation in microfinance proliferated enormously; more than 20 bilateral donors and international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) have entered the microfinance scene in Nepal, each promoting their own distinctive model. Politically this phenomenon has had contradictory implications. On the one hand, the idea that rural finance should be undertaken by financially sustainable, nonstate institutions has assumed hegemonic proportions in Nepal; as we have seen, it is no longer politically or economically viable – given the conditions on donor funding – to explicitly reject neoliberal premises about the efficacy of market interest rates, local deposits, and a profit orientation. On the other hand, expanded involvement of donors from home countries with different national regulatory frameworks has resulted in the articulation and promotion of alternatives to the most market-oriented and anti-statist models of microfinance promoted by the World Bank and USAID. The cooperative model that resonates most with the old state-led, integrated approaches, for example, is promoted by German agencies drawing on corporatist governance models and a strong cooperative movement at home. Likewise, the early FINGOs


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have now been joined not only by other practitioners of microfinance, but also by a handful of NGO think tanks engaged in training, evaluation, and policy formulation. This proliferation in the approaches and ideological orientations of donors and NGOs has actually resulted in a situation in which some donors and NGOs themselves are articulating the most explicit critiques of neoliberalization and driving a re-evaluation of the role of microfinance in rural development. One set of comments in our 2003 interviews centered on the contradictions that have emerged when donors sought to neoliberalize rural finance. A representative of the German bilateral agency funding the Small Farmers Development Bank and the transition to small farmer cooperatives shared concerns about the Rural Microfinance Development Centre (RMDC). While the purpose of RMDC was to promote microfinance by establishing a market for wholesale credit in the private sector, this observer remarked that its activities are compromising the sustainability of small farmer cooperatives (which apparently do, at least theoretically, have some access to RMDC funds): We have a problem right now. . . RMDC’s role is to refinance rural financial institutions. The perceived advantage of RMDC is that they have access to cheap money from the Asian Development Bank, ADB . . . lends money at below-market rate to RMDC. That means RMDC can turn around and offer it to MFIs at 6.5 percent [per year]. Meanwhile SFCLs are mobilizing savings by offering interest rates of 8 percent, maybe 9 or 10 percent [per year]. But why should an SFCL manager continue mobilizing savings at these rates when he can get a credit line with RMDC at 6.5 per cent. That would make better business sense . . . Go for it. But then what happens when the credit line runs out in two or three years? And another problem is that there is a mentality [among borrowers] that this is not Nepali money: it’s not our money, it’s foreign money. So we don’t have any responsibility to pay it back.

By offering cheap credit to small farmer cooperatives, RMDC serves as a disincentive for managers of small farmer cooperatives to finance their own lending activity by raising local deposits. Yet deposits are a key pillar of the principle of financial sustainability and local self-reliance advocated by donors seeking to achieve the transition from state-led to market-led rural finance. As it happens, the political imperatives of donors – in this case the Asian Development Bank, to expend money on the creation of a ‘‘private’’ market in wholesale credit – may contradict, even undermine, the neoliberal hegemonic project on its own terms.




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Another set of comments about microfinance questions its capacity to catalyze entrepreneurial activity in the absence of an integrated development approach or supportive macroeconomic policies. The credit coordinator of a British FINGO argued that the benefits of microfinance are limited to helping people manage cycles of deficit and helping women, in particular, develop confidence and economic literacy: I would say the only thing microfinance does for really poor people is to smooth consumption. Because there are times in the year when the poor cannot manage their expenses . . . So when their financial resources are down . . . they can use . . . microcredit as a cushion . . . Another thing is the benefit of association . . . When women are united, organized into groups, they have some voice . . . and that voice gives some sort of confidence – confidence in terms of money, confidence to fight against domestic violence, confidence regarding emergencies. So that is the second benefit of microfinance. I would leave it at that. If microfinance programs are not complemented with education, with skill training, with market linkage . . . these are the only things it can do. And in many cases in Nepal this is where things have stuck. This is a sizable contribution, it’s an important contribution, but [it won’t on its own alleviate poverty].

A senior program officer at a local ‘‘microfinance think tank’’ – an NGO spawned by a Canadian donor agency – made a similar case about the limits of microfinance to catalyze income generating activities: ‘‘if it is a remote location [like in most of the hill areas of Nepal], then the way microfinance contributes is that it functions as a ‘social finance’ – what I mean is that people need money for medicine, to put their children through school, for marriage, this kind of thing.’’ From this perspective, then, the few positive social benefits of microfinance do not derive from, or necessarily even facilitate, participation in markets, as the model promises. In fact, there are structural impediments to market participation that microfinance alone cannot address. If you take the objective of generating entrepreneurial activity on its own terms, continued this NGO officer, then the historical gendering of microfinance makes less sense, even from a neoliberal perspective: When the Grameen Bank started in the early l980s in Bangladesh, what that taught us, the whole world, was that women are credit-worthy. Women don’t drink and gamble like men. They are very reliable, good clients . . . In contrast, men tend not to repay, which leads to defaults . . . so the message from this experience was that microfinance clients should be women . . . But now that saying is gone. In Nepal, most of the cooperatives have mixed memberships . . . and the repayment rate is not necessarily


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lower. . . we cannot make a theory that only women have good repayment. In women’s case, there is also this problem . . . microfinance institutions give loans to women, but . . . the male household members take the money. . . and when it comes to repayment time, it becomes very difficult for women. As for empowerment, in most cases what happens is that women take loans but use them only after getting approval from men.

In the absence of wider social change, giving credit to women may serve lenders’ interests in getting their money back (though some individual women may be a poor credit risk). But it is unlikely to have a transformative effect on household relations. In fact, targeting microfinance programs at women may simply embed the creditor–debtor relationship within prevailing gender dynamics – burdening women with debt without ensuring their capacity to manage household finances. The potentially disempowering effects of microfinance have been amply chronicled elsewhere (Goetz and Sen Gupta 1994; Rogaly 1995; Mayoux and Johnson 1997; Rahman 1999); what is remarkable here is that the point is being made by a practitioner of microfinance in a country where the model has been uncritically replicated for over a decade. What is needed, some donors and think tank NGOs argue, is a broader approach to development that does not rely exclusively on credit markets to alleviate poverty. The most eloquent statement to this effect came from the representative of the German donor, who argued that when so many donors expand and replicate microfinance in a hasty, unplanned manner, there is real potential to damage vulnerable local resources: If you choose the microfinance approach it is a very short term approach . . . For poverty alleviation we need other instruments as well . . . education, business development services . . . There are so many examples where microfinance goes wrong. When donors come into the country they are saying, okay, you form . . . groups and just collect some savings and we will give you some credit. And then they leave after two years. They will say, we have created 20,000 or 10,000 . . . groups. We have reached 50,000 poor [women] with microfinance. Well, those groups will collapse sooner or later. And mobilize savings, where is our responsibility? The savings will be gone. They will be misused. So I think we have a real problem. And many donors and governments don’t understand our responsibility toward the poor.

He concluded by making a case for development banking: I think we [donors] have become more market-oriented, more commercialized. But there is a public responsibility. That is why I think there is a




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justification for development banks like ADB/N. I mean, other people, especially the World Bank, might say, just close them. They make no contribution. But there is a social and public responsibility to serve the poor. I think we should admit this and we should support it. So there is a place for state-owned development banks . . . even if they are not optimizing or maximizing their profit . . .

To look at the rural finance sector as a whole, then, the prevailing narrative and practice certainly reflects an accommodation to neoliberalism. But there is also evidence of unevenness and instability. Nepalese planners may have conceded to the rationality of the market, but not without recognizing the politics of neoliberalization, asserting their own agency, and maintaining a commitment to social protection. Meanwhile, the contradictions that arise when the neoliberal hegemonic project is applied to rural finance have become increasingly apparent: anti-statist ambitions require active state involvement and regulatory reform; the construction of wholesale credit markets with donor subsidies undermines the capacity of nongovernmental rural credit programs to mobilize deposits; and empowering women with access to credit can ultimately disempower them with debt. As a result, donors and NGOs, formerly an unequivocal force for neoliberalization, are emerging as a source of critique. In fact, our initial evidence suggests that the microfinance sector in Nepal may be on the decline, in spite of the ongoing panacean rhetoric circulating globally about the power of microfinance as a market-led approach to poverty alleviation.

Conclusion We have considered the mainstreaming of microfinance as an instance of neoliberalization and traced the processes through which reforms to rural finance in Nepal have embedded neoliberal principles within state regulations and institutions. Rather than characterizing this process as mere ideological reproduction of neoliberalism, however, we emphasize the different and shifting perspectives of variously positioned participants in the institutionalization of microfinance: donors, state planners, and nongovernmental organizations. In so doing, we trace debates over the means and ends of governance, revealing spaces of critique and resistance in Nepal’s encounter with microfinance as a political technology of neoliberalism. Key to our approach have been: a) a historical perspective obtained through archival research


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and narrative analysis of interviews conducted with state planners over a 10-year interval; b) an emphasis on the contradictory role of state regulation in the neoliberalization of development; and c) a gender perspective illustrating the instrumental role of gender in neoliberalization and ultimately as a site of its critique. Our research dispels two common myths about the spread of neoliberal ideas around the world. First, neoliberalization does not unfold as a smooth, monolithic, or inevitable process; rather, the insertion of neoliberal ideas into particular ‘‘national populars’’ requires the strategic articulation of ‘‘soft forms’’ – in this case through a discourse of social outreach and women’s empowerment and the forging of alliances with local institutions and practitioners. Second, while donors have undoubtedly mobilized imperial relations of power to advance a neoliberalization agenda, the case of microfinance illustrates the extent to which sites in the periphery themselves can be crucial to the formulation and propagation of neoliberal technologies. The Nepal case reveals cracks in the ideology and programs of neoliberalism when they come up against the networks of people and institutions in a particular national setting. Planners within state institutions whose training and commitments lie with a different economic orthodoxy seek to accommodate microfinance, a program of neoliberalism, to an end of social protection and redistribution. These motivations are reflected in the stickiness of regulations mandating a role for commercial banks in rural finance, even as the state concedes to programmatic reform enforced by donors intolerant of credit subsidies and market governance. The impetus for neoliberalization comes from American-dominated multilateral and bilateral agencies, but the proliferation of microfinance among donor agencies from home countries harboring different regulatory regimes has exposed the most anti-statist and market-oriented elements of microfinance to new critical scrutiny. Meanwhile, the 1990 democratic reforms in Nepal opened up a political terrain for two contradictory tendencies in relation to microfinance. The state’s more permissive stance toward NGOs on the one hand created an opportunity for state planners disillusioned with Keynesian approaches to open FINGOs engaged directly in microfinance provision and eligible directly for donor funding. On the other hand it spawned other intermediary NGOs – development think tanks – within which processes of ideological reproduction and critique transpire side by side. The fact that alternative and contrary perspectives have been consistently articulated within the Nepalese civil service and are increasingly articulated by donors and NGOs with heterodox orientations once again reveals that




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neoliberalization is not a homogeneous process with universal effects. As John Clarke (2004a: 102, 105) put it, ‘‘[l]iving within neoliberalism is not necessarily the same thing as being neoliberal.’’ The terrain of rural finance may reflect an accommodation to neoliberalism, but it has not been entirely transformed and flattened by a neoliberal hegemony. Taking a processual view of neoliberalism as a hegemonic project has allowed us to foreground the incompleteness and unevenness of its achievements and to identify moments of conflict and contestation. From the perspectives of state planners, nongovernmental organizations, and donors, we see not only how neoliberalism attempts to make the world conform – how it takes root in particular national-institutional contexts – but also how the world is shaped by other forces and other projects that get in the way of constructing neoliberal hegemony. It is important to pay attention to these alternatives as they are a vital source of other, more progressive, imaginaries of the world. Our research shows how innovation may arise at the transnational scale, among those in a position to influence the conditions of development aid and interstate market rules.

Notes 1 There is no adequate terminology to characterize relations among countries with differing access to resources and power. Most have pejorative implications: developed/developing, First World/Third World, core/periphery. Some have outlived their relevance, or the historical conditions of their emergence: First World/Third World. More politically neutral geographic terminology – North/South, West/East – do not always accurately capture the global distribution of power and resources. We have settled on ‘‘core’’ and ‘‘periphery’’ to capture relative positions within a fundamentally unsustainable and uneven capitalist global system (though we resort to ‘‘Third World’’ when we sense the language of ‘‘core/periphery’’ could be misinterpreted as ‘‘gradations of significance’’). 2 According to the Microcredit Summit Campaign (MSC) – a lobbying and funding institution established at the first Microcredit Summit in 1997 to coordinate and document the worldwide replication of microfinance – as of 2003 there were 2,572 registered microfinance institutions, serving 61.7 million low-income households around the world, representing an increase of 447 percent in the number of microfinance clients from 1997 to 2003 (Daley-Harris 2002). 3 This in spite of their own ideological differences regarding the role of the state in development (see Bromley 1990; Yunus in Gibbons 1992).


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4 Foucault’s concept of ‘‘dispositif’’ is useful here. Like Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, ‘‘dispositif’’ highlights that hegemonic conditions prevail when a ‘‘thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble’’ of agencies and discourses and ‘‘polymorphous techniques of power’’ appear to be functioning in contiguous, cohesive ways. Thus part of the process of undoing hegemony is exposing its heterogeneous, uneven, and contradictory relationships (Foucault 1980: 194). 5 The proportions for the ‘‘Priority Sector’’ have increased gradually (from the initial level of 7 percent) since the portfolio requirements were first instituted in 1974 – and were first expressed as a proportion of banks’ deposits, as opposed to loans (von Pischke et al. 1993: 10). 6 In other work we explore the appeal of notions of empowerment and entrepreneurialism to rural Nepalese women, along with their tactics to subvert the limiting and patronizing aspects of microfinance programs. Their perspectives, which are crucial to the durability – and fallibility – of neoliberalism at the grassroots, are beyond the scope of this chapter (but see Rankin 2001, 2004; Shakya and Rankin 2006; Shakya 2007). 7 Underscoring the role of individual ‘‘freedom’’ in governmental selfregulation, Foucault writes that in the modern state ‘‘there cannot be relations of power unless the subjects are free. If one or the other were completely at the disposition of the other and became his thing, an object on which he can exercise an infinite and unlimited violence, there would not be relations of power. In order to exercise a relation of power, there must be on both sides at least a certain form of liberty’’ (1988a: 12). The modern state is then characterized by ‘‘the idea of a kind of power which takes freedom itself and . . . the life and life-conduct of the ethically free subject, as in some sense the correlative object of its own persuasive capacity’’ (Gordon 1991: 5). Power thus operates not in spite of, but through the construction of a space for free economic exchange and ‘‘through the construction of a subjectivity normatively experienced as the source of free will and rational, autonomous agency’’ (Scott 1995: 201). 8 Unless otherwise indicated, interviews with stakeholders in Nepal’s rural finance sector were conducted by the authors; audio recordings were transcribed and translated into English by the authors with assistance from Pratima Shrestha, Sabin Ninglekhu, and Suvechha Adhikari. 9 A similar transformation occurred in Muhammad Yunus’ stance vis-a`-vis the role of public subsidies in microfinance – from arguing that the state must play a rule in securing credit as a fundamental human right (Yunus 1992) to vociferous public advocacy of an anti-statist position focusing on local capacities for self-reliance (Yunus with Jolis 1998). 10 Frequent metaphorical reference to cows is not uncommon in a predominantly Hindu society where cows are accorded sacred status.



Part II Within and between States and Markets: the Role of Intermediaries





Introduction to Part II

Part I of this book focused on economic reforms in two specific but interconnected geographical contexts. The authors were careful to show empirically the implications of the relational geographies of ‘‘development’’ policies and programs. In terms of outcomes, while each of those chapters stressed the particularities of their empirical material, there were also similarities between the cases: between the types of reform and the agencies involved in the design, delivery, and evaluation of policies and programs. This second part of the book takes its cue from the first, and attention turns to the role of those involved in the making of neoliberalization in different cities and nations around the globe. These are the intermediaries of neoliberalization. Whether they are multinational staffing agencies involved in the setting of labor regulation norms in the different markets, or Argentinean neighborhood organizations striving to protect the jobs of local workers, their business is making things happen. And, if there is nothing happening then their self-declared remit is to challenge and change the status quo. In management talk, they are the ‘‘change managers,’’ exploiting the increasingly uncertain geo-economic and geopolitical order of recent years by carving out a market niche for their business. And, of course, by doing what they do, some might argue that they make the contexts in which they do their business more and not less uncertain: a virtuous circle for some, a vicious circle for others. The chapters in this second part, then, reflect our call for scholarship that draws attention to aspects of neoliberalization in addition to the coordinates of state restructuring. Of course, studies of state restructuring are incredibly important, and yield immense conceptual and empirical insights. Our point is that we must also take into account


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INTRODUCTION TO PART II

the other dynamics at play behind the geographical diffusion witnessed in the past three decades. As we have discussed these ideas between us we have found ourselves thinking about two provocative commentaries published in the past few years. The first was Loı¨c Wacquant’s (1999: 321) contention that there is a pressing need to trace ‘‘link by link, the long chain of institutions, agents and discursive supports’’ that have made possible the emergence of neoliberal reforms in multiple places. The second was Wendy Larner’s (2003: 510) call for a ‘‘more careful tracing of the intellectual, policy and practitioner networks that underpin the global expansion of neoliberal ideas, and their subsequent manifestation in government policies and programmes.’’ That these seem to be common calls again highlights the intellectual synergies that might be realizable in bringing into dialogue political economy and poststructural approaches to neoliberalization. In response we placed the three chapters together in this part of the book because they trace the links and networks that mediate between and within states and markets. Here, perhaps, Majone’s (1989) notion of ‘‘rule intermediaries’’ – the analysts, consultants, and speculators who make sense of new political orthodoxies – is useful, as is Thrift’s (2005) recent work on the ‘‘cultural circuit of capital.’’ In both these frameworks the emphasis is on the collecting, naming, circulating, and performing of knowledge. Involving human bodies and nonhuman technologies and objects, and involving a range of sites, from the classrooms of the most well known of business schools to the locations of trade body conferences or seminars, the circuits or networks stretch across space, and are constituted and given meaning in relation to the ideas and knowledge produced and disseminated in various places. These intermediaries are involved in the making up of neoliberalization as it is found and observed in different nations: never ‘‘pure’’ in the neoclassical sense, but always coming into being, formed through the process of hybridization. In two of the chapters the emphasis is squarely on agents whose role in the making of neoliberalization is readily apparent. The investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in the chapter by Nicholas Phelps, Marcus Power, and Roseline Wanjiru and the temporary staffing agencies in Kevin Ward’s chapter can be interpreted as the products of, and simultaneously contributors to, neoliberalization. The business of both types of agencies – development and staffing – in each of the national markets where they are present is to contribute to a particular model of economic growth. In addition to each benefiting from favorable




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changes in geo-economic and geopolitical conditions, the IPAs and the temporary staffing agencies have both managed to manufacture demand for their services. For Phelps, Power, and Wanjiru the existence of over 500 IPAs globally by the beginning of 2003 reveals how the quest for foreign direct investment has become central to development strategies in the global South. Focusing on the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA), they examine the persistent use of ‘‘country benchmarking’’ frameworks which establish hierarchies of ‘‘performance’’ and ‘‘best practices.’’ They explore the process of ‘‘paradigm maintenance’’ where the models of neoliberal ‘‘success stories’’ favored by global agencies are held up as examples for others to follow. For many involved, such ideologies are seen to have emanated from a US–UK ‘‘heartland’’ – conceived by academics, animated by politicians, and diffused by the professional classes that act as rule intermediaries. Similarly, Ward sees the global expansion of temporary staffing agencies since the 1970s as reflecting how this industry created new markets for its business by strategically positioning itself as an exemplar of labor market flexibility. The temporary staffing industry has benefited from, and, through the growth dynamics of the largest agencies, contributed to the emergence of a ‘‘common-sense’’ understanding of how flexible labor markets improve the competitiveness of cities, regions, and nations. This has been performed not just through the actions of the largest multinational agencies. A number of trade associations have actively sought to shape the views of policymakers and politicians, through annual conferences, industry journals, and lobbying activities. The result has been the geographical expansion of the temporary staffing industry, one component in the general adoption by national governments of reforms that aim to restructure and to ‘‘free’’ labor markets. In the third of the three chapters in this section of the book, Pete North focuses on a range of intermediaries involved in stabilizing the Argentinean economy after the recession at the end of 2001. Concerned not with the production of neoliberalization, but rather with its remaking in the context of the post-recession real politick, this ensemble of community and labor movements strove to improve the lives of the country’s most poorly off, while at the same time working with the state to ensure long-term political-economic stability. Striving to protect the rights of locals and/or workers, a range of agencies and groups worked to secure their – and their country’s – long-term economic futures. In the context of decades of high-profile neoliberal reforms,


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this challenged those in power to account for the economic crisis while remaining wedded to the possibilities offered through structural adjustment programs. Despite having a very different set of agendas from those of the IPAs and the temporary staffing agencies, these social intermediaries still performed a similar function: to act as producers and circulators of knowledge. We see similar characteristics between these three examples, in terms of the role in each case of agents performing intermediary functions, working between states and markets.



4 Learning to Compete: Communities of Investment Promotion Practice in the Spread of Global Neoliberalism Nicholas A. Phelps, Marcus Power, and Roseline Wanjiru

Nations, Paul Krugman (1996) tells us, do not compete in the way businesses do. Krugman may be right in the sharply delineated world of economic theory. It is with a degree of resignation that he also concedes that the obsession with competition owes something to the rhetorical power of its proponents. Krugman ought not to be surprised by this since public policy has little to do with the ‘‘truth’’ of economic theories and everything to do with argument and persuasion (Majone 1989: 23). The obsession with competition, including competition for foreign direct investment (FDI), might indeed be dangerous since ‘‘unlike competition in goods markets, there is no presumption that competition for investment is efficiency enhancing . . . and it clearly has the potential to result in ‘races to the bottom’ ’’ (Thomas 2000: 271). States and peoples can be ‘‘coerced’’ by processes of competition without themselves winning or losing FDI (Crotty, Epstein, and Kelly 1998). Yet competition there is, and it owes its existence in no small measure to the powers of persuasion and dissemination mobilized by powerful actors.


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NICHOLAS A. PHELPS, MARCUS POWER, AND ROSELINE WANJIRU

Nation-states continue to evolve different models of economic development and regulation. These different modes of social regulation (Tickell and Peck 1992) compose a world market for social order (Bornschier and Trezzini 2001). Only a subset of these models of social order – those captured in the term ‘‘competition state’’ applied to the UK and US (Cerny 1997) – might be considered variations on a neoliberal theme. Therefore ‘‘despite the aspirations of its most powerful protagonists, the neoliberal tide of the 1990s has not forced a genuine or substantive convergence’’ (Held and McGrew 2002: 41) among models. Nevertheless, new sites of rule- and law-making have emerged in an international political economy in which nation-states have become increasingly fragmented policymaking arenas permeated by the transnational networks of multinational corporations and professional and scientific associations (Held and McGrew 2002). In light of this, and some of the powerful means of argument and persuasion deployed by the likes of international organizations (IOs) and professional and scientific associations, is it then possible to speak of the hegemony and internationalization of a neoliberal competition state model of economic development? In posing this question it is clear that ‘‘any analysis of the diffusion of neo-liberalism must pay attention to the nature of . . . movements between sites of incorporation and imposition, because neo-liberalism cannot be reduced to an ‘internal’ characteristic of certain institutions or polities; it also exists as an extra local regime of rules and routines, pressures and penalties’’ (Peck and Tickell 2002: 392). And indeed, ‘‘when we enter these anonymous forces . . . chains, flows, networks . . . we discover a more open and less determinate picture’’ (Burawoy 2000b: 31). In this fourth chapter in the book we trace the movements of neoliberal elements between sites by focusing on the question of how nations currently are learning to compete for foreign direct investment. We explore the less determinate picture of neoliberalization in an analysis of the investment promotion (IP) business, paying particular attention to the ‘‘periphery’’ of the world economy. IP provides an excellent, if partial, insight into the neoliberal agenda – centered as it is upon the competition for mobile capital. The neoliberal agenda reserves a privileged position for FDI as the highest form of external finance for development, ahead of portfolio investment, commercial loans, or overseas development aid. IP is a set of partially interrelated and internationalized practices, a feature of which is the ‘‘fast policy transfer’’ (Jessop and Peck 2001) argued to lie at the center of systemic mutations of neoliberalism. Our research draws upon 19 interviews



INVESTMENT PROMOTION PRACTICE IN THE SPREAD OF GLOBAL NEOLIBERALISM

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conducted between 2002 and 2004 with staff from national investment promotion agencies (IPAs), investment promotion arms of international organizations, and from consulting firms. Face-to-face interviews regarding the diffusion of IP practices were conducted (with a specific focus on East Africa and East Asia) at a range of sites that included international fora such as the 2002, 2003, and 2004 World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies’ (WAIPA) annual meetings in Geneva, and the home and overseas offices of individual national investment promotion agencies (in the UK, the US, Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore).1 We begin by situating the competition for FDI and the growth of an IP community of practice within historical shifts in the liberal state model. We then go on to make three arguments regarding the contribution of such a community to the spread of neoliberal competition for capital. First, despite widespread reforms of investment codes and convergence upon what might be regarded as neoliberal norms for regulation of investment, the international investment environment is some way from complete harmonization. Second, even in the relatively narrow ‘‘issue area’’ of investment regulation and promotion, the responsibilities of IOs overlap and may even contradict one another. IOs have also been geographically selective in terms of their interventions. IOs represent just one of a number of agents of investment, regulatory reform and promotion practice. Far more important than IOs in the international transmission of investment promotion practices are some of the most internationalized segments of the private sector – the overseas investors themselves as well as accountancy and merchant banking enterprises.2 Yet such ‘‘global’’ interests remain to be translated to local spheres by national and subnational IPAs, location, management, and engineering consultants, lawyers, political risk analysts, and real estate companies (Phelps and Wood 2006). Third, to the extent that powerful isomorphic practices and discourses do exist, they do so as variations on a neoliberal theme (Peck and Tickell 2002), are diffused often at a regional (i.e., continental) scale (Stone 2004a) and are refracted through nationally specific modes of economic development and regulation – a process through which transnational norms are localized (Acharya 2004) and which directs attention to the peripheries of the world economy. We then go on to illustrate these arguments with regard to IP practices in Southeast Asia and Africa. Finally, in our concluding discussion, we consider the issue of how to conceptualize the contribution of IP practices in the context of neoliberalization.


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Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and the Competition for FDI A large measure of competition among liberal states revolves around the securing of economic means to their continued survival. In broad historic terms, economic competition underwritten by military coercion has gradually been replaced by economic competition underwritten by regulatory and policy experimentation (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000). Viewed in longer-term historical perspective, the international order that emerged after World War II and up to the late 1970s may be rather exceptional. It marked ‘‘the end of ‘capitalist internationalization’ as governments learned . . . that international automatically stands in fundamental . . . contradiction to an active state domestically’’ (Ruggie 1982: 387). Moreover, it was in this period that the multinational enterprise (MNE) reinforced ‘‘mutually exclusive territoriality, borders, and geographically-based political and economic government’’ (Kobrin 2001: 185). More recently we have seen a further change in the instruments rather than the social aims of the liberal order. The stable set of interstate relations based upon divergent national models of social order or regulation has given way to what might be perceived as a pervasive trend toward greater competition between states for investment. In broad terms this might be equated with the rise of the neoliberal or competition state model of national economic development associated recently with the UK and US (Cerny 1997) over developmental or welfare state models pursued in parts of Eastern Europe, Latin America (e.g., Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela), and East Asia (e.g., China, South Korea) (Wade 1990). The continued growth in the number of nation-states (especially in economically emergent parts of the world) and the continued growth in average state expenditures mean that state power has continued to be wielded in familiar ways in the international interstate system. As such, despite the emergence of new sites of authority in the international political economy, national sovereignty has not been wholly subverted (Held and McGrew, 2002: 126). Outside of regions such as Europe and North America, nation-states would appear to remain stronger still. In East Asia, the impression is that globalization is discursively constructed amid the Asian economic crisis as an external ‘‘objective’’ force to discipline ‘‘corrupt’’ and ‘‘statist’’ economies. However, state and market are not considered separable in quite the same way they are in the West (Beeson, this volume). Here then, ‘‘globalization . . . has created more




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tensions for resistance and re-regulation’’ rather than a reconciliation with neoliberal policy orthodoxy (Yeung 2000: 135). A key feature of the neoliberal competition state model is the competition for capital in the form of FDI and the growth of IP activities that has followed as a result. Since the 1960s and 1970s, there has been a broad shift in opinion regarding the economic development implications of MNEs, from a situation where host governments were concerned about their exploitative tendencies to one where they are now eager to obtain the potential benefits of being part of international production networks (Dunning 1997: 217). The liberalization of FDI flows is numbered as one of 10 neoliberal Washington Consensus principles (Beeson and Islam 2005). As a consequence, IP activities (especially those associated with national and subnational IPAs) have shifted from a regulatory to a more fully promotional set of activities. One further consequence is that IP activities potentially now only loosely articulate with the broader national models of social order in which they were once embedded. There is potential for discrepancies to exist between the promotional efforts of IPAs and wider models of social order. The case of Singapore suggests that some of the most aggressive IP practices can be allied to a developmental state model. Consequently ‘‘promotion efforts are the result of competition by governments in the effort to attract foreign direct investment. This competition is not entirely new; what is new is its aggressiveness and intensity’’ (Wells and Wint 2000: 2). The intensity of competition has increased with the integration of post-communist nations into the international economy and the liberalization of many mixed economies previously closed to a greater or lesser degree to FDI. For example, between 1991 and 1998, a total of 895 regulatory changes were made by nations of which 848 (95%) were more favorable and just 47 (5%) less favorable to FDI (United Nations, 1999: 115). Alongside this has been the growth of agencies charged with IP at both the national and subnational level. According to one set of figures there are 410 national and subnational IPAs worldwide (Morrisset and Andrews-Johnson 2004: 1). In spite of Krugman’s complaints, ‘‘the new competitive foreign investment environment has prompted analogies between competition among governments for foreign investment and competition among firms for market share’’ (Wells and Wint 2000: 4). Yet it would be a mistake to think that the widespread liberalization of economies and FDI regulatory regimes has produced something of a homogeneous international environment for FDI. There is enormous international variation in the regulatory environment facing FDI.


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Indeed, ‘‘what exists comprises a patchwork of bilateral treaties, regional arrangements, and limited . . . multilateral instruments. This patchwork . . . weakens the bargaining power of countries vis-a`-vis TNCs, which have learned how to exploit the absence of a transparent and harmonized FDI regulatory environment’’ (Young and Tavares 2004: 11). In light of this, and from the point of view of investors, there remains a world market for different models of social order formed of national variations in the FDI regulatory environment alongside other aspects of the macroeconomic and microeconomic (or industrial policy) environment (Bornschier and Trezzini 2001).3 There is, for example, considerable diversity in the regulatory or administrative environment for FDI. A recent study by the Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS) of business administrative procedures in 32 developing countries found marked variations in the burden facing investors, whether measured in the number of procedures, time taken for approvals, or an imputed cost of delays (Morrisset and Neso 2002). In all the countries surveyed, the administrative costs facing overseas investors are much greater than those facing domestic investors, though such differences also, in turn, vary across nations, from Romania where administrative costs for foreign investors are two and a half times higher than for domestic investors, to Madagascar where they are 69 times higher (Morrisset and Neso 2002: 13). There is enormous variance even within this small sample of developing countries, with the average cost per procedure more than 10 times higher in Mozambique than in South Africa (Morrisset and Neso 2002: 19). Finally, no simple correlations exist between these administrative burdens and adherence to liberalization programs since ‘‘it is noteworthy that, in spite of recent trade liberalization efforts, import/export permits and clearance processes are still extremely time consuming in Africa’’ (Morrisset and Neso 2002: 12). What role do IP practices play in convergence upon the neoliberal competition state model? Following Hay (2004) we can identify several ‘‘referents’’ of convergence through which IP can make its contribution to neoliberalization as an outcome.4 There is scope for the IP community to make contributions to each type of convergence. The autonomy and advocacy role of IPAs can place them in a strong position to translate external pressures and challenges (input convergence) into a degree of paradigm convergence and legitimate the latter. But the advocacy role and conditions of IP communities and IPAs vary considerably from nation to nation. Moreover, where significant modification takes place, policy transfer does not necessarily lead to policy convergence (Stone 2004a: 548).




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International Organizations – Pathologically Neoliberal? Although the various IOs are often lumped together as co-authors of a global neoliberal conspiracy, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on their origins, their autonomy, and their distinctive pathologies before examining their role in IP. Here a good measure of the power of IOs stems from the exercise of power ‘‘autonomously in ways unintended and unanticipated by states at their creation’’ (Barnett and Finnemore 1999: 699).5 What we see, rather like patterns of regulation of FDI (Safarian, 1999), are oscillations in the orientation of these IOs to the competition for FDI. The stances of several of these IOs have departed considerably from the common Keynesian Bretton Woods platform on which they were created. Their alignment to major liberal nation-states – particularly the United States – over this time period has also waxed and waned.6 The World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are perhaps the most closely associated with neoliberal ideology. The WB is not, however, some simplistic condensate. The WB’s neoliberalization of the spaces of international ‘‘development’’ is an incomplete and unfinished project, contested in each place (Power, 2003). Joseph Stiglitz (former Chief Economist of the WB) argued in 2002 that the Bank’s developing country assistance strategies were standardized irrespective of context or country.7 Since the 1940s the WB has lent more than $330 billion to ‘‘developing countries’’ and defines itself as a ‘‘development’’ institution, broadening the scope of its activities from funding infrastructure projects in the 1950s and 1960s to focusing on ‘‘pro-poor’’ economic growth and providing, for example, sectoral and structural adjustment loans in the 1970s and 1980s. The resignations of Ravi Kanbur (author of the 2001 World Development Report) and Joseph Stiglitz, we argue, suggest that there has not always been consensus within the WB, which has become acutely aware of perceptions that it is unresponsive and bureaucratic. Furthermore, the very recent origins of the specifically FDI-oriented arms of the WB – the Foreign Investment Advisory Service and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) – ensures that they have been invested with neoliberal pathologies from the very outset. Until 1973, the IMF oversaw the adoption of general convertability among the major currencies, supervised a system of fixed exchange rates, and provided short-term financing to countries in need of a ‘‘quick fix’’ of foreign exchange to maintain their currencies at par


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value. The IMF’s constitution was amended in 1978, broadening its function to enable it to grapple with the challenges that have arisen since the collapse of the par value system (Driscoll 2000). This is partly a consequence of the fact that since 1973, when the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system ceased to function as the global standard of international monetary relations, the IMF has largely been devoid of a focused operational mandate (Bird and Rowlands 1999). Now being deployed on an ‘‘as needed’’ basis in the midst of crisis, the IMF has a number of roles but no clear understanding of how its activities fit into the wider international financial system. Speaking in Manchester in 2001, Stiglitz took a swipe at the IMF for first not researching the links between capital market liberalization and economic growth, and, second, for deepening the financial crises faced by countries of the South. He argued that ‘‘[t]he institution that was created by Keynes in part to promote global economic stability became the institution that promoted global economic instability’’ (Stiglitz 2001: 12). Both agencies have also converged in the roving geopolitical attentions they have lavished upon parts of the international economy. In the 1960s and 1970s, Indonesia was central to the focus of IMF attentions, while in the 1980s Latin America became a focal point after the debt crisis there began to unfold. At the beginning of the 1990s Central and Eastern Europe, along with Russia and the former Soviet Republics, began to receive more attention. More recently it has been Mexico (after the currency crisis of 1994–5), Thailand8 (in the context of the Asian crisis of 1997–8) and Argentina (after the economic collapse of 2001). Thus depending on the nature and spread of financial and economic crises, the IMF has shifted the focus of its attentions as its lending has increasingly concentrated on a few large borrowers and principally on countries suffering major currency crises (Griffith-Jones and Ocampo 1999). As one might expect of a vast organization like the United Nations, its FDI-related arms (including its Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, and Industrial Development Organization, UNIDO) are possibly the most plural and variable in their approaches to FDI and economic development. The UN, in the guise of UNIDO, has been in the vanguard of recent talk of ‘‘one size cannot fit all’’ being adopted among IOs. Carlos Magarinos, Director General of UNIDO, has argued that ‘‘[t]hese realities dispel the straightforward use of recipes based on conventional economics or the simple transplant of successful experiences from one country into another’’ (UNIDO 2003b: v). In the 1960s and 1970s, UNCTAD championed the cause and orchestrated the voice




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of developing countries in trade issues. It also focused attention on the contentious issues of technology transfer and transfer pricing associated with MNEs. The differences in approach, analysis, and policy recommendations between UNCTAD on the one hand and the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT [now the WTO]), the IMF, WB, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on the other were at their greatest during this period (UNCTAD 1985). Since this time, UNCTAD has shifted closer to the perspectives of these other IOs and to the private sector.9 Its annual World Investment Reports have done much to generate a preoccupation with FDI as a vehicle for economic development and the competition for it with the likes of its ‘‘FDI competitiveness index’’ (United Nations 2002). Yet in 2003 the UNCTAD view appears to have evolved again. It has argued for ‘‘the development dimension to be an integral part of international investment agreements’’ (United Nations, 2003: 172). In its Trade and Development Report, Director Rubens Ricupero argues for a ‘‘candid reassessment of the economic record of the past two decades’’ and a move away from generalized approaches to accommodate ‘‘the diversity of . . . challenges facing the developing world,’’ doubting that ‘‘a ‘second generation’ of neoliberal reforms will start to put things back on track’’ (UNCTAD 2003). The World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) began as a UN-organized, fee-paying, members’ network of IPAs through which expertise and best practice could be accessed informally at annual meetings and periodic regional workshops. The list of 164 members on WAIPA’s website reveals wide geographical coverage of agencies, although the annual fee of US$2,000 surely prevents even more agencies from joining (WAIPA 2004). However, we were told that the Association is even more important than this suggests because of its emerging role in forging greater connections not just among IOs, but also with a wider set of private sector bodies such as the World Economic Forum and consulting companies (President, World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies, Geneva, January 2002). The OECD has been closely aligned to the interests of developed nation governments. However, although it authored the controversial failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (OECD 1995), it nevertheless is also less definitive about FDI development models. A significant amount of time and resources of the OECD are presently focused on assisting the creation of new legal and economic regulatory frameworks in the post-communist countries of Southeast Europe. For instance, regarding its Investment Compact for Southeast Europe:


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It’s not trying to give a model of a particular market economy. . . The reality is the history of some of these places will shape the model of the market economy (Representative, Investment Compact for South Eastern Europe, OECD, Geneva, January 2002).

When it comes specifically to the FDI-related activities of these IOs, there is something of a division of labor between international organizations and the areas of ‘‘expertise’’ they choose to promote about themselves. The OECD has been most closely associated with strategic-level framing of FDI policy agendas, rules for the treatment of MNEs, and bilateral investment treaties. However, the Foreign Investment Advisory Service of the WB is also concerned with the generalities of the investment environment in nation-states that it advises. The relevant arms of the United Nations sit at a level below this in assisting with medium-term programs to contribute to the formulation of investment codes and investment and industrial policy. The likes of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency of the World Bank and WAIPA are oriented toward technical assistance regarding investment promotion issues. As it was described to us: In the case of MIGA what we have chosen to do is to take really the handson investment promotion. The transfer of best practice. How you set up an agency. How you create a strategy. How you do investor targeting . . . Our colleagues in the World Bank group – FIAS – focus upstream. They are looking at the legal and regulatory environment. They are looking at the impediments . . . within countries to investment (Deputy Director, Multinational Investment Guarantee Agency, Geneva, January 2002).

MIGA charges for the ‘‘toolkit’’ of IP best practice it has developed and for its services in implementing components of this ‘‘toolkit.’’ WAIPA was formed in 1995 as an association under the aegis of UNCTAD and is gradually weaning itself off UNCTAD funding and in the process is carving out a broader role for itself. It was explained that: Each one of these organizations on its own is doing work in the areas of investment . . . And they all have programs in different countries. The difference between what they’re doing in these countries and what . . . we’re doing is that we leverage on a regional basis the membership which we have (President, World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies, Geneva, January 2002).




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IOs are also prominent in acting as intermediaries via the burgeoning market for web- and email-based networks related to investment monitoring and information exchange. FDI Xchange and IPAnet are run by MIGA. The latter is something akin to WAIPA itself while FDI Xchange is, according to a CEO’s guide prepared by MIGA, an informationproviding service that ‘‘directly links your investment promotion or privatization agency with investors interested in your country’’ (MIGA, undated). While there appears to be a division of labor, in practice it is more complicated than this might suggest. There are certainly several important examples of collaboration among IOs at present, especially over assistance to African countries. There is, for example, a UNIDO, UNCTAD, FIAS, and MIGA multi-agency initiative to target a group of least developed countries including Mozambique, Tanzania, Mali, and Uganda. However, there is also a sense of competition. As we were told: The reality is that some of these organizations are pushing themselves a bit like a beauty contest, you know. There was a race to see who could get into Serbia first (Representative, Investment Compact for South Eastern Europe, OECD, Geneva, January 2002).

The picture that emerges here then, is of a field in which there is certainly some overlap and no small measure of competition among international organizations to supply IP services to national and subnational IPA clients. Moreover, the field is more congested than this implies since, as we go on to consider, there are a range of other agents in the marketplace.

Investment Promotion as Rule-intermediation According to one recent survey, the most important organizations used as sources of information in their international site selection processes were, in order: investment or merchant banks, the big accountancy firms, national investment promotion agencies (IPAs), economic development agencies, specialized site selection firms, and general management consulting firms (MIGA 2002: 30). Immediately we can draw an important observation from this: that it is the most internationalized of private sector actors, the investors themselves as well as the largest merchant banks and accountancy firms, that are the prime sources of ideas and practices relating to the competition for that investment.


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In terms of national and subnational IPAs there are marked variations between countries and regions within countries. There are differences in terms of, for example, the internal structure of IPA bodies, their public or private status, and their advocacy role and answerability to ministers (Wells and Wint 2000). It is expenditure on policy advocacy that appears to have the highest return in terms of stimulating FDI rather than investment generation expenditures (Morrisset and Andrews-Johnson 2004). There are also important differences in the recruitment patterns of IPAs. UNIDO advice suggests that promotion officers need to have a positive attitude since ‘‘if the organisation is staffed with the wrong people, or if obstructionist civil service attitudes and practices are allowed to prevail, the organisation will fail irrespective of its policies’’ and that ‘‘the intake from the private and the public sectors should be balanced, as the skills and experience of both sectors are essential’’ (UNIDO 2003b: 53). Certainly within national IPAs we were told that: People have become much more professional and much more targeted in the way in which they are approaching their business (President, WAIPA, Geneva, January 2002).

Yet there is no common recruitment background or professional credentials to IP staff. Until comparatively recently and in most national contexts, IP ‘‘professionals’’ have actually been drawn from the civil service. The likes of location consultants play an intermediary role in the competitive market for capital (Thomas 2000). However, the quantitative role that they play in the competition for FDI should not be overstated. One estimate by a leading site selection-consulting firm placed the share of their type of organization in the global market for such services at no more than 10 percent (Spee 2003) and their involvement varies with the economic cycle.10 As such, the role of these intermediaries is rather lower in developing country settings despite what might be regarded as opportunities produced from a lack of regulatory transparency. One recent survey found that 7 percent of FDI inquiries into a selection of African countries came from intermediaries (UNIDO 2003b: 50). Moreover, the leading location consulting firms (excluding those that are part of the largest accountancy firms) could not be considered global in terms of their market penetration. They are regional, national, or even subnational actors that together with the likes of IPAs, technical consultancies, and real estate agents translate the interests of multinational capital in individual instances of investment (Phelps and




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Wood 2006). Nevertheless, these intermediaries have been prominent in the transmission of practices regarding the regulation of investment climates and the attraction of FDI. The major consultancies are also important in ensuring that the technologies of investment promotion circulate through electronic and print media.11 The processes of learning and circulating neoliberal practices are complex because these different agents act as sources of practices for each other. So, for example, a respondent from one major IO in the field of IP noted how location consultants and the like have expertise at the detailed stage of site selection and that they incorporate this along with ideas and practices from companies themselves into their own work.12 Some of the most successful national IPAs, an example being the Irish Development Agency, have themselves begun to offer consultancy services to others.13 Similarly, Most of these consultants’ experiences in helping corporates decide where to locate . . . they use that experience to turn it around and say ‘‘we’ve worked with all these companies, we understand the way that they think, and what they are looking for.’’ So they put that back on you and say ‘‘well, this is why you didn’t get the project and this is what you need to do to improve yourselves’’ (Business Development Manager, London First, London, April 2004).

In these examples we see Lindblom’s (1977) ‘‘circularity of influence’’ exerted by potentially mobile private sector interests within the competition for capital. Examples of best practice are identified, sanctioned, and diffused often in a quite circular pattern within these partially internationalized networks of actors while other practices are disciplined. ‘‘Modeling’’ has been the most important mechanism in the construction of elements of global business regulation (Braithwaite and Drahos 2000) and the sphere of IP is no exception. ‘‘The standard cited most frequently for best practice in IPAs is based largely on a few countries . . . Ireland’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) and Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB), in particular, top the list as models’’ (Morrisset and AndrewsJohnson 2004: 2). Small and peripheral nations can be propelled to model status on the back of a single big ‘‘win’’ – as in the case of Costa Rica’s capture of a major investment by Intel (Spar 1998). Such stories circulate as models so that the neoliberal ethos of competition for capital is ‘‘designed for winners, not voters – who necessarily encompass the categories of both winners and losers’’ (George 2001: 14–15).


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Overall, the situation might be described as one of an emerging profession, the credentials of which are as yet quite ill-defined owing to the organizational diversity of IPAs and roles of other IP actors described above.

Refraction of the Neoliberal Competitive Ethos With ongoing international economic integration, the growing international division of labor it implies, and with parallel networks of diffuse decision-making power, some have argued that ‘‘the concepts of core and periphery, or north and south, are increasingly not geographic per se, as much as they are social class in character, as the global economy creates new variation, specialization and asymmetries that cut across nations and regions’’ (Burback and Robinson quoted in Arrighi 2001: 470). As Massey (1979) argued, growing spatial divisions of labor pose more intractable problems regarding uneven development that seemingly cut across traditional geographical conceptions of core and periphery, north and south. Perhaps more accurately, we can say that, in the absence of a truly singular global economy, geography has become more complex, with economically troubled enclaves within the core (Peck 1996) and instances of economic success in the periphery being in the vanguard of the neoliberal agenda, including the competition for FDI. Gibson-Graham, Resnick, and Wolff (2001) argue that there is a sense in which a belief in technical solutions to generic problems of efficiency and allocation produces development as a project of replicating the (neoliberal) west. Commenting more specifically upon investment promotion practices in a sample of developing countries, Klak and Myers (1997: 146) confirm that ‘‘there has been a remarkably rapid unification of policy around a neoliberal development model across the third world.’’ We might sympathize with these arguments for all that they imply about the possibilities for alternative development scenarios but, taken together, they have clear limits. For a start, any assumption that neoliberal interests are inevitably western in origin is problematic because contemporary liberalization has multiple forms, several of which include creative re-regulation and are apparent in western and eastern (Vogel 1996), core and peripheral nations alike (Peck 2004). Second, as even some of the IOs recognize, possibly rhetorically, in relation to IP, there is actually a ‘‘complex competitive landscape ripe for




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differentiation and market segmentation’’ (MIGA 2003a: 8). As such there has been a further recognition that: The high cost model developed in Europe, which is frequently used as a reference frame, is beyond the means of many developing countries, especially Least Developed Countries . . . This does not mean that many features of these ‘‘wealthy and developed’’ agencies are irrelevant. Many of the techniques developed are valid and must be aspired to by all IPAs. However, the techniques and practices need to be modified and adapted to cater for the realities that confront IPAs in Africa (UNIDO 2003b: 3).

Some of these adaptations are therefore born out of the necessity of insufficient funding; others are born out of the ongoing political orientations of nations. As an interviewee described: Depending on the level of development in a country, different IPAs will be doing different things . . . And to a large extent in most countries it is becoming less political. In some countries you have IPAs that are motivated by political approaches (President, World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies [WAIPA], Geneva, January 2002).

Adaptations also display strong regional tendencies since the geographical proximity of states influences the transnationalization of policy (Stone 2004a: 553). Third, and as Klak and Myers (1997: 134) do indeed note, these Third World states have been inclined to model themselves on East Asian ‘‘tiger economies’’ rather than western competition states. East Asian interventionist states may, in some regards, actually be in the vanguard of neoliberal regulatory experiments, as Aihwa Ong has suggested (Ong 1999). Certainly in the area of IP practices that we are concerned with here, there are important eastern sources of such technical solutions to the perceived weaknesses of the western liberal democratic state model. Fourth, if anything, as we saw earlier, some of the models advanced in the diffuse network of institutions that forms the IP community are a rather atypical bunch. What can the peculiarities of the likes of Costa Rica, Ireland, and Singapore tell us about the practicalities of IP in, say, parts of Africa, Brazil, India, or China, or even moderate-sized nationstates? The answer is often very little, as agencies in the countries themselves have recognized. In sum, we see a quite complex geographical picture regarding the transmission and adoption of norms and practices associated with the


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competition for capital. In this respect Meyer et al.’s description of the working of world models (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, and Ramirez 1997: 154) is quite apt: World culture contains a good many variants of the dominant models, which leads to the eclectic adoption of conflicting principles. Diffusion processes work at several levels and through a variety of linkages, yielding incoherence. Some external elements are easier to copy than others, and many external elements are inconsistent with local practices, requirements and cost structures.

In the following sections we go on to recount evidence regarding the generation and transmission of IP practices in two broad geographic regions – Southeast Asia and East Africa.

Southeast Asia: Neoliberalism’s Divergent Peripheries Indonesia is at one extreme of experiences in Southeast Asia. Indonesia was an important focus for the geopolitical strategies of the United States government and attentions of IOs such as the WB and IMF in the Cold War era. Indeed ‘‘there are few developing economies where the influence of market-oriented technocrats and international agencies . . . has been so embedded in the policy process as in Indonesia and where relationships between the government and Western economists have been so close’’ (Hadiz and Robison 2005: 220). Yet recent neoliberal reforms have effectively been manipulated by powerful political interests that became entrenched during President Soeharto’s time. It is also a country in which IP practices have historically been quite isolated from external influence (Encarnation and Wells 1985), partly due to historically uneven regulation and a limited geographical spread of FDI (Hill 1998). This isolation has become severe since the East Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. The operations of Indonesia’s national IPA and its provincial offices have been affected severely by the fiscal crisis in Indonesia. Overseas investment promotion activities now operate through diplomatic embassies largely at the mercy of assistance from host government ministries. The IPA, BKPM, has refused to pay its membership fees to WAIPA, arguing that: If I talk about WAIPA and MIGA, for the time being I feel they are not very useful for us . . . we have been asking so many times because we would like to get the benefit for being a member of WAIPA. That is why




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we are yet to pay for our membership because we want to see what is the benefit for us . . . because there is only just a meeting and presentations (Director of Overseas Promotion, BKPM, Jakarta, September 2004).

At the national level, at least, there is a continued sense of isolation from market trends and a reliance on a limited number of external sources of information regarding IP practice. This in turn appears to be driven by a very different perspective of development: We have received so many suggestions, so many views from the international community including from FIAS . . . We have also received suggestions from the ADB [Asian Development Bank] and the Australian government because they would like to see Indonesia will do as the developed countries do. But we cannot afford to do that because our economic development state is still behind (Director, Macroeconomic Planning, Bappenas, Jakarta, September 2002).

As interviewees observed, developed countries have an incentive to encourage competition within globalization.14 The ASEAN region now provides the context for gaining IP best practice and even here there are a limited number of conduits. The BKPM itself has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Board of Investment for Thailand covering exchange of information primarily regarding the use of information technology in marketing.15 It has also received assistance from Singapore, Australia, and the ADB.16 Yet the ‘‘entry points’’ for IP experience that do exist may be hard to replicate. For example, Batam Industrial Development Authority (BIDA) is an IPA autonomous from BKPM operating on the industrialized island of Batam near to Singapore. It represents a rather atypical, though important, entry point for the wider dissemination of IP practices within Indonesia (Phelps 2004). By virtue of the island’s industrialization as part of the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS-GT), BIDA has close relationships with Singapore’s EDB and discussions with the Malaysian Industrial Development Authority (MIDA) and Johor Corporation (the IPA of Malaysia and development corporation for Johor State, respectively). It has been able to run missions to Germany, has enjoyed technical cooperation with other agencies in Canada and Japan, and has benchmarked itself against the IPAs in Thailand and Vietnam.17 At the other extreme of experiences in Southeast Asia is Singapore where IP practices are among the most admired in the world. For several decades the EDB has practiced the sorts of techniques that are only now becoming systematized in the IP community:


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The EDB not only monitored the activities of other countries it viewed as Singapore’s Asian ‘‘competitors’’ for investment . . . but it also used Singaporean Embassies, EDB offices abroad, extensive travel by EDB staff, and discussions with prospective investors to keep track of policies in other potential contenders outside the region, ranging from Ireland to Puerto Rico (Encarnation and Wells 1985: 71).

We find the case of Singapore instructive, since we think arguably it represents a refinement of competitive ideals found in the Atlantic heartland of neoliberalism; a case of the east teaching the west how to compete for capital, contrary to the simplistic idea of a flow of knowledge and resources from the ‘‘active’’ core to the ‘‘passive’’ periphery. A competitive ethos is deeply ingrained in Singaporean society. Since its severance from Malaysia and given its small size and lack of any notable natural resources, economic competitiveness pursued through a strategy of attracting and developing foreign investment has been at the heart of the Singapore political economy. Critically, this has seen the EDB assume a central advocacy role within Singapore government. This competitive ethos runs deeper still. The European Regional Director of the Singapore EDB described Singaporeans as ‘‘calculated paranoiacs,’’ before proceeding to provide an illustration of what this meant and continues to mean in a way that would likely confound Paul Krugman. Michael Porter came to Singapore last year and said Singapore should forget manufacturing and be the services center for Southeast Asia . . . That is very good in theory. . . I think what he has failed to see is that that is premised on the fact that every other nation is willing to work on the basis of comparative advantage. Do you think that Malaysia is going to allow Singapore to be the financial or transportation hub? I don’t think so. There are political considerations there (European Regional Director, Singapore EDB, London, June 2002).

We should note that there is no little irony in this since it is the western colonial-imprint that has been identified as a key ingredient in Singapore’s adaptation to neoliberalism. For Ong (1999) the postcolonial developmental strategies exemplified by Singapore tie ‘‘expert knowledge in the social and human sciences to government, thereby translating the practical rationalities of liberalism into strategies and programs that shape the mentalities of their subjects’’ (Ong 1999: 203). Ong argues that this model of pastoral care aims ‘‘at producing citizens with the human social and cultural capital that will allow them




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Plate 4.1 Raffles City Tower – home to the Singapore Economic Development Board (photograph, Nick Phelps)

to thrive in a global economy’’ (Ong 1999: 212). Since the Singaporean economy has been founded on attracting foreign investors, IP practices reflect intimately this distinctive national political economy. Here, what Schein (1996) refers to as the ‘‘strategic pragmatism’’ of the ‘‘cosmopolitan technocracy’’ of the EDB has been born out of a fusion of elements from the British and United States’ civil services and Eastern ‘‘extended trust.’’ Finally, the inventiveness of Singapore’s EDB – in establishing a series of overseas industrial estates (Perry and Yeoh 2000) – presents one


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of the best examples of the concerted extraterritoriality of states that is seen as an important manifestation of the contemporary redefinition of the old liberal state model (Ruggie 1993).

Africa: The International Community Looks in on the ‘‘Dark Continent’’ Africa has perplexed development economists for some time now. It is a vast continent, rich in resources, and yet one that has remained at the margins of the international economy (Callaghy 1993). As it was explained to us: One of the main challenges we face is making Africa a suitable investment destination . . . Africa has a negative image, and when something goes wrong somewhere, the whole continent is implicated. This is a challenge not just for Tanzania alone but for Africa as a whole (Attache´, Tanzania Trade Centre, London, April 2003).

A MIGA program manager based in Washington, DC suggested that with the transitions in post-communist countries under way, and with at least some parts of Latin America adhering to the Washington Consensus, Africa has come to be regarded by IOs as one of the last bastions of outmoded state interventionist models,18 especially those associated with strategies of import substitution. Some indication of this view is evident when reading between the lines of the following description from MIGA of the situation in African countries: Many have institutionalized an array of incentives to the benefit of foreign investors. In addition, a growing number of countries are becoming parties to various international treaties on investment disputes and their enforcement. Although much remains to be accomplished, overall the legal and regulatory environments in African countries gradually are becoming more hospitable for foreign investors (MIGA 1999: 6).

Africa has become perhaps the major focus of the work of IOs such as MIGA, UNCTAD, and UNIDO. So much so that the rapid developments in capacity of countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda owe a great deal to the technical assistance and funding streams offered by these organizations. When asked about the role played by various agents in the spread of investment promotion practices in East Africa, we were told:




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Well, it has to be UNCTAD first, UNCTAD second, and UNCTAD third, and then the others (UNCTAD investment analyst, Geneva, January 2004).

This may be overstating the case, but it does highlight a fundamental truth – international organizations play a major role in these countries.19 Important elements of the work of the Investment Promotion Centre (IPC) in Kenya, for instance, have been funded by the likes of UNIDO and USAID, at least to the extent that they have been discontinued in the absence of such funding. One member of IPC staff we interviewed had been seconded to Japan via the Investment Technology Promotion Office of UNIDO. They noted that, as a function of USAID funding, there was in the past a regular series of meetings at the provincial level to try to encourage a common agenda among governmental bodies involved with the investment process.20 Even though not currently active in Kenya, another interviewee mentioned that an attempt to implement research done by MIGA on ‘‘after care’’ had foundered due to lack of funding.21 There are also some interesting geographical dynamics regarding the ability of African countries to compete for FDI. For a long time Kenya has been regarded as the economic hub of East Africa: the major point of entry to the region for people, commodities, and investment. Promotional literature has emphasized the contribution of relative political and economic stability to Kenya’s competitive position. So, for example: Since independence in 1963, Kenya has enjoyed uninterrupted political stability. This together with the pragmatic economic approach that the government has followed to encourage foreign and local investment, has led to remarkable development in many sectors (National Investment Committee Kenya 1994: 3).

According to the research and information manager at IPC Kenya, prior to the 1980s, Kenya was indeed a natural entry point for FDI within the East African region, given its relatively liberal FDI regulatory stance compared to its neighbors. In more recent years, such stability is no mask for fundamental problems of what the WB might describe as weaknesses in governance, such as corruption for which Kenya has repeatedly compared poorly in international political risk analyses. Inertia might be a more accurate word to use since in recent years its neighbors have, in some respects, surpassed Kenya in the FDI attraction stakes. According to several of our interviewees at IPC Kenya, Kenya’s new Investment Code, which has been in draft form for over 10 years now, was actually the model for similar codes already enacted


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Plate 4.2 National Bank of Kenya Building – home to the Investment Promotion Centre, Kenya (photograph, Nick Phelps)

in neighboring Tanzania and Uganda.22 One IPC manager23 pointed out that the Investment Code is vital to creating the IPC as a genuine ‘‘onestop shop’’ as currently inquiries come via the IPC, Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA), consultants, and government ministries and there is no single authoritative source of data on FDI flows in Kenya. Another interviewee at IPC Kenya complained that many of the best practice IPAs – including some of those in Africa such as Senegal – are relative latecomers and owe their success to this. They put it this way:




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It’s like starting from scratch. The governments in these countries were starting afresh and the government has more focus . . . All the external factors, they weigh very heavy on us. A lot of the other African countries, their approach has been shock therapy. In Kenya it is gradualist (Manager, Research and Information, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004).

More recently, and in parallel with attempts to revive arrangements for East African economic integration, interviewees described a collaboration pact that has been signed among East African IPAs to jointly market FDI in the East Africa region,24 with some expectation of harmonizing incentives, procedures, and tax regimes.25 What is also important to note here is how technical assistance from the likes of MIGA may filter down more widely among African countries as they learn from each other. Informal patterns of learning, therefore, show a marked regional bias. Again this troubles and upsets predominant assumptions about the flow and direction of knowledges and resources from the core to the periphery in terms of best practices and ‘‘learning.’’ Interviewees, when prompted, named other very recently successful African nations as those whose IPAs they were looking to learn from. When questioned, various respondents from the IPC in Kenya mentioned Mauritius, Tanzania, Uganda, Senegal, and what were referred to as ‘‘nontraditional’’ IPA model countries. The ‘‘traditional’’ IPA model countries mentioned specifically were the UK and the US, a nontraditional example cited by one interviewee being Brazil.26 Once again, the simplistic model of a transfer of knowledges and resources from the core to the periphery is destabilized and disrupted by these sorts of practices and ‘‘nontraditional’’ exemplars. The position of many African IPAs within their domestic governmental architectures is in striking contrast to the position of, for instance, Singapore’s EDB which we described earlier. Thus, ‘‘African IPAs need to develop the wherewithal to influence policy making to overcome the government and market failures that keep their ‘product’ outside the margins of international production networks and capital flows’’ (UNIDO 2003a: 3). Certainly, with the belated and perhaps reluctant shift from large-scale government intervention in, and regulation of, industry, there is something of a legacy of public sector officialdom within African IPAs. The majority of staff of the three East African IPAs were recruited from the civil service. Although the proportion of staff with experience of the private sector has increased, especially in the case of Uganda, staff at each IPA felt that such experience was still lacking.27 Despite these perceived human resource weaknesses, the


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expertise of IPA staff in the IPAs of four African countries were well regarded in one recent survey of investors (UNIDO 2002: 30).

Conclusion: A Global Community of Investment Promotion Practice? In describing the increasing complexity of the decision-making processes associated with public policy, Majone (1989) draws an analogy with the economic efficiencies derived from the ‘‘roundaboutness’’ of production (Young 1928). Majone (1989: 159) argues that ‘‘regulatory complexity creates the need for ‘rule intermediaries’ – people like lawyers and accountants who specialize in the interpretation of ambiguous or conflicting rules.’’ The professions and actors involved with IP can be seen as an important example of a cadre of rule intermediaries within contemporary neoliberal global governance. However, it is clear that this stratum of intermediaries is incomplete and fragmented at a global level. As such, ‘‘global governance is not monolithic but segmented and differentiated,’’ but nevertheless liberal global governance ‘‘sutures together the divergent interests of corporate, national, technocratic and cosmopolitan elites’’ (Held and McGrew 2002: 67 and 63 respectively). The networks and the nodes formed of periodic meetings and workshops of IP practitioners do not have the high public profile of the likes of the WTO or WEF meetings that are the target of anti-globalization movements, but they do represent important spaces for the dissemination of neoliberal ideology and practices. At present these networks and nodes are parallel to, and largely detached from, the sorts of new transnational sites of governmental decision-making power identified by Held (1995). However, if the advocacy role of the IP community continues to increase, a greater degree of articulation of IP networks with such sites of power can be expected. While some of the main rule intermediaries are indeed global in reach, the transference of IP practices is geographically uneven and the community itself is virtually absent to any meaningful degree in some settings. Thus the diffusion and adaptation of IP practices rests crucially on the translation of models and principles to local settings by local actors (Phelps and Wood 2006). Two further observations follow. First, the IP community is formed from a series of networks of truly international, but also national and local actors. These networks are both relatively recent in origin and geographically uneven in reach and impact in terms of their ability to spread the neoliberal ethos of competition for FDI. Given this mix of more or less locally dependent IP actors, regional-scale




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processes of political-economic integration become important in mediating tendencies toward convergence on neoliberal policies (Acharya 2004; Hay 2004; Stone 2004a). Second, in the same fashion as western liberal ideas two centuries earlier (Bayly 2004), ‘‘while neo-liberalism may have begun life as a North Atlantic intellectual movement . . . its mutation . . . has been associated with a profoundly transnational process of ‘social learning’ ’’ (Peck 2004: 402). If the evidence of some of the practices surrounding the competition for FDI is an indication, then parts of the periphery may be important sites of social learning and dissemination of neoliberal practices and ideological elements (Larner 2002; Peck 2004), while many others represent arenas in which important modifications to neoliberal norms and practices are apparent. If the IP community makes its own contribution along with other cadres to the roll-out of neoliberal competition state hardware and software, it is a world in which geographically uneven development persists. There is a development paradox here. IP is assumed to generate FDI, and indeed studies find that IP yields positive returns to investment (Wells and Wint, 2000; Morrisset and Andrews-Johnson, 2004). However, the effectiveness of IPAs depends crucially on the overall investment climate and state of development of the economy concerned. In global terms, the vast bulk of FDI (and trade) flows between developed nations. The long-accrued economic advantages of developed nations and the sorts of tax revenues raised as a result allow expenditure on practices such as IP. In other words, existing geographical patterns of FDI promote IP expenditures, not the other way round. It is hardly any surprise that the returns to IP are lowest in developing countries and highest in developed countries (Morrisset and Andrews-Johnson, 2004). The former have smaller IPAs, and are, in most instances, unable to match the fiercely competitive promotional efforts and incentives born of the deeper pockets of developed country IPAs and their governments (UNCTAD 2002). IP practice and discourse appear not so much as an effective tool for development, but a symptom of the uneven development of capitalism.

Notes 1 We are grateful to the British Academy for funding research on state– multinational enterprise relations in Southeast Asia; the World Universities Network initiative for funding fieldwork in Geneva; and the School of


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Geography University of Leeds for funding fieldwork in Geneva and on the clothing and textiles industry in Kenya. We would also like to thank Kim England and Kevin Ward for their helpful comments on the draft of this chapter. When the IMF and World Bank were founded at Bretton Woods in the 1940s there was very little private FDI in countries of the global South. The investment market has changed dramatically since then, however. Private investment accounts for more than 80 percent of net long-term flows to less developed countries. In 1996 alone private investment grew by 60 percent ($60 billion) while there was a 23 percent ($12 billion) decrease in public investment (in the form of development assistance) (Johnson and Schaefer 1997). The neoliberal competition state model assumes a single market for capital (the one interested in minimization of costs) when, in fact, different models of social order tend to be sought by different types of FDI (Phelps 2006). Hay (2004: 245) identifies ‘‘input convergence,’’ ‘‘paradigm convergence,’’ ‘‘policy convergence,’’ ‘‘convergence in legitimatory rhetoric,’’ ‘‘process convergence’’ leading to ‘‘outcome convergence.’’ The autonomous power of international organizations derives from the legitimacy accorded to them and their control over technical expertise and information and is crystallized in the classification of other actors and their actions (politically, legally, and discursively), the investing of situations, actors, and actions with meanings, and their role in diffusing particular norms (Barnett and Finnemore 1999). The earliest efforts at international regulation of trade and investment under the aegis of the International Trade Organization – the precursor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, now the WTO) – ultimately collapsed in the face of opposition from the US government, the same government that supported, although not vigorously, the failed MAI (Brewer and Young 1996). The standard elements of these strategies are 1) privatization, 2) capital market liberalization, 3) market-based pricing (countries may experience some ‘‘social unrest,’’ as the Bank puts it), and 4) poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSPs), irrespective of context or country (Stiglitz 2002). During the Asian financial crisis of 1997–8, the IMF provided exceptionally large loans – totaling more than $36 billion – to Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand in support of stabilization policies and structural reforms (IMF 2002: 12). UNCTAD was initially influenced by Raul Prebisch’s ideas of the economic inefficiencies and disequilibrium produced from patterns of international trade and investment (UNCTAD 1985). Prebisch was an Argentinean economist originally working at the United Nations Commission for Latin America (UNCLA) and later at UNCTAD and was a contributor to important debates about ‘‘dependency’’ in Latin America. John Dunning’s eclectic




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theory – which originates out of transaction cost economics – has been a major influence in the work of UNCTAD recently. Dunning has conducted research into the economics of international direct investment and multinational enterprise since the 1950s and has been a major contributor to the UNCTAD journal, Transnational Corporations. Foreign Investment Analyst, IMADE, Madrid, March 2004. Ernst and Young publish their European Investment Monitor, OCO Consulting has their Monthly Investment Monitor, and IBM’s Global Business Consulting Services’ Plant Location International has a proprietary global database of investment decisions. There are also web- and email-based networks, such as IPAWorld run by Oxford Intelligence for IPAs, that parallel those operated by IOs. Corporate Location, FDI magazine, and Global Exchange are examples of periodicals that create further cohesion in the IP community. Deputy Director, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, Geneva, January 2002. Representative, Investment Compact for South Eastern Europe, OECD, Geneva, January 2002. Deputy Chairman of Investment Implementation Services, BKPM, Jakarta, September 2004; Director, Macroeconomic Planning, Bappenas, Jakarta, September 2002. Director of Overseas Promotion, BKPM, Jakarta, September 2002. Director, Macroeconomic Planning, Bappenas, Jakarta, September 2002. Marketing and Public Relations Manager, Batam Industrial Development Authority, Batam, September 2002. Programme Manager, Capacity Building and Investment Facilitation, MIGA, Washington, DC, April 2002. MIGA reported that it had provided technical assistance to 45 African countries (MIGA 1999: 7) and in partnership the Swiss national investment agency has its own pilot program of assistance in Africa covering Ghana, Mozambique, Senegal, and Tanzania (MIGA 2003b: 3). FIAS has been active in Mali, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and Namibia (IFC 2004). Manager, Research and Information, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004. Manager, After Care Services, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004 Senior Investment Promotion Officer, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004. Manager, After Care Services, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004. Senior Manager, Investment Promotion IPC Kenya, Geneva, January 2004. Manager, Research and Information, IPC Kenya, Nairobi, May 2004. Senior Manager, Investment Promotion IPC Kenya, Geneva, January 2004. Attache´, Tanzania Trade Centre, London, April 2003; Senior Manager, Investment Promotion IPC Kenya, Geneva, January 2004; and Executive Director, Uganda Investment Authority, Geneva, January 2003.



5 Temporary Staffing, ‘‘Geographies of Circulation,’’ and the Business of Delivering Neoliberalization Kevin Ward

Loud music seems to be coming at me from all corners. It is dark, I can’t see any speakers – in fact, to be honest, I can’t see much at all. The person in front of me trips over a chair, falls into a table and a bottle of water is sent flying. Just as he or she – I can’t be sure as it is still too dark – reaches a seat, so the music stops. Thank heavens. And then suddenly it starts again, except even louder, but this time we have light. My eyes are drawn toward the stage, past the person in front of me who is still brushing water off their suit jacket (it’s a man!). There, in front of us, is what appears to be the first PowerPoint slide of a presentation, showing the center of Paris, and in large yellow, rather garish, letters I can see CIETT 2003. So I now know I am in the right place. My interest in the temporary staffing industry has taken me to Paris, and the annual conference of the International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses (CIETT) which, according to the paraphernalia, ‘‘provides an excellent opportunity for both industry experts and all-interested parties to learn about key developments experienced by the agency work industry worldwide’’ (CIETT 2003: 1). Each conference has a theme. In the past it has been ‘‘Temporary work in the knowledge society’’ (Belgium in 2000), tapping into the pre-dot.com



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global economic downturn fascination with ‘‘knowledge.’’ This year the theme is ‘‘Challenges of the employment market in the 21st century,’’ a theme chosen, according to Ken Davidson, the then-President of CIETT, because ‘‘recent decades have seen considerable growth in temporary work, a solution that meets the needs both of our customers and of many workers. This growth can also be explained by the fact that our profession is particularly dynamic and attuned to the needs of the employment market’’ (quoted in CIETT 2003: np, emphasis added). The temporary staffing industry is not short of those professing to have an inside knowledge of it or who talk about it in ways that reflect the ‘‘new means of picturing business power and identity that frame the world in a different way’’ (Thrift 2000: 678). Senior executives; business analysts; financial journalists: all have something to say about temping and its wider significance. These ‘‘experts’’ – those that constitute one element of the ‘‘cultural circuit of capital’’ (Thrift 1998) – perform a number of different functions in imagining a new economic order. They are ‘‘producers and disseminators of business knowledge, able to take up ideas and to translate them into practice and to feed practice back into ideas’’ (Thrift 2001: 415). Or, put another way, they form a coterie of ‘‘rule intermediaries’’ (Majone 1989: 159) – those analysts, consultants, and speculators who make sense of new political orthodoxies, who are ‘‘involved in the process of norm setting’’ (Majone 1989: 24) in the circulation of ‘‘solutions.’’ A recurring theme throughout the two days is how agencies are not implicated in the way labor markets have changed but, rather, are portrayed as simply responding to a growth in demand for their services, to the ‘‘needs’’ of business and individual clients. Particular attention is paid to explaining both how being placed or employed through a temporary staffing agency is becoming socially acceptable in a growing number of countries and what this means in terms of the wider economic performance of individual countries. The penultimate section of the conference appears to be the one that most delegates have come to hear, and the numbers swell, to the point where there are people standing in the aisles. Entitled ‘‘Economic perspectives for the agency work industry,’’ this section consists of two presentations. The first is by Boris Bernstein, a Harvard-educated senior analyst at Goldman Sachs, and formerly an employee of both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He and his like fulfill an important role in the expansion of the industry. His job, alongside other analysts in the largest investment banks such as those at Deutsche Bank and SG Warburg, is to


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monitor the industrial and geographical expansion of the temporary staffing industry, and to interpret and translate the particular strategies of the largest public agencies into a figure, as a means of judging whether share prices are under- or overvalued. He is a ‘‘rule intermediary’’ because in and through his work he is performing analysis as argument. This clarification matters, for: Far from waiting passively for the stipulation of public values to be served, policy analysts are deeply involved in the process of norm setting (Majone 1989: 24).

The second talk is by Jean-Claude Daoust, the then outgoing President of CIETT. At this point I make my excuses to the person next to me and negotiate my way to the exit. I have had enough of this self-appointed ‘‘world congress of temping.’’ I leave the other 262 delegates, who hail from 24 countries,1 to discover what he has to say. Later in the evening I find myself sharing a drink or two with the representatives of the Japanese Staffing Services Association (JSSA). They are talking enthusiastically about the growth rates the industry is experiencing in their country. One or two of them have been to London recently, to find out about the UK temporary staffing industry. Representatives from other national trade bodies join our table. This is no place for the fainthearted. Nor is it a place for those who would resist ‘‘change’’: the air is thick with the ‘‘religious revivalism’’ that Nigel Thrift (1998) writes about. I find myself a constitutive element in a narrative of possibilities, in which the very act of the discussion makes it more likely that they will occur, that the act of conversation between me and the others at the table – in which I am, at least, a reticent participant – is as important as its content. Talk turns to future global expansion, the current regulatory landscape, and the pros and cons of the corporate strategies of the largest multinationals. My head is spinning. The words are off-putting but at the same time fascinating, annoying, and rather facile, and yet, also strangely intoxicating. According to some of those involved in the discussion, the global space economy is quite literally a space of flows. If only it wasn’t for those darn things called borders or boundaries, or interest groups or labor unions, all of which only ever get in the way and should be removed, in order that money and bodies could be moved from one place to another to realize the maximum amount of returns. The conversation embodies the very ideology of neoliberalism in its purest guise, ‘‘an understanding of the capitalist market . . . understood as a non-political, purely ‘economic’ sphere’’ (Cola´s 2005: 73).




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It is now getting late and I need to leave, quickly, before I move from passively nodding my head to violently shaking my fist. I put my hand in my pocket and pull out the business cards that I have amassed over the day. They resemble a pack of cards, a ‘‘who’s who’’ of global temporary staffing and associated business interests. Back at my hotel I order a large whisky: I deserve it. I begin to think about the people and the networks involved in making neoliberalization. I reflect on how it is possible to understand what I have just experienced for a day and a half in the context of debates over the realization of ‘‘global labor flexibility,’’ in light of the claim of Guy Standing (2002: 33) that ‘‘[f]lexibility has become one of the most powerful words that shape policy and public perceptions.’’ Moreover, much of the emphasis of this conference, and of much of the literature produced on and by the temporary staffing industry, ties it into wider discussions over the ‘‘new economy,’’ that ‘‘description and, at the same time . . . assumption of what constitutes a normal future’’ (Thrift 2001; see also Theodore and Peck 2002), even though empirically the industry has so far struggled to escape from its mass-production ‘‘Fordist’’ moorings (Peck, Theodore, and Ward 2005). And it is not just those inside the temporary staffing industry who position and talk about its business, and how it is changing, albeit slowly, in this upbeat manner. The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) (2001: np) World Employment Report Life at Work in the Information Economy makes the link between the ‘‘new’’ type of employment relationship and associate labor recruitment and practices and the restructuring of economic activity, arguing ‘‘that increasingly the atypical may be becoming the norm.’’ The opportunities to rebrand and to reimagine what they do has not been lost on the largest agencies: in recent years all of the multinationals have dropped the word ‘‘temporary’’ from their promotional material, presentations, and websites, replacing it instead with a range of terms, such as ‘‘flexible staffing,’’ ‘‘human capital management,’’ ‘‘labor solutions,’’ ‘‘staffing companies,’’ and ‘‘workforce architects,’’ terms that seek to reposition their business at the forefront of the much-vaunted economic transition. A report by Deutsche Bank in 2000 is illustrative. Entitled Staffing Companies: The Agents of New Economy Assets, this report into the geographical and industrial expansionary dynamics of the six largest temporary staffing agencies was disseminated globally, to the corporate elite of the transnationals, to large-scale investors, to those involved in lobbying on behalf of the industry, and finally, to anyone that it was believed might be persuaded to play a role in making what was in the document a reality (see Plate 5.1). It became, in the rather overused words of Bruno



Plate 5.1 Staffing companies: the agents of new economy assets




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Latour (1987), an immutable object – something that moves around, that is circulated, but that also holds its shape, in both a physical and a relational sense. This document consisted of various sections that were organized in such a way as to convey its central message. It was also given meaning by its relationship to other claims being made around the need to make labor markets more flexible – some of its power was relational. And the business analysts – those who produced Staffing Companies and other similarly titled documents – have been joined by others, who also have a stake in changing the way the industry is thought about and imagined, in order to open up new markets for agencies. Even while these claims were being made, the contribution of these ‘‘new economy’’ activities to the bottom line of most of the largest agencies was minimal. The act of renaming spoke more to possible future expansion than it did about representing the current business profile. The rationale behind these changes was, according to the agencies, nothing to do with them, but was rather a simple business response to the changing ‘‘needs’’ of corporate clients. The temporary staffing industry often did not mention its own activities in the narratives of labor market change that it espoused, arguing that ‘‘as businesses have expanded their desire for different options for fulfilling their staffing needs, the staffing industry has rapidly expanded the types and amounts of services it offers. We have become flexible in order for our clients to have flexibility when developing staffing strategies’’ (McClimans nd: 3). In providing these accounts, temporary staffing representatives were seeking to overcome one of the fundamental difficulties with consulting of any kind: that is, to solve the problem that ‘‘what consulting has to sell isn’t always new and certainly isn’t always fresh’’ (O’Shea and Madigan 1997: 13). If it were possible to remake the services offered by temporary staffing agencies, then it might also be possible to open up new markets for them, to convince corporate clients, and perhaps workers, of their ‘‘need’’ for the functions performed by agencies. All of which might help convince governments that the temporary staffing industry itself might have something to offer in terms of contributing to improving national competitiveness through making labor markets more flexible. The aims of this chapter are threefold. The first is to think seriously about the industries2 that emerge in the wake of – or in the space created by – the redrawing of the boundaries between state and market, and which we might name as neoliberalization, and to understand the role of these same industries in opening up this space into which they can then ‘‘emerge.’’ I use the example of the interlinked processes of, on the one


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hand, the geographical expansion of temporary staffing (Theodore and Peck 2002; Ward 2004; Peck et al. 2005) – deliverer supreme of labor market flexibility a` la neoliberalism – and, on the other, the acceptance by a growing number of nations of the need to re-regulate and to make more flexible their labor markets. I argue that this industry has played a role in making this imagining of future flexible labor markets possible through its geographical and its industrial expansion. As Jamie Peck and his colleagues (2005: 4, original emphasis) put it, ‘‘staffing firms are not simply supplying their services: in their role as private labour market intermediaries they are a major new institutional presence in liberalizing economies. They facilitate new kinds of intermediated employment practices and forms of labour contingency that otherwise would be logistically and social infeasible.’’ My second aim in this chapter is to reflect on the role of trade or professional associations and consultancies, and their role and performances in what Nigel Thrift (1998: 42) has termed the ‘‘ ‘cultural circuit of capital’, ‘self-organizing . . . [and] . . . responsible for the production and distribution of managerial knowledge to managers.’’ This circuit, in Thrift’s schema, consists of those who gather information – firms, research analysts, market researchers, and the media; those who produce knowledge – academia, in the form of business schools, management consultants, and management gurus; the means through which knowledge is distributed – including seminars, books, tapes, and trade magazines; and the audiences for this information, the managers themselves. Although it is not clear from this foundational work, the audiences for this knowledge are also clearly then at the same time those who would gather information, and hence there is an obvious circularity to the gathering, production, distribution, receiving, and then the acting on of this information. An important part of this circuit is, of course, trade associations, although they are not mentioned in the work of Thrift (1998), and it is to them that I turn in this chapter, in the context of the temporary staffing industry. My third aim is to consider the role of events, such as conferences and seminars, as ‘‘sites,’’ the locational practices that are the ‘‘new means of producing creativity and innovation [that] are bound up with new geographies of circulation that are intended to produce situations in which creativity and innovation can, quite literally, take place’’ (Thrift 2000: 685). In doing this here, the aim is to make a case for a peopled analysis of neoliberalization, one in which practices ‘‘have citational force because of the spaces in which they are embedded and through which they work’’ (Thrift 2000: 677).




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The Geographical Expansion of Temporary Staffing and the Rise of ‘‘Flexible’’ Labor Regulation According to Guy Standing (2002: 6), there is a ‘‘tension’’ at the heart of the debates at the end of the twentieth and at the beginning of the twenty-first century over ‘‘labor market flexibility.’’ This, he argues, is between labor’s wish for ‘‘liberating flexibility’’ and capital’s quests for ‘‘subordinated flexibility.’’ Recognizing that whether labor market flexibility is a ‘‘good’’ or a ‘‘bad’’ thing depends on who you are and the control you have over that flexibility – a situated understanding, to use the contemporary vocabulary. Standing’s comments echo those made by others, who have moved the argument on from the initial concerns with flexibility per se. This work, which retains its purchase in the current era, was extremely valuable, both intellectually – in terms of making sense of, and explaining, the ‘‘moment of destruction’’ of the wage relation (Brenner and Theodore 2002a) – and politically – in making visible real changes in the terms and conditions under which people labored. While these initial concerns still ring true today, more recent work has sought to unpack the notion of ‘‘flexibility,’’ acknowledging that while the term has a particular history and geography, one that tends to embody the ‘‘creation of a new infrastructure for marketoriented economic growth, commodification, and the rule of capital’’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002a: 15, original emphasis), under certain conditions it can also empower workers, specifically those who want their work hours to fit around other commitments. While there are clearly some more progressive aspects to labor market flexibility, it is the less upbeat aspect of flexibility, the ‘‘flexploitation,’’ what Gray (1998: 3) terms ‘‘the anti-worker aspects of flexibility’’ that I will concern myself with in this chapter, and more specifically, the neoliberalized restructuring of labor markets. Labor market flexibility is, of course, only one part of a wider shift in the organization and regulation of economic activity (Standing 2002), and as such, the general ascendance of neoliberalism, and the installing of ‘‘flexibility’’ as the labor market orthodoxy of choice of nation-states of almost all political persuasion and ideological belief, is part and parcel of a wider shift in the international political economy. In its purest form this pursuit of labor market flexibility rests on the belief that ‘‘profit maximization in markets rid of policy-induced distortions is held to bring about optimal resource allocation and increased productivity. Lower income taxes and flexible labour markets encourage


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investment and economic growth while eliminating unemployment’’ (ul Haque 2004: 2). Of course, neoliberalism in the abstract is a thing of economics textbooks: ‘‘actually existing neo-liberalism’’ as Brenner and Theodore (2002a) refer to it, or ‘‘neo-liberalism as a capital-centric project’’ (Peck 2005), is what we have witnessed, a qualitative reorganization and rescaling of the state, a constant process of state-crafting and re-crafting. As part of this redrawing of the state–market relationship there has been a fundamental remaking of labor market norms, one that is geographically uneven. In the case of labor markets, the late twentieth century appeared to mark the end of efforts to create secure employment for all workers globally (Standing 2002). Though there have been significant differences in the form, type, and impact of labor market reform, depending on whether you are in an industrial or industrializing nation, there is nevertheless a basic reform riff, the abstract features realized in ‘‘hybrid, but connected, formations’’ (Peck 2005). As ul Haque (2004: 8) puts it, the neoliberal position is that ‘‘if labour markets were allowed to function freely (i.e., absent from collective bargaining, government regulations, government hiring and firing of workers, etc.), flexible money wages would reduce unemployment.’’ Of course, liberalizing factor markets, such as those for labor, to accompany the liberalization of product markets, is not something that can be done by states alone. Or, put another way, it also requires that flexibility be delivered, bringing others – in the form of those who form part of Thrift’s (1998) ‘‘circuit of capital’’ – into the fold, to work alongside nation-states. Whether the macroeconomic restructuring of labor markets witnessed in industrialized countries, or the microeconomic emphasis (in terms of increasing firm-level economic efficiency) that tends to be how neoliberalism has been pitched in the countries of the global South, ‘‘flexibility’’ is not some force of nature, something that happens ‘‘out there,’’ wherever ‘‘out there’’ is, but is rather something that has to be produced relationally. Driving this flexible labor agenda forward over the past two decades have been those with a stake in the expansion of the temporary staffing industry, one that sells itself as the deliverers of flexibility. So, when the American Staffing Association (ASA) lists on its website the five contributions the temporary staffing industry makes to the US economy and society, second, only behind ‘‘jobs,’’ is flexibility. As the ‘‘need’’ to be flexible has become the objective in more and more places, in part due to the expansion of temporary staffing, so the temporary staffing industry has further expanded, both industrially and




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geographically, a recursive relationship, with current best estimates suggesting that the total revenues produced by temporary staffing agencies globally are about e157 billion (Peck et al. 2005). However, and despite rapid, although not uninterrupted expansion since the 1970s (Theodore and Peck 2002; Ward 2004), this global revenue is highly unevenly produced, with three national markets – the US, the UK, and France – generating almost 70 percent of all global revenues. Despite the geographical expansion of the industry, perhaps better understood as its ongoing internationalization (Peck et al. 2005) rather than its globalization, the temporary staffing business still remains geographically uneven. For most of its history, since the first temporary staffing agency was established in the US’s Mid West in the 1920s, the US industry has been synonymous with the global industry. Fifty years later the US temporary staffing industry entered its ‘‘golden era’’ during which it experienced double-digit growth rates (Segal and Sullivan 1997). In 1976 the US temporary staffing payroll was $1 billion: by the end of 2001 it was just over $100 billion. Despite being disproportionately affected by the 2003 US economic downturn (Peck and Theodore 2004), the US temporary staffing industry remains a not-inconsequential institutional actor in US labor markets across the country. This institutional presence has been replicated outside the US, as the past 10 years have seen the more ‘‘mature’’ and established markets continue to expand, while at the same time their relative importance to the overall international market has declined. In Northern Europe, Sweden has experienced annual revenue growth rates of 50–60 percent, although this has slowed in the past couple of years, and although the industry is less mature in Norway and Finland, it continues to grow in both. In other European countries, such as Greece, Italy, and Spain, the past few decades have seen the industry legalized, after years of intense political lobbying both by the European political institutions and by the largest temporary staffing agencies themselves. In Italy, for example, having spent years constructing ‘‘the market’’ for their services, the likes of Kelly Services and Manpower, Inc. have moved in, obtained and protected their market share, at the same time as Italian temporary staffing agencies have also been set up. As a result, the Italian temporary staffing industry has grown to 300 agencies in just three years (Peck et al. 2005). And with the entrance into the European Union of 10 new member states from Central and Eastern Europe, some of the largest agencies have turned their attention to this part of the world (Ward, Coe,


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and Johns 2005). For example, agencies have been busy buying a presence in the markets of the Czech Republic or Poland; others have been expanding through acquisition activity, speculating that the future growth of this region will go hand-in-hand with a more fundamental change in the role of the state as both an employer and regulator of workers. All of this activity has led the US market to shrink in relative importance: in 1990 two-thirds of all temporary staffing revenues were generated in the US market; by the turn of the century this figure had dropped to 45 percent, with all available evidence suggesting it has continued to fall since. In addition to this geographical expansion, and as I have already highlighted, the other significant change in the business of temporary staffing agencies is their expansion into new industrial sectors. In areas of the economy, such as accounting, health care, legal, and IT, agencies have actively tried to seek out new markets for their services, attempting to diversify, to move away from those sectors such as clerical and light industrial, out of which the industry emerged, and where the bulk of temping business has traditionally been done (Ward 2004). So, Adecco has placed great stock by its ability to move into ‘‘higher skilled populations, higher margin industries and higher value-added services’’ (Adecco 1999: 4). Its ‘‘speciality brands’’ now account for more than 13 percent of its revenues and 20 percent of its gross margins. Its emphasis on information technology, finance, and career management is replicated among the other largest agencies. For example, Kelly Services recently set out how its future growth rests on its ability to nurture and develop its ‘‘Professional, Technical and Staffing Alternatives’’ division. In 1990 this segment accounted for only 7 percent of company sales: by 2000 this had risen fourfold. Despite Kelly Services’ emphasis on the changes that have taken place in the temporary staffing industry, in absolute terms the bulk of revenues continue to be made in the most established markets placing those workers that traditionally have been the industry’s staple diet: office clerical and light industrial laborers (Theodore and Peck 2002). Talk of geographical expansion and industrial diversification (Ward 2004) is just that: talk. In the next section I turn to the two trade associations that have done the most to get the temporary staffing industry where it is today, and which will be important in creating the conditions under which it might get to where it aspires to be, both geographically and in terms of further securing its place in the emerging global neoliberal economic orthodoxy.




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The American Staffing Association (ASA) and the International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses (CIETT): Representing Temporary Staffing, Keeping the Faith and Spreading the Word Those who ‘‘represent’’ the temporary staffing industry, the largest trade associations who speak publicly on behalf of the largest and the smallest agencies, organize the events, meetings, seminars, and summits that act as a means of sharing and circulating corporate practices. They have played an important role in the recent expansion of the industry, opposing government legislation or regulation that might limit the business done by temporary staffing agencies. In the words of Diane Stone (2001: 20), these trade associations perform as ‘‘knowledge actors,’’ and as I hope will become clear, the American Staffing Association and the International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses have played important roles in the industry’s evolution. In particular, after almost 30 years of market-making activities in and around North America and Western Europe, these two largest trade associations have set about supporting, reinforcing, and, in some cases, instigating the geographical expansion of the temporary staff industry. In the case of Italy, for example, a senior figure in CIETT explained its role: ‘‘we were involved . . . in opening the Italian market, because it was a genuine market. And because we felt there was no reason – legal or otherwise – to justify prohibiting agency work. So there was a lot of work done with the Italian Government to authorize agencies’’ (Senior figure, CIETT, Brussels, October 2002). CIETT’s relationship with the ASA has evolved into something akin to a ‘‘sibling organisation’’ (Hersberger 2005: np). The American Staffing Association is, in its own words, ‘‘the voice of the staffing industry.’’ The absence of any mention of the US in this statement is important: for most of its history the US temporary staffing industry was the global temporary staffing industry. As such, the ASA could claim to speak on behalf of the industry, and the so-called ‘‘titans of staffing’’ (Ward 2003). It claims to ‘‘promote the interests of our members through legal and legislative advocacy, public relations, education and the establishment of high standards of ethical conduct,’’ an active institutional force in the remaking of labor market norms through its activities. The association was founded in 1966 as the Institute of Temporary Services, ‘‘to ensure that quality temporary help services were available to businesses and to promote flexible employment


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opportunities for people.’’ Since then it has undergone a number of changes, the result of, but also a contributing factor in, the image produced of the temporary staffing industry. So, in 1970, the institute became the National Association of Temporary Services. In 1994, the name was expanded to National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services, because according to its website ‘‘many of our members were offering more than temporary help services.’’ Five years later, at the end of the twentieth century, the name was again changed, this time to American Staffing Association ‘‘to better reflect the full range of staffing and human resources services offered by member companies.’’ The ASA now has members with 15,000 offices throughout the United States. Organizationally the ASA does its work within the US through ‘‘chapters,’’ or local branches, of which it has 71 in 43 states and Washington, DC. Its members provide a range of different ‘‘services’’: temporary help, permanent placement, temporary-to-permanent placement, long-term and contract help, managed services (often called ‘‘outsourcing’’), training, and human resources consulting, in which a staffing firm assumes responsibility for payroll, benefits, and other human resource functions. In addition to this expansion in how agencies ‘‘consult’’ with client firms, they do their business in a wide variety of occupations, including: office-clerical (secretaries, general office clerks, receptionists, administrative assistants); industrial (manual laborers, food handlers, cleaners, assemblers, drivers); technical (engineers, scientists, lab technicians, architects, technical writers); information technology (consultants, analysts, programmers, designers, installers); professional–managerial (accountants, attorneys, advertising executives, middle and senior managers); and health care (physicians, dentists, nurses, hygienists, medical technicians). In 2003 the ASA restructured its organization in recognition of the changing sectors in which US temporary staffing agencies were doing their business. It established four sections – health care, industrial, placement and recruiting, and technical, IT, and scientific – to address the needs and interests of individual staffing industry sectors, and, as we’ll see in the next section, established sector-specific ‘‘summits,’’ in which the details of particular segments of the temporary staffing market could be discussed, the opportunities for market expansion sold. The International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses was formed only a year after the ASA, on May 17, 1967 in Paris. However, its initial activity attracted less attention than that of the ASA, in part a reflection of how important the US agencies were in pushing the initial




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geographical expansion of the temporary staffing industry. CIETT is a ‘‘confederation,’’ a grouping of national federations of employment businesses, in its words ‘‘businesses that supply workers for temporary assignments on their clients’ premises.’’ As well as devising its own Code of Practice in 1971, to which all member states and agencies have to adhere, on its website CIETT cites its primary objective as being: to seek greater recognition of the contribution that agency work makes in relation to overall employment creation, integration in the labour market and economic growth, through: stimulating the formation of federations in countries where no such federation exists; facilitating the exchange, centralization and distribution of information and literature of direct or indirect interest to agency work for the benefit of members, and for the information of the public and of official bodies; negotiations on agency work with international institutions and organizations, as well as national governments or official national organizations in co-operation with its Member Federations; supporting the efforts of its members in any action to protect the interests of agency workers, and to work towards harmonization of the status of agency workers; undertaking any studies, surveys or work at international level likely to help to integrate agency work into the economy; enhancing the prestige of the profession, to ensure a permanent place for it in society; working towards the universal acceptance of the principle that agency workers are the employees of employment agencies.

The association’s position as the representative of the global temporary staffing industry in concord with the ASA has been recognized by other social and economic actors. For example, Euro-CIETT, formed by CIETT Council Members from European Union and European Economic Area countries, is recognized as the Social Partner for the sector by the European Commission, within the framework of the European Social Dialogue, while it has also been active in negotiations and lobbying over the content of the proposed European Union (EU) Directive on temporary agency work. Perhaps more importantly, in the context of the argument made in this chapter over the objects involved in the ‘‘cultural circuit of capital,’’ in 2000 CIETT commissioned global consultancy giants McKinsey and Company to produce a report into the role the industry might play in the labor markets of the future. Entitled Orchestrating the evolution of private employment agencies: towards a stronger society, although it subsequently became known in the industry as the ‘‘McKinsey report,’’ this 71-page document fulfilled a number of roles


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for the association as it sought to expand geographically the presence of temporary staffing industries, and to challenge the terms in the established markets under which agencies went about their business. First, it brought together existing data sets that allowed CIETT to make claims over the standing of the report; in particular, in terms of situating the temporary staffing industry in relation to the European Union’s Lisbon Agenda to increase the number of people in work by 2010. Second, it reported on the findings of a questionnaire survey conducted by Deloitte and Touche Bakkenist and administered to 700 agency workers across Europe. Leaving aside the methodological limits to this survey, of greater importance were the symbolic claims that CIETT could make about the document in terms of the newly generated findings that it contained. Third, and moving away from the content of the document per se, that it was produced by one of the largest multinational management consultants was not unimportant. Having McKinsey and Company’s logo on the document meant it traveled further – quite literally – and was circulated in the sorts of elite circles – in terms of senior executives and others – that further allowed CIETT the scope to make claims over the movement of agencies up the human resources ‘‘value chain.’’ Fourth, and my final point, the physicality, the materiality of the document mattered: it could be sent out, circulated, commented on, acting as a means around which discussions and lobbying could occur. Unlike the ASA, CIETT, by definition of its international nature, has been able to use this geographical reference to increase its number of member federations, and in doing so, to increase its geographical scope. In recent years the number of CIETT member federations has expanded, albeit slowly. In 1998 it had 26 national federations; by 2005 this had increased to 30 (see Figure 5.1), with Greece, Finland, and Poland joining in 2002. Perhaps reflecting the importance of the largest agencies vis-a`-vis national states, it also counts six of the largest transnational agencies as members.3 Since the mid-1980s a number of South American, African, and Asian countries have formed their own trade organizations as a way of providing a means in and through which to focus campaigning and lobbying activity. For example, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Japan, Morocco, South Africa, and Uruguay are all now full members of CIETT, though most joined only in the past decade, as the market for temporary staffing in each began to open up (Peck et al. 2005). This geographical network serves – much like the seminars and the summits I will discuss later – as a means through which ideas, practices, and understandings can be produced, circulated, and exchanged. In the

Figure 5.1

CIETT’s member federations


Associate members

Full members



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words of Stone (2004b: 9), ‘‘networking has . . . become a mode of policy research just as the network is a medium for it.’’ For example, in 1997 the Japanese professional association, the JASSA, sent a delegation to France, Germany, and the UK to study the temporary staffing industry in each country, as part of the liberalization of this nation’s labor markets (Weathers 2004; Imai and Shire 2006). The JASSA – the Temporary Work Services Association of Japan – is one of the better-established trade organizations and was formed in 1984. It successfully lobbied for the legalization of temporary staffing in 1986 and has since then set about arguing for the reduction of the regulation of the industry, using visits like the one it made to Europe in 1997 as a means of finding out about the nature of different national markets, but also about the lobbying activities of the different national trade associations. In 1999 the laws on the Japanese temporary staffing industry were relaxed, a success in part stemming from the experience the JASSA gained from joining CIETT in 1994 and the visit it made to the association’s Brussels headquarters in 1997. The JASSA has not been the only trade body to use the CIETT network as a means of circulating information and knowledge: in July 1999, the Chinese Federation of Temporary Work Businesses visited CIETT headquarters in Brussels, before proceeding to its annual conference, to have its CIETT membership confirmed. Institutionally CIETT has recognized its role in nurturing its new, still ‘‘emerging’’ markets, ‘‘establishing a special membership fee for Emerging Markets of $100’’ (CIETT 2000: 5). The notion of ‘‘emerging markets’’ features in the documentation produced by CIETT, and is also a term used by business analysts and consultants, when they speculate on future growth areas (Peck et al. 2005). In its 1998 annual report of activities, CIETT (1999: 27) divided up the world according to the state of the markets for temporary staffing, moving between continents, countries, and regions (Table 5.1; see also Bernstein 2003). Although more commonly a term used in financial market discussions, in the past decade, CIETT has made a point of being implicit about its geographical imagination, about how it sees the world in terms of both current and future geographies of temporary staffing. In this way CIETT is striving to remake the regulatory landscape of labor markets in an image conducive to the further expansion of temporary staffing; it is the performing of this act, the producing of the tables, the making visual – literally in cartographic terms – of this imagination that the association hopes will make its future of choice realizable.




Table 5.1

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CIETT’s imagining of the global market for temporary staffing

New markets

Emerging markets

Maturing markets

Greece Eastern Europe Far East South America

Austria Denmark Finland Germany Ireland Italy Japan Norway Portugal Spain Sweden Switzerland

Belgium France Luxembourg Netherlands UK USA

Source: CIETT (1999)

Sites of Exchange, Diffusion, Learning, and Networking: of Forums and Summits The third focus of this chapter is on the spaces in which diffusion, learning, and networking occur: the conferences, forums, and summits that are organized by the ASA, its private sector nemesis Staffing Industry Analysts, Inc., and by the CIETT. The argument I want to make is that these need to be understood as important means in and through which temporary staffing can be celebrated, its challenges acknowledged and its possibilities made more realizable, its contributions to the economic development trajectories of national economies rendered visible. Here I want to examine the ASA’s annual forums, and the ways in which they are situated in terms of the state of temporary staffing, and what the hosting of new, more specialist ‘‘summits’’ reveals about the expansionary dynamics of temping, before returning to the annual conferences organized by CIETT. The focus is on the process of making markets rather than the outcomes (Peck et al. 2005). I am less concerned with what the theme is and what gets said, and more with the changing places in which the conference has been hosted during the past five years. In this sense I want to focus squarely on the events themselves. I then want to proceed to explore how where CIETT has held its annual conferences since the late 1990s is instructive on the changing geographical imagination of the trade association.


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Every year the ASA hosts its Staffing World event. Over the years this annual event has been renamed and restructured, in line with the changing organizational architecture of the ASA. Under the ASA’s institutional predecessor, the National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services (NATSS), the events were known as the annual convention and exposition. For example, the 37th NATSS annual convention and exposition held in Atlanta was entitled ‘‘Imagine the possibilities’’ in a pre-millennial vein, while in more recent years Staffing World – as it has become known – has moved around the US, from Las Vegas (2000) to New York (2001), from Orlando (2002)4 to Las Vegas (again) (2003), from Washington (2004), which was attended by almost 2,000 delegates, to Orlando (again) in 2005. Attendees tend to be members of the ASA – it is largely a national event – and hence international delegates are rare, although increasing. For example, at the 2004 event South African industry representatives attended, in order ‘‘to spread the word about staffing issues in South Africa’’ (quoted in Hersberger 2005: np). The annual events consist of keynote addresses, themed workshops, the awarding of the ‘‘National Temporary Employee of the Year,’’ and inductions into the Staffing Industry Leadership Hall of Fame, which was started in 1985 ‘‘to honor individual contributions to the staffing industry and ASA’’ (Hersberger 2005; np). In addition to the annual events organized by the ASA, the US temporary staffing industry is also host to an annual Staffing Industry Executive Forum, organized by Staffing Industry Analysts, Inc., a private company that formed in 1989 and that describes itself as ‘‘the leading provider of business intelligence, market data, news, and analysis to staffing industry executives and employers who use contingent/temporary staff. We deliver independent and objective information that focuses on the staffing industry – temporary help, permanent placement, contingency/retained search, contract project placement, professional employer organizations (PEOs) and outplacement’’ (www.staffingindustry.com/about). Targeted at senior officers, the Executive Forum, which was first held in 1991, attracts more international delegates than the ASA’s Staffing World and is sold to prospective attendees in the following way: . The Executive Forum is for you, the senior staffing industry executive, regardless of your staffing sector or segment, regardless of the staffing or recruiting services you offer, regardless of the size of your staffing company. . The Executive Forum is the one industry event for executives who value innovation and distinct viewpoints.




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. The Executive Forum is the one industry event where best practices are showcased and substantive face-to-face conversations and meetings take place. Source: http://www.staffingindustry.com/executive_forum/why.html As Plate 5.2 set outs, the 2003 Executive Forum in New York constituted the type of spaces in which ‘‘the new kind of managerial subject can be both created and affirmed’’ (Thrift 2000: 675). Brochures are full of calls to managers of agencies and to others in the industry to network, to learn, to participate in workshops. In recent years, to reflect the diversification of the temporary staffing industry, Staffing Industry Analysts, Inc., have also organized a number of themed ‘‘staffing summits.’’ In the case of information technology, in which US temporary staffing agencies began to expand their business in the late 1990s as part of the dot.com boom, the first summit was held in 1999, with the 2003 IT services business summit in San Jose, California, typical in terms of structure and content (Plate 5.3). For other areas of the economy, such as health care, the growth in the use of temporary staffing is a more recent development (Plate 5.4). As the US industry struggles to increase the proportion of the total workforce placed through temporary staffing agencies – it appears to have been stuck on or around 3–4 percent for a number of years now – those with a stake in the industry are creating the conditions under which diversification sideways into new ‘‘niches’’ or ‘‘segments’’ is made easier. For much of its history, the CIETT annual conferences have been held in the continental European heartlands of temporary staffing. In recent years, however, as the industry has begun to look to expand geographically, the hosting of the annual conference has taken on extra strategic importance. Its location has formed an important aspect to the association’s changing geographical imagination, and its market-making practices, in ways that resonate with the words of David Harvey (2001) on geographical knowledges. CIETT and others have used the annual conferences to campaign for the further liberalizing of labor markets and the opening up of new markets for the business of temporary staffing. The conferences also, in an indirect way, act to make possible the remaking of neoliberal worker subjectivities, as the expansion of temporary staffing is argued, by those who would expand it, to empower those workers with the ‘‘right’’ sort of human capital, what Kelly Services term in their documentation the ‘‘free agent worker.’’ The first example of this shift in the rationale for the locating of the CIETT annual conference was in 1999, when it was held in Rome, Italy, organized by the Italian


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Plate 5.2 2003 Executive forum

Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses (AssoInterim). This is not perhaps surprising. In 1997 the Italian government, after lobbying by the largest agencies and CIETT, legalized temporary staffing. The market quickly expanded, as a result of both ‘‘latent demand’’ and the political maneuvering of the largest agencies, meaning that the post-legislative




Plate 5.3

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IT services summit

rules of the game were set in favor of these same agencies, allowing them to make abnormally high margins in the short term (Peck et al. 2005). After its 2000 annual conference in Belgium, one of its founding member state federations and one of the most established temporary staffing markets (CIETT 1999; Peck et al. 2005), 2001 was a year of change


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Plate 5.4 Healthcare summit

for CIETT. For the first time in its history it held its annual conference outside of Europe. In May 2001 the Argentine Federation of Temporary Work Businesses (FAETT) hosted the CIETT annual conference, using ‘‘the occasion to showcase the staffing industry in Argentina and through Latin and South America’’ (Global Staffing Industry Report




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2001: 3–4). Over 200 delegates attended the three-day conference, representing the different national trade bodies and the largest multinational temporary staffing agencies. In May 2002 the Japanese Staffing Services Association hosted the annual CIETT conference. This time over 430 delegates attended, creating a focus for those with a stake in opening up the Japanese market to continue to press for labor market reform (Peck et al. 2005). In 2003 the annual conference returned to Europe, to Paris, France, where this chapter began. The return to more established markets did not last long, however: in the middle of 2004 CIETT announced that it would host its 2005 annual conference in Cape Town, South Africa. As the local organizers of CIETT 2005: A South African perspective, a global challenge proclaim, ‘‘South Africa, through APSO (Association of Personnel Service Organizations of South Africa) is honoured to be hosting CIETT 2005 . . . We wish to showcase our labour practices following the impact of transformation in South Africa after 10 years of democracy.’’ In addition to local delegates, such as Simon Ridge, the President of the Association of Personnel Service Organization (APSO), others who attended and performed at this event included well-traveled industry luminaries, such as Richard Wahlquist (President and CEO, American Staffing Association), Tunde Johnson (Compliance and Business Ethnics Officer, Adecco), and Joel Biller (President, CIETT), as well as, as if to reaffirm the symbolic importance attached to the temporary staffing business by industrializing nations, the President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, and his Minister of Labour, Membathisi Mdladlana. This involvement of senior government officials at CIETT 2005 is not altogether surprising. As Patrick Bond (2000) has written about South Africa’s economic and political transition, changing the terms and conditions under which workers are employed in order to make labor markets more flexible was just one example of how the South African government embraced neoliberal reforms.

Conclusion After over 30 years of holding its annual conferences in continental Europe, the International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses (CIETT) recently set about remaking its geographical imagination, as part of its attempt to remake the global map of the temporary staffing industry. In the past few years the association has held its annual conferences in Argentina (2001), Japan (2002), and, most recently,


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South Africa (2005). As the only international trade body for temporary staffing agencies, it knows that one way of growing and nurturing new geographical markets, is to get government officials and representatives of the industry talking to each other. Hosting the annual conference gives the bringing together of people a structure, a focus: it literally creates a space in which people can meet, learn, and be ‘‘educated’’ into the virtues of this way of freeing-up labor markets. In its role to ‘‘promote the industry’’ CIETT (2005: 2) is clear about what it should be doing: ‘‘it is up to international groups to open up these new geographic markets.’’ In taking its message of a particular type of labor market flexibility to these countries, CIETT and the largest agencies play an active role in making possible wider transformations in the regulation of labor. They make realizable the types of changes that governments are asked to make, in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) or to satisfy the repayment conditions of loans issued by supranational agencies, such as the World Bank. At the same time, the American Staffing Association, an erstwhile predominantly national and rather geographically inward-looking association, has recently looked outward. The new President of CIETT is an American, and a former senior executive at the ASA. He is clear that what happens in other staffing industries and markets matters to the economic fortunes of the US and to the size and type of business done by US temporary staffing agencies. As he puts it, ‘‘CIETT was formed by a number of forward-looking leaders in the temporary help business who realized that globalization was on the way and that what happened in one country would influence what happens in others’’ (Joel Biller, President of CIETT quoted in Crayton 2004: np). Missing from many industry-produced accounts of its growth and expansion is any sense of the institutional role agencies have played in national labor market restructuring. Agencies have played a not insignificant role in producing the economic conditions to which they are then supposed to be responding. In Biller’s account, globalization is something to which staffing agencies should respond, not something that they and others involved in the temporary staffing industry have been actively producing in the past few decades, positioning themselves as purveyors of flexibility par excellence. Instead, in and through the work of the ASA, CIETT, and the largest agencies, labor market ‘‘problems’’ are diagnosed – normally with mention of ‘‘rigidity,’’ examples of current ‘‘good practice’’ drawn upon through seminars and summits, leading to the proposal of a series of ‘‘solutions,’’ which agencies are then on hand to administer. And these reform programs are brought to life




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and energized at conferences and seminars. I would argue that these events are one of a number of key sites in the facilitating of the spread or diffusion of neoliberal labor market restructuring across the global space economy. At the conferences, and in and through associated publications, CIETT, and the de facto ‘‘international’’ body, the ASA, work with the re-regulatory grain, and in doing so reinforce it, giving extra credibility and making it more of a ‘‘reality.’’ Connections are made to other documents produced by supranational agencies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union, and the World Bank. Through these practices the industry is placed relationally in the wider policymaking and political imagination, as a constitutive element in the production of less regulated, more flexible labor markets. A case in point is the way in which the European Union’s Lisbon Strategy is named by CIETT to make a case for the future necessity of the industry in Europe. In each country where national industry trade bodies form, they do so in order to market what the business of temporary staffing can offer, not just to firms and to workers, but also to those with a wider stake in the nation’s economic competitiveness and growth. In establishing a national trade body – as was, for example, recently the case in Poland, post its accession into the European Union – the business of temping gains a foothold into another market, moving another step further to putting in place a new global orthodoxy of labor market re-regulation of a particularly neoliberal variety. As Tom Bierman, the then President of CIETT, proclaimed in the summer of 2003: There are plenty of new geographical markets to develop – Latin America, China, India and the countries around the southern tip of Africa being prime examples. So there remains plenty of potential even in difficult times.

Those I spent the evening with in Paris, the account of which began this chapter, also spoke enthusiastically about future growth opportunities. Talk was not of falling margins, increased competition, or the barriers to further growth. No mention was made of how, in many of the most mature markets, the industry had grown quickly only to end up relatively small (Theodore and Peck 2002). Rather, the talk was of entering new geographical markets, of takeovers and acquisitions and of locking customers into an ever-widening suite of services. I doubt many with whom I spoke had a geographical background. Nevertheless, the air was thick with geography. Many of those in the temporary


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staffing industry see it as their role to talk geographically: in doing so, they continue to play a role in promulgating the uneven evolution of neoliberalization, not as some end state but as a set of generic tendencies that are realized, find a home, in different ways in different national labor markets.

Acknowledgments This chapter started life as a panel presentation at the 2003 annual conference of the Association of American Geographers. Thanks to all those who participated in the discussion at that panel session, to Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, and more recently Neil Coe and Jennifer Johns for sharing my interest – if interest is the right word – in the temporary staffing industry, to Nick Phelps, Marcus Power, and Kim England for their insightful and helpful comments on the first draft, and to Graham Bowden for drawing Figure 5.1. I draw on 40 interviews with temporary staffing representatives, agency executives, and labor unions, and the analysis of a large range of secondary data on the temporary staffing industry. I alone am responsible for this chapter’s faults.

Notes 1 Although 163 of the 263 of the delegates are French, taking some of the gloss off the claims about the international nature of the event. 2 I don’t mean to use the term ‘‘industries’’ here as an ontological pre-given category, but instead use it to refer to the naming practices involved in the defining of boundaries in which firms place themselves and which are used by workers, governments, unions, and others. 3 These were Adecco, Kelly Services, Manpower, Randstad, United Services Group (USG), and Vedior. 4 As I have argued, there is a clear attempt to remake subjectivities at these events, which goes beyond the material. As one delegate explained: ‘‘so much of the value I got from attending Staffing World 2002 was emotional. I was uplifted and energized by the opening performances in the Staffing World Star of Tomorrow competition’’ (Fairchild 2003: np).



6 Neoliberalizing Argentina? Pete North

I saw columns coming from all the neighbourhoods of the city after the president announced a state of siege (and) I thought ‘‘this is like the fall of the wall. This is the fall of the neoliberal wall’’ (Protester Ricardo Carcova, December 20, 2001, Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, cited by Harman 2002: 3).

Over three days in December 2001, a mass demonstration composed of savers, seniors on pensions, unemployed and underemployed people converged on the Plaza de Mayo in central Buenos Aires, banging pots and pans, revving motorcycles, and letting off fireworks. The immediate cause of their anger was an abortive attempt by the state to raid private pension funds to pay a due installment on Argentina’s foreign debt. This undermined investor confidence and money quickly flowed out of the country into offshore US-dollar-denominated accounts, compounding the crisis. Citizens still talk of lines of armored cars on their way to the airport and to the ferry to Uruguay. The state then attempted to counter this monetary exodus by freezing bank accounts, but it was too late. A monthly drawings limit of 350 pesos was imposed, known as the coralito or ‘‘playpen.’’ Furious savers vented their anger at their inability to withdraw their money. They were quickly joined by thousands of unemployed and underemployed people, unhappy with the way they had been treated by the regime, and who wanted to take the opportunity to show their anger. Buenos Aires exploded into near insurrection, with the attempt of a rattled government to restore order through a clampdown leading to 36 deaths and further inflaming the situation.


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An attempt to declare a state of emergency was the final straw: in what became known as the ‘‘Argentinazo,’’ President de la Ruá was forced to resign and flee the presidential palace in a helicopter. Three other presidents came and went in quick succession before the Perońist strongman Duhalde became interim president. Duhalde bowed to the inevitable, floating the peso, which immediately lost 75 percent of its value, before stabilizing at around three to the dollar. Protests continued against primarily US-headquartered banks which had assured their customers that their money was as secure as it would be if it were held at the bank’s US headquarters. Only the removal of the freeze in July 2002 pacified the crowds. During the early months of 2002 the economy nose-dived. Rock (2002) reported that the Argentine gross domestic product (GDP) sank by 16.3 percent during this period, while manufacturing output was down by 20 percent. One in five of the population were reported as living in severe poverty, which in the provinces meant not being able to get enough to eat, while over half the population, 19 million people,

Plate 6.1 Pickets mass to defend the Bruckman occupied factory, Buenos Aires, March 2003 (photograph, Pete North)


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lived in poverty. Twenty percent were unemployed, while 23 percent were underemployed. By 2004, things had got a little better. The economy grew at a steady 8.8 percent in 2003 and 2004, but 40 percent of Argentines still lived below the poverty line, with 15 percent still in extreme poverty (Buenos Aires Herald 2005). On the face of it, this is but another crisis of neoliberalism. The freeing of foreign currency exchange controls meant that when the Argentine government acted in a manner that undermined its economic credibility, capital fled the country. Incompetent attempts to stabilize the situation just made matters worse and Argentina exploded into social unrest and economic meltdown. The crisis was so sharp, quick, and deep that neoliberalism seemed to unravel, its contradictions on display for analysts to pore over. Surely those responsible for the catastrophe through their economic mismanagement would hold their hands up and admit they got it wrong, while critics could sit back in smug satisfaction and say, ‘‘We told you so.’’ The pot-and pan-bangers of downtown Buenos Aires appeared to have seen off neoliberalism in a manner similar to the ways in which those who pulled down the Berlin Wall had seen off communism. The evil International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been exposed! Was this the end of neoliberalism? Socialists, anarchists, and the anti-capitalists who massed at Seattle, Prague, and Genoa asked if events in Argentina were the beginning of a new, liberated society in the making (Dinerstein 2002; Harman 2002; ‘‘IM’’ 2002, Aufheben 2003; Klein 2003a, 2003b). The crisis in Argentina appeared to occur at a time when neoliberalism had lost its luster as the favored prescription for development. The journalism of Naomi Klein, criticisms of former World Bank insider Joseph Stiglitz (2002), and the critiques developed by the protesters at Seattle and after seemed to be borne out in practice. Seemingly, doctrinaire economic prescriptions, developed in Chicago and implemented by ideologues stuck in their hotel rooms, had been exposed. Argentina became the paradigmatic example of the failure of neoliberalism, and the alternatives developed by Argentines the best answer to those who accused anti-capitalists of having a critique of neoliberalism but no practical alternatives. But it’s not that simple, right? It is not good enough to conceptualize economic policymakers in Southern countries as impotent in the face of the Bretton Woods institutions. The crisis in Argentina provides an opportunity to think through how neoliberalization (Peck and Tickell 2002) can be mediated locally both by the effectiveness of local actors in constructing neoliberal economic forms (either of their own volition, or within centrally imposed constraints), and by


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the resistance that neoliberalization generates. Seeing it as a process enables us to understand to what extent the similar changes in economic policy in country after country constitutes a globally hegemonic move to a new mode of economic regulation driven by the center: and, similarities in policy prescriptions notwithstanding, to what extent things are more contingent. In this context, neoliberalization can also be understood as the latest phase in a historical process, as elites in Southern countries struggle to develop a coherent accumulation strategy that is designed for local conditions, rather than fitting blueprints designed in the boardrooms of the IMF or the common rooms in the University of Chicago. Obviously this is not ‘‘either/or’’: economic restructuring is not imposed carte blanche on Southern countries, nor is it a purely locally generated phenomenon. It must be mediated locally but embedded within global processes. However, the postmortem of the crisis in Argentina has meant that the role of actors locally and globally has come under some scrutiny as each has struggled to justify their role. People can be more self-critical when things have gone horribly wrong, and the sharpness of the crisis in Argentina has meant that the consequences of liberalization have been made transparent. Similarly, the efficacy of the alternatives to neoliberalism developed in Argentina have been similarly scrutinized and found wanting (North and Huber 2004). This chapter begins by taking a longer view of attempts by Argentine actors to create a stable regime of accumulation. It first identifies the checkered recent history of reforms that suggest, in Argentina’s case at least, that neoliberalism cannot be easily and sharply differentiated from some settled Keynesian predecessor. Consequently, while characterizing contemporary processes of economic change in Argentina as ‘‘neoliberalization’’ does have some explanatory power, this is not to contrast it with something that Argentina never had (Keynesianism), nor to assume that Argentina is now ‘‘neoliberalized.’’ Rather, in Argentina there is a much longer and more complicated history to attempts to create a stable regime of accumulation through introducing the economic reforms that we now characterize as ‘‘neoliberal’’ (see Munck, Falcon, and Galitelli 1987). As such, neoliberalism can be seen as the latest attempt to install class power, rather than just a utopian experiment (Harvey 2006: 149). Secondly, the chapter will discuss the extent that the latest attempts to solve Argentina’s problems, the Menemismo in the 1990s which fell apart so spectacularly in 2001, originated in Washington, DC or closer to home, in Buenos Aires. Was Menemismo the rolling out of policies developed in the IMF, or did it originate locally? I discuss the role of the IMF in the crisis of 2001, in particular discussing its own analysis of




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the catastrophe. Thirdly, I examine the role of civil-society-based actors in negotiating the crisis, with an analysis of the way that unemployed workers’ organizations (the pickets) and middle-class barter networks helped ordinary Argentines resist and survive in a way that demonstrates that conceptions of neoliberalization as unchallenged and hegemonic are also problematic. The chapter will conclude by questioning whether the reform process in Argentina can best be examined through the lens of neoliberalization, or whether it constitutes the latest in a long line of attempts to create a sustainable regime of market capitalism, not necessarily neoliberal in form.

Neoliberalizing Argentina? If neoliberalism is an economic philosophy that stresses a Ricardian international division of labor, with each nation producing what they are best at, free trade to enable those who produce a given commodity the most efficiently to sell it wherever it finds a market, free movement of capital so it can find the place of best return, and downward pressures on wages and conditions to ensure global competitiveness, then neoliberalism is not new in Argentina. For over a century there has been a lack of agreement between outward-looking merchants and private sector interests who saw Argentina’s future secured through attacking workers’ standards of living to secure competitiveness for external trade within a global division of labor, and others, often in the military and in manufacturing for the internal market, who stressed protectionism, economic nationalism, and workers’ rights. Argentine economic policymaking has been characterized by battles between elite groups competing to make policy in the interests of their client groups, be they business (the liberal Radicals), the military (economic nationalists), or organized labor (Perońism). Policy has consequently veered between developing economic ‘‘independence’’ through import substitution industrialization (ISI) and an emphasis on inserting the country into the global economy. A second fracture has been between periods during which organized labor was able to win higher wages and conditions and limited welfare provision, and times when these gains were lost. The situation is therefore much more fluid than characterizations of ‘‘neoliberal’’ or ‘‘Keynesian’’ suggest. There have been six phases when attempts have been made to impose a settled regime of accumulation (see Table 6.1). Argentina started the twentieth century highly integrated into the economy of the British Empire, as a producer of primary agricultural


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A short history of Argentina’s political economy

Period

Context

1880s–1930s

Export-based growth focusing on primary production (grain, meat) and integration into the British Empire. Up to the Great Depression, World War II Perońism – import substitution industrialization and strong commitment to workers’ rights and strong trade unions Attempts at reducing workers rights to reimpose export growth model constantly rebuffed by Perońism and military nationalists. No settled process of accumulation The ‘‘process of national reorganization’’ by the military government attempts to cut through conflict and impose a settlement through military force. No agreement between economic nationalists and those advocating export-led growth Heterodox economic approach under Alfonsıń attempts to avoid neoliberalism Conventional but mediated neoliberalism under Menem up to December 2001 crisis Post-neoliberalism under Kirchner

1940s–1955 1955–75

1976–84

1984–90 1990–2001 2001–date

products (wheat, meat) which would be transported on British-built and -owned railways and onto British ships. Argentina had income levels similar to those of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and seriously explored a more formal relationship with the British Empire (Romero 2002). However, nationalist sections of the Argentine military rejected both what they saw as a dependent relation with the British that affronted national dignity, and the liberal ideology of the newly formed middle class Radical party which looked to the United States as a model of development and to enlightenment and free market values more generally. The military characterized liberalism and enlightenment values as ‘‘atheistic’’ as these values stressed individual responsibility for self-improvement through thrift, rational self-interest, and hard work. For right-wing elements in the military, these values were destructive of conservative Catholic conceptions of a stable organic community in which everyone had their God-given place (Norden 1996). Liberalism was therefore conflated with those other unruly ideologies, anarchism and communism, as dangerous for maintaining social order and class hierarchies (Rock 1993). The military positioned itself as self-proclaimed guardian of the nation in the first of many coups in 1930, at a time when the Wall Street Crash dented faith in free trade and economic liberalism. Attracted ideologically to European fascism, the military smashed trade union organizations and cut rates of pay in a




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drive to restore competitiveness, in the context of the worldwide depression and the accompanying ‘‘race to the bottom.’’ As economic liberalism as an ideology was repressed, a domestic bourgeoisie with an attachment to free markets and democracy failed to emerge and the state took its place as driver for capitalist development. Military coups or imposed/designated governments attempted to implement change from above in 1930, 1943, 1946, 1955, 1962, 1966, and 1976. By 1946 Colonel Juan Domingo Peroń had emerged from the nationalist military and built a new movement with strong connections to organized labor. Peroń and his charismatic wife Evita recognized that European fascism had failed as while the state was glorified and some measure of development achieved, ordinary people had no buy-in. In the Argentine context, Peroń believed that a self-interested elite had let ordinary Argentines down, while its attitude to the British was an affront to ‘‘national dignity.’’ If ordinary Argentines did not get their share, he argued, why should they feel any commitment to the nation and reject both communism and liberal individualism? Consequently, Peroń’s very real commitment to workers’ rights within a semi-totalitarian political system inspired commitment from those members of organized labor who benefited from relatively high wages, secure employment, and social security (Munck et al. 1987). To secure economic independence from a Britain now devastated by war, Peroń moved the economy away from an export orientation toward an import substitution industrialization (ISI), in which the state facilitated the development of local production to replace imported goods. This, he argued, would secure both independence and, crucially, national dignity, as well as provide goods and services for local production and employment. A focus on exports would require wages to be kept low to ensure that they were competitive, and would mean that the nation was subject to decisions made elsewhere. Economic independence through ISI would mean that Argentina was in control of its own destiny. However, the Radicals, who believed that Peroń was indistinguishable from a communist, dictatorial, and morally dubious given his interest in very young women, fervently opposed the Perońist utopia. In 1955 he was ousted in what was dubbed the anti-totalitarian ‘‘Liberating Revolution.’’ The Radicals, now back in the driving seat, proscribed Perońism, attacked workers’ rights and conditions, and moved to reintegrate Argentina into the world economy. This, of course, was opposed by the proscribed Perońist unions through civil disobedience, go-slows, and an organized boycott of elections (James 1988). The resulting unrest led to military intervention in 1962 and again in 1966.


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In May 1969 student unrest at the University of Cordoba, in Argentina’s second largest city and a center for car production, occurred alongside a general strike called by the main union federation, the Perońist CGT. Students and car workers, joined eventually by the common citizenry, took control of the city center, lighting bonfires to ward off the tear gas. Order was not restored for three days and then only at the cost of killing 20–30 people, arresting 500, and injuring 300. For Romero (2002: 180–92) this uprising, known as the Cordobazo, led to a ‘‘people’s spring’’ of unprecedented social unrest across Argentina which spread beyond the organized working class in the Perońist unions to include those in informal employment and the middle classes in a wave of protest that continued until Peroń’s return from an 18-year exile in Spain in 1973 to his third, brief, Presidency before his death in office, and his replacement by his third wife, Isabel Martıńez de Peroń. Perońism was always a mixed movement. Building on the Argentine Right’s philosophical rejection of liberal individualism in favor of an organic state (which included the working class), he rejected both USstyle capitalism and Soviet communism. Peroń’s speeches were therefore often stridently anti-American and railed against capitalist oligarchies. Some of Peroń’s younger followers took this anti-capitalist rhetoric seriously and, inspired by the Cordobazo and Che Guevara, set up a number of armed groups, the largest of which were the Montoneros. From the late 1960s onwards, the Montoneros carried out a number of armed actions against the police and army. Bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings followed, focused on Buenos Aires (Moyano 1995). Peroń, though, was no communist. On his return to Argentina in 1973, Peroń, and then Isabel, turned on their former Leftist supporters. Working closely with state security forces, they formed the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (Triple A), which began to assassinate Leftists. Triple A violence compounded that of the Montoneros, and the chaos that ensued meant that many middle class Argentines, the majority in opinion polls at the time, supported the 1976 military coup. For 40 years, then, Argentina oscillated between competing military and civilian governments, no one regime lasting long enough to impose a new settlement. Perońists committed to, on the one hand, economic nationalism and import substitution industrialization (ISI) competed with the Radicals who, on the other hand, saw the future in exportbased growth which would require living standards to be reduced so that Argentina could compete with other primary product exporters. Both groups fought viciously with each other, which, in the military’s eyes, justified its intervention in the name of saving the nation from what it




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saw as self-interested politicians. Now organized labor and armed groups were exacerbating the problem, leading to what the military saw as a crisis of governance. The 1976–84 military governments attempted to cut this ‘‘Gordian Knot’’ through the authoritarian implementation of a ‘‘process of national reorganization’’ (the ‘‘proceso’’). Modeled on the Nazi technique of ‘‘night and fog,’’ the military decided to ‘‘disappear’’ those self-interested, irresponsible ones who had ‘‘failed’’ Argentina, and ‘‘liquidated’’ them in a network of secret concentration camps, or by throwing them into the Atlantic from planes (Marchak 1999). Over 30,000 were killed, and many more suffered terribly during this period of Argentina’s history (Timerman 1981). As well as being socially and politically abhorrent, the proceso failed to achieve either its political or economic objectives. The military itself had no clear economic strategy. The Army, Navy, and Air Force each possessed competing military-economic establishments, with individual officers owning or running state-owned firms as their own personal fiefdoms. The military failed to impose an economic consensus based on any kind of agreed developmental model. Rather, sections of the military plundered state-owned enterprises, borrowed heavily for

Plate 6.2 A memorial to the ‘‘disappeared,’’ San Telmo, Buenos Aires (photograph, Pete North)


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pharaonic economic development projects, and then, in an attempt to divert attention from inflation and, again, rising unrest, invaded (or recovered, depending on your point of view) the Falklands/Malvinas. The reintroduction of civilian government after the military’s dismal performance (on its own, macho terms) during the Falklands/Malvinas war meant that 40 years of military intervention left Argentina with no clear economic policy: rather stagnation, inflation raging at an annual rate of 600 percent, and a domestic debt that had grown under the military from US$7.8 billion in 1975 to $46 billion in 1984 (Pettifor, Cisneros, and Olmos Gaona 2001). Economic stability continued to be elusive under democracy (Tedesco 1999). Alfonsıń, the Radical who was president from 1984 to 1990, had to deal with the economic and political fallout of the Falklands/Malvinas war. Like many countries struggling to deal with horrific atrocities, Argentina felt the need for a new start and the reintroduction of democracy after 1984 raised hopes that the country might have a bright future. However, the reality was somewhat short of expectations. Inflation continued to rage, reaching 1,500 percent in 1985. Various heterodox economic plans succeeded in momentarily bringing down inflation at the cost of considerable social pressure, only to encounter military opposition against ‘‘foreign’’ intervention and resistance from the Perońist unions, whose members were bearing the brunt of the pain. Room for maneuver was limited by the external debt, which accounted for a third of the government’s budget, and state public sector payrolls, which accounted for another quarter. The state attempted to increase its wiggle-room by printing money to pay government employees (thus, Perońists argued, providing employment and securing social solidarity), while political corruption and clientelism led to the growth of ‘‘gnocchi’’ (or ghost) employees.1 Printing money that supported inactive clients, but which did not encourage investment in production and hence economic growth, led, predictably enough, to hyperinflation. The Perońistdominated provinces, which under Argentina’s federal constitution have considerable autonomy, also reacted to the hard times by boosting public sector employment and they too began to support their bloated state payrolls by printing their own money in the form of bonds called patacones (Pilling 1996). By 1989 Argentina faced another crisis. The IMF refused to agree any future support, inflation was running at 4,000 percent, and large-scale looting of supermarkets by hungry people meant that Argentina looked ungovernable. In 1989 Carlos Menem was elected in crisis conditions. He made vague promises of more jobs, better pay, and a unilateral moratorium




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on the debt, and referred to the traditional Perońist concerns with social justice, economic independence, and national dignity, stressing the need for production (Szusterman 2000). Within weeks, however, he became the toast of the neoliberal international establishment by centralizing economic decision-making among a small group of technocrats who reported directly to him. This group consisted of Perońists who had spent the ‘‘proceso’’ years in the United States (and often at the University of Chicago), thereby becoming schooled in neoliberal ideas. The extent of the crisis and his track record within Perońism meant that Menem was able to rule by decree, which facilitated a highly personalized, authoritarian, clientelist, semi-extralegal way of working in the age-old tradition of the Argentine caudillo (Szusterman 2000). He used this power to make another attempt at fundamental reform through what he called the ‘‘shock of hyper-credibility.’’ This involved opening up the market at a very rapid pace (Teichman 2001) such that airlines, telecommunications, water, railways, petroleum, steel, and the military companies were all privatized by 1994, within a mere five years of him taking office. No longer would the maintenance of ‘‘strategic’’ industries in state hands placate economic nationalists. This coincided with the 1991 recession in the United States which meant that free money flowed south, while the establishment of the southern cone free trade area, Mercosur, led to strong trade growth, especially with Brazil. Economic performance began to rise to pre-coup levels. By 1992, The Economist was reporting that the country’s prosperity ‘‘reminds some of the golden era, a century ago, when the pampas supplied imperial Britain with wheat, beef and wool and Argentina was one of the 10 richest countries’’ (1992: 18). Seemingly, Menemismo was working its magic. The transformation was at a cost. Menem’s personalized, tight decision-making style was quickly revealed as corrupt. Kickbacks, commissions, and ‘‘gnocchi’’ employees mushroomed and it became clear that those who bought newly privatized enterprises at favorable rates had also made significant political contributions to Menem (Teubal 2001). Economic policy became ever more tightly centralized under the control of a small clique of Chicago School-trained economists with close links to the World Bank (Teichman 2001: 107). Like other countries in which neoliberalization has been introduced, an apparent ‘‘golden boy’’ emerged in the shape of the finance minister, Domingo Cavallo, whose prime innovation was the ‘‘dollar peg,’’ tying the value of the peso to the US dollar at equivalence. Before a peso could be issued, the Argentine Treasury would have to hold a dollar, taking monetarist concerns with limiting monetary issuance to fundamentalist levels. The peg stabilized


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inflation (Pastor Jr 1999) and provided high levels of credit when the economy was strong, but was over-dependent on the economic performance of the United States and in the long run made Argentine exports expensive, hitting rural areas particularly hard. Employment levels dropped rapidly: for example, railway employment fell from 100,000 before privatization to around 10,000 afterwards. Privatization decimated the middle class: employees who were not protected by clientelist networks lost their jobs – especially those who worked for privatized industries. The perception that the middle class, previously used to the good life, had been particularly hard hit while the rich looked after themselves and the working class had their union-run social programs (obras sociales) contributed to the virulence of the outrage of 2001. Not only had the decimated middle class lost their jobs and their status but now their safety net, their savings, was under threat. From a neoliberal perspective, The Economist (2004) argued that the job losses were a result of grossly inflated state rolls, and pointed to the benefits of privatization, such as a US$70 billion investment in energy leading to a halving of energy prices. Many parts of Argentine society did well under Menem, but the effects were geographically uneven. The ‘‘dollar peg’’ meant that a liquidity shortage compounded the economic crisis in the provinces, to which provincial governments responded by printing more patacones. They saw their state payrolls as providing a much-needed ‘‘buy in’’ to the nation for ordinary Argentines, thus contributing to social stability. As a former provincial governor, and needing the support of the provinces to drive through the restructuring process, Memen was not going to challenge the provinces’ right to issue their own currency. Thus there was no political constituency against patacones. Menemismo began to unravel as a series of international financial crises hit investor confidence. In a rollercoaster ride, Argentine GDP fell 7.6 percent in the period 1994–6 as a result of the 1995 Tequila crisis, before rising again in 1997–8, only to fall back again as the 1998 Asian and 1999 Russian and Brazilian crises hit. The debt grew to finance the strong peso, while Argentine exports became increasingly less competitive and the balance of payments deficit grew. The Radical de la Ruá replaced an increasingly unpopular Menem in 2000. When the US economy entered a recession in April 2000, its financial ripples transmitted south as a result of the ‘‘peg.’’ After the election of George W. Bush, the IMF responded to a refusal of the provinces to make what the IMF regarded as ‘‘necessary’’ cuts by insisting on a ‘‘zero’’ fiscal debt. Most commentators saw this as unrealistic and a direct result of the




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influence of the new hard-line US administration on the IMF (Rock 2002). Contrary to conceptualizations of neoliberalism that call for a smaller state, public sector employment had grown by 35,000 as a result of the recession, and the IMF suspended payments. The Argentine people responded to the growing feeling of crisis and disillusionment with political corruption and incompetence by casting four million blank ballots in the October 2001 mid-term elections.2 In December 2001 the crisis erupted with the near insurrection with which this chapter began, and continued until the election of Perońist Nestor Kichner in 2003, when the economy began to revive through an export boom on the back of a newly competitive peso.

Neoliberal Argentina? The protesters in the Plaza de Mayo in December 2001 had many objectives. Some just wanted their money, in US dollars. Some wanted to tell the government that, given recent memories of the proceso, repression would not be tolerated. For others the protest was part of a longer struggle against a recession that had deepened since the mid1990s. For some, responsibility for the crisis lay with the ‘‘yanquis’’ and the IMF; while others blamed ‘‘los ladrones,’’ home-grown thieves in the political and financial classes who, they argued, had systematically looted Argentina’s wealth through corrupt, insider privatizations and who now, having been tipped off, were moving their money out of the country in armored vans. Yet this chapter has also revealed that Argentina has struggled to impose any settled regime of accumulation. Argentine elites regularly attempted to limit and to push back the benefits won briefly and selectively by workers, and there was certainly no agreed Keynesian settlement to unravel. So what was new? To what extent was what we now call neoliberalization just the latest in a long line of battles within and between fractured Argentine elites and organized labor to impose a settled regime of accumulation? To recap: ‘‘neoliberalism’’ is economic liberalism based on the international free movement of goods and capital – but not of people – with a rhetoric that the state should not interfere with decisions best left to the market, through over-regulation (Demmers, Fernandez Jilberto, and Hogenbloom 2001; Peet 2001; Peck and Tickell 2002; Munck 2003). Welfare payments should be cut back so as not to act as a disincentive to joining the labor market, and recalibrated toward ‘‘workfare,’’ pushing


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the unemployed into work. State-owned industries should be privatized. Fiscal ‘‘responsibility’’ should be followed. Certainly, all these elements were present in Argentina under Menem, but they were also present at other periods of Argentine history – before the 1940s, after the Liberating Revolution of 1955, in part during the 1976–84 proceso. Menem was not the first economic liberal to try to roll back levels of state intervention in the economy or to lower levels of pay and conditions to promote international competitiveness. Other elements of neoliberalism were absent or mediated significantly. Menem did cut back levels of welfare (Usami 2004), but also used state funding of the unionrun welfare programs, obras sociales, to reward pro-reform unions and to penalize opponents (Ejdesgaard Jeppesen1994). There was no movement toward either workfare or work-focused welfare programs, and to this day the picket groups of unemployed workers distribute and control their own state-funded welfare programs. Secondly, Menem put union leaders on the boards of privatized industries and gave unions shares in the newly privatized industries to buy them off (Levitsky 2003). Indeed, it was Menem’s links with the unions that enabled the restructuring process to move quickly, and with little opposition, for much of the first half of the 1990s. Close links between Perońism and the trade unions meant that the Labor department was staffed by unionists who were well placed to ensure that the unions got their share of the wealth created through insider privatizations. Ejdesgaard Jeppesen (1994) contends that some pro-Menem union leaders argued that the changes he was attempting to make were necessary, given Argentina’s recent history, but that the Radicals would not be able to deliver: I think that no other party than the Perońist party can carry it through because they would have met so much resistance from the workers that it wouldn’t have been possible . . . Perońism can actually do it as it has this big base of workers (Ejdesgaard Jeppesen 1994: 81).

Ejdesgaard Jeppesen went on to argue that the paternalist legacy of Perońism, that the party will always look after its supporters and that the leader knows best, also meant that the unions went along with the reforms longer than might otherwise be the case. Even when the pain got too great and public sector workers formed the CTA (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos, Argentine Workers Congress), while the unemployed formed picket groups, the Perońist CGT remained loyal (Levitsky and Way 1998). Labor flexibility for those in employment was resisted and limited compared to the experiences of most other




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neoliberalized nations during the 1990s. While employment levels in the factories that had provided Argentine workers with First World living standards declined, and inequality, marginality, and insecurity became the lot of those who lost their jobs, trade union opposition was such that Menem was never able to pass legislation on flexibilization which would have replaced centralized bargaining with decentralized, plant-by-plant negotiations, temporary workers, and lower pay (Rock 2002: 76). Skilled workers who stayed in employment, especially in those sectors that used the high peso to re-equip with up-to-date machinery, did not see their wages decline during the 1990s at constant purchasing parity: consequently, wage inequality, between the skilled and unskilled, increased (Elias and Ronconi 2003; Galiani and Sanguinetti 2003). Obviously, for those sacked from their public sector jobs, or for those working for firms that went bankrupt as a result of the overvalued peso, the situation was disastrous, and after the 2002 crash everyone’s wages declined catastrophically (Gallo, Stegman, and Steagall 2006: 204). But the argument is that neoliberalization usually sees the marginalization of organized labor. For those on the inside track, this was not the case in Argentina. Not for the first time, corporatist union power linked to Menemismo prevented the destruction of pay and conditions for those who benefited from trade liberalization. Thirdly, while the peg did lock fiscal responsibility into policymaking – classic neoliberalism – crucially, given that Argentina’s federal constitution reserved strong powers for the provinces, the Federal Government could not, or would not, prevent the provinces from bypassing the effects of the peg by printing their own money – patacones – to pay for both their existing responsibilities and significant new ones such as education which Menem devolved. As I show below, community groups, NGOs, individuals, and businesses emitted their own currency. As even the neoliberal night-watchman state is supposed to tightly control the quality and integrity of money (Harvey 2006: 145), again we see in practice a sharp deviation from classic neoliberalism. There was thus not a strong relation in practice between the rhetoric of fiscal rectitude demonstrated by the peg and the reality of loose provincial monetary policy. Clientelist welfare union leaders on the boards of privatized industries and Perońist provinces and community groups printing money does not look too much like classic neoliberalism! What we see here is a process of economic reform that in some ways looks neoliberal, but in other ways is as much an Argentine hybrid as the classic Perońism of the 1940s and 1950s was a hybrid of corporatism, and Menemismo was as much a


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creature of Perońism as it was of neoliberalism. Economic reform was derailed by a Perońism more interested in maintaining social peace through state employment, in maintaining its clientelist political machine, and in filling the pockets of Menem’s supporters than in following the Washington Consensus. It therefore looks more like the crony or gangster capitalism that was the result of the neoliberal reform process in Russia than the neoliberal utopia envisaged in Chicago, or even the more thoroughgoing neoliberalization seen in the United States, Britain, or New Zealand. What was different from previous eras was the peg and the absence of foreign exchange controls, which meant both that problems originating elsewhere were transmitted to Argentina, and that the government’s ability to deal with problems by changing course was limited by the need to maintain the value of the peso. Argentina did squeeze inflation out of its economy, but suffered an avoidable recession compounded by external shocks. But the extent that the peg and open capital markets are synonymous with neoliberalism is debatable, as a discussion of the IMF’s role in the crisis demonstrates.

Doing Neoliberalization: the IMF and Argentina The discussion above indicates that many of the policy choices originated with Argentine elites, not with international forces such as ‘‘imperialism’’ or the IMF, and that it is they who are implicated in the ensuing economic mess. In its analysis of the crisis and of its role in it, the IMF (2003) argued that far from imposing neoliberalization on an unwilling Argentina, the decision to adopt the ‘‘peg,’’ to allow patacones and high state payrolls, the corrupt privatization process, and the decision to liberalize exchange controls were made by the Argentine authorities. For the IMF, the problems that emerged after 1998 sprang not from an outsider-driven process of breakneck structural adjustment, but from too little reform, with the IMF becoming associated in the public mind with the problematic and ineffective policies and decisions of Argentine elites that IMF privately did not support. Rather than publicly criticize these policies, the IMF had felt that it was better to maintain an imperfect relationship with the Argentine elites and to attempt to get them to go further. The alternative was to end their involvement in the country. The IMF disagreed with many of what it called the ‘‘unorthodox’’ policy choices taken by Menem and then de la Ruá. The fatal flaw was the peg, which should have been abandoned once inflation had been




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stabilized. In the long run it constrained monetary policy, limited exports, and made it difficult for the market to adjust to changing conditions. Argentina should then have insisted on sustainable public finances by controlling provincial public debt and off-budget spending (i.e., the patacones). The government should have addressed longstanding structural and institutional weaknesses such as large-scale tax evasion (particularly by elites who did not believe they had any responsibility to pay taxes). Finally, the IMF critiqued the reluctance to follow through on labor flexibility. In any case, poor public accounting meant that the real state of the public finances, especially in the provinces, was hard to judge. For the IMF, the crisis was a result of the unsustainable peg coupled with the boosting of public expenditure at election times by Argentine elites. Thus far the IMF blamed Argentine elites for not introducing neoliberalism quickly or systematically enough. It did attempt, for the first time, some self-criticism, arguing that it had been too optimistic and complacent about growth rate projections in the 1990s, assuming that growth would inevitably follow from structural reform. It paid too little attention to problems in implementing reform and how these affected growth. It argued that it had been wrong to see the level of debt (given the size of Argentina’s economy) as sustainable, relying on the market to decide what was and wasn’t a good risk or prudent loan. Consequently, much of Argentina’s debt – 90 percent – was denominated in foreign currency. Not enough attention was paid to the implications of the 1998 exogenous shock and Argentina’s inability to respond to changing conditions as a result of the peg. As Argentina could not adjust, problems were stored up. The IMF argued that it needed a better understanding of what constitutes sustainable debt, especially given exchange rate movements. Levels of sustainable debt may be lower than was previously thought, it concluded. Secondly, if the policy was catastrophically wrong, so was Argentina’s relationship with the IMF and other multilateral institutions. The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF (IMF 2004) argued that both sides had been too dogmatic, and there had been not enough candor in discussions and clarity following the results of policy. Neither Argentine policymakers nor the IMF took corrective measures early enough to change a strategy that was unsustainable. The IMF was unable to persuade the Argentine authorities to make the painful but necessary changes, and it felt that it had been too sympathetic to the Argentine government’s reluctance to pay the very high costs of transition. They chose to support the government to buy time until conditions


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improved, but they did not. Structural problems were not addressed, and the crisis eventually exploded. The IEO argued that the IMF should have made its fundamental objections to the appropriateness of the peg clearer (as opposed to a free floating peso). If the Argentine government wished to continue the peg, the IMF should have insisted that Argentina adopt the fiscal policies necessary to inspire confidence on the international money markets that a 1:1 peg was credible (which would not have included toleration for patacones and inflated public sector rolls). When that did not work, the IMF argued in retrospect that it should have pushed for an end to the peg, a timely devaluation of the peso, and debt restructuring in the mid-1990s. This would have averted the crisis, the IMF believed. It is also what eventually happened in 2002/3, under much more unfavorable conditions and without investor agreement. But, the IEO argued, it is likely that this would have been resisted by an Argentina that would not have wished to have been seen to be being constrained by the IMF. And while deflation is often considered the most sensible option after it has occurred, Argentina is not the first country to try in vain to defend the virility of its currency against international currency market valuations in ways that are destructive of the real economy, as the UK’s experiences of Black Monday in 1992 show. The IEO argued that the lessons of the Argentine crisis are that while the choice of an appropriate exchange rate is one for the country authorities, the IMF must be candid about whether it believes that this is consistent with other polices followed by the country concerned, and what the limits are to the approach. The IMF must play a role in the good times in engaging in a discussion about the sustainability of policies, and the good and bad elements of the policy. Country ownership is critical, but not sufficient if this means that misguided or excessively weak policies are followed. Tradeoffs and problems need to be openly discussed, and the IMF should be prepared not to support policies it disagrees with. Finally, it is understandable that painful transition has costs and a country will resist costly reform, while the IMF will want to avoid being blamed for the costs, so it is in the interests of both sides to avoid ‘‘tough choices.’’ The IEO argued that the IMF should be more proactive and help a country with transition costs. If all else fails, the IEO argued that the IMF should be prepared to break off engagement with countries involved in what it believes to be fundamentally flawed policies. However, this was not possible, as the IMF had no exit strategy, no way to break off relations with a country that was doing some of the things the IMF felt appropriate. Here the




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IMF had a dilemma. How could it avoid on one hand becoming associated with policies it never supported, or on the other being accused of being dictatorial, enforcing policies on elected, sovereign governments? How can it tell when policies are fundamentally flawed, or matters of debate – until the late 1990s Argentina seemed to be doing well, and crashes are by definition hard to predict. The IEO summed up the problems as ‘‘strong country ownership of weak or inconsistent polices’’ – not slavish implementation of policies set elsewhere. Thus while the IMF does engage in limited self-criticism, and rightly points to many problems that emerged from decisions taken by Argentine elites, it ignores the hegemonic role it played in setting the wider neoliberal policy playing field within which Argentine elites worked, and the role of transnational and Chicago-trained technocrats in shaping its policy. It rewrites history, acting as if the lauding of Argentina as the neoliberal poster child was nothing to do with it. There is no understanding that many of Argentina’s problems emerged from failures in neoliberalization elsewhere (Asia, Russia), that open capital markets allow ‘‘failure’’ to spread, or that Malaysia, for example, insulated itself through controlling its capital exchange markets. It does not critique either the principle of privatization (state ownership of economic enterprises is ruled out), let alone the cabalistic privatization processes in Argentina. The state seems to have little role in development, welfare spending is all bad, and spending by the provinces is nothing but a problem. It does not critique Argentina for failing to take the ‘‘high,’’ technological, high-wage road to globalization, develop industry, support new enterprises, or develop policies for sustainable development. There is no understanding of the insecurity of millions of Argentines, the poor levels of welfare, or the low levels of education. That there are no accusations that the problems were down to those who protesters charge with being ‘‘thieves,’’ benefiting from privatization kickbacks and then, knowing of the devaluation to come, spiriting their money out of the country, is understandable. That problems emerged from the way Argentine elites ‘‘did’’ neoliberalism is fair critique – they were not willing dupes of the IMF. What is revealing is the lack of sustained critique of neoliberalism. All that is on offer is candid discussion of how to implement neoliberalism, of its costs and benefits, and of the need to help those at the sharp end. The problem is that Argentina was not neoliberalized either effectively enough or extensively enough. The solution? Drive neoliberalization through further and more effectively.


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Opposing and Mediating Neoliberalism So, were Argentine elites guilty of failing to implement neoliberalization as a result of a lack of commitment to the process or as a result of their own self-interest? Or were they stopped by the actions of others that they could not overcome? Resistance to neoliberalization mediated its effects significantly. Elsewhere (North and Huber 2004) I review the wide range of responses to the Argentine crisis. Here I will restrict the discussion to the pickets and to barter, both large-scale responses to the huge growth of unemployment and poverty. The pickets organized unemployed workers. We have already seen that the Perońist CGT was relatively quiescent during the Menem period, leading to the formation of the more radical, public-sectorbased CTA. The CGT’s lack of engagement with the wider protest movement continued during and after the crisis of 2001 (Harman 2002). It might be a conspiracy theory, but there was a noticeable lack of activity by the Argentine trade unions in the Argentinazo coinciding with the elevation of the Perońist Duhalde, the Perońist who stood out the strongest against Menemismo and who claimed to be the holder of Peroń’s legacy of connections to organized labor. In the 2003 elections, Menem even went as far as claiming that the swift exit of de la Ruá in the face of the Plaza de Mayo demonstrations was the result of a ‘‘coup’’ by the Buenos Aires Perońist and Radical ‘‘machines’’ of Duhalde and Alfonsıń respectively (Buenos Aires Herald 2003c). While the protests of December 2001 were spontaneous (although doubt has been cast even on this [Buenos Aires Herald 2003b]), Perońist control of the unions and of clientelist networks in Buenos Aires, the establishment of small but significant welfare programs delivered by the picket (picqueteros) organizations, the widespread use of barter, and the relatively successful macroeconomic programs of his economy minister Lavagna led to the stabilization of the economy and containment of the eruption of December 2001. Those who were still in work were generally quiet, concerned not to rock the boat. The unrest was mainly focused on those who lost their jobs through the recession of the 1990s. It is in the loss of secure and relatively highly paid employment, backed by clientelistic but well-connected corporatist trade unions that provided basic levels of welfare, that we see the greatest imposition of neoliberalism (Ejdesgaard Jeppesen 1994). Underemployment or informal employment is too often the norm for Argentines who once would have benefited from one of the most secure




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labor markets in Latin America3 and it is not surprising that the most resilient of the groups who have responded to the crisis have been the unemployed workers’ movement, the pickets (Dinerstein 2001; Petras 2002) who organize what Argentines call the ‘‘old poor’’ (those who have been unemployed since the 1990s, or even beyond), and the ‘‘new poor’’ who survived the crisis of 2001/2 through barter. The pickets are organized groups of unemployed workers who, Lapegna (2002) argues, intervene in the circulation of capital by closing communication routes, thus hitting capital hard through what is in essence a ‘‘communications strike.’’ Interrupting the process of production through a strike is not a tactic available to those without employment. Because the state withdrew from supporting vast geographical and social sectors, picket organizations provided the only way for many to satisfy basic needs. More than this, the pickets are collective processes enabling those that Argentine capitalism has excluded to solve their problems themselves, with their compañeros. This movement, from atomized unemployed nobody, one of millions, to a piquetero, part of a collective with a voice and a strategy provides what Lapegna calls a particular ‘‘ontological security’’ that moves beyond present-day insecurities, providing some sense of a better future to be collectively won. In an effort to sometimes break, sometimes control, this collective identity, action, and provisioning, Duhalde introduced two welfare programs (plans), one for heads of households (Plan Jefes y Jefas de Hogar) and one for work (Plan Trabajo). These plans were distributed to their members by the picket organizations – obviously a technique for the state to control the pickets and open to clientelist practices. As the immediate social crisis ebbed, President Kirchner argued that urging repression ‘‘means not remembering Argentina’s recent history,’’ while his interior minister held that ‘‘the only solution is to deal with the root causes . . . the first thing is a solution to these terrible injustices’’ (Buenos Aires Herald 2003a). This is a policy that seemed genuinely popular as memories of the military government were too raw for repression to have much support, and Menem’s call to ‘‘eliminate’’ the pickets was decisively rejected in favor of the more sophisticated Kirchner approach combining conciliation of the ‘‘reasonable pickets’’ with the sidelining of more intransigent voices. But neither does the government have much idea of how levels of employment will be generated to provide real opportunities for pickets, and the government’s welfare programs do little to help generate new opportunities. Neoliberal opinion in Argentina consequently understands the new political realities, but seeks more neoliberalization as the solution. In an


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article ‘‘Economists Ponder Picket Issues’’ (Buenos Aires Herald 2003a), Argentine economists declared themselves ‘‘alarmed by the proliferation of daily protests that affect the normal development of productive activities’’ which are ‘‘obviously a pressure factor that contributes to create a difficult social picture.’’ Further social unrest was a factor that foreign investors took into consideration when making their investment decisions. Picket protests ‘‘help create an atmosphere of insecurity’’ that ‘‘surely does not contribute to economic recovery’’ and the fact that pickets are allowed to ‘‘affect the rights of third parties with no government intervention’’ sends a ‘‘negative signal to foreign investors.’’ Unrestrained picket activities may create the impression that ‘‘there is no authority in Argentina.’’ Asked to comment on the government’s reluctance to repress the pickets, opinions were mixed. One of the respondents argued that ‘‘nobody likes the word ‘repression,’ but the government needs to offer assurances that the rights of third parties will not be overridden by protesters’’ in the shape of road blocks or violent acts, while another argued that ‘‘repression makes things even more difficult . . . negotiations must be of a peaceful nature. Repressive solutions do not work.’’ The economists argued that by disrupting economic activities, picket activists were making economic recovery and the consequent solution of their own employment problem less likely. They also argued that welfare programs should be modified and turned into ‘‘tools that may help encourage the creation of stable job posts’’ and that to keep welfare programs (which they called subsidies) in place ‘‘for an indefinite period of time means substituting belief in work values by a counterproductive and negative system of handouts.’’ Social welfare subsidies should slowly ‘‘start giving way to a program of simple public works.’’ To use neoliberal terms, they were arguing that welfare payments controlled collectively by the pickets should be replaced with workfare. In this discussion we see a clear understanding of the resistances to neoliberalization. There is a palpable reluctance to repress a group that is seen by many in government as representing a legitimate and understandable defense of the right of unemployed people to inclusion in the nation. The pickets are seen almost as the new ‘‘decamisados,’’ the ‘‘shirtless ones,’’ the poorest members of the working class that Peroń and Evita claimed to champion.4 We see the provision of welfare collectively by picket groups; welfare not workfare let alone work-focused welfare. Rather, the pickets are able to pool their benefits to run collective canteens, gardens, bakeries, and the like. Outside the ranks of those organized by the pickets, the ‘‘new poor’’ have had to rely on informal work or, increasingly, on trueque, the barter




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markets that sprang up from 1997 (DeMeulenaere 1999; Pearson 2002; Powell 2002). The trueque is a network of markets in disused factories, car parks, vacant lots, and the like where people set up stalls trading goods that they have made or no longer need, using alternative forms of money printed and circulated by community organizations and NGOs. They emerged in 1997 in Bernal, part of Buenos Aires’ industrial rustbelt, during the Menem period as (along with patacones) another direct result of Argentina’s over-restrictive fiscal policy when an environmental NGO called PAR wanted to explore solutions to the growing poverty and unemployment that surrounded it (Primavera, De Sanzo, and Covas 1998). PAR hoped that trueque would enable its participants to provide better livelihoods than those provided by the market and by Menem’s economic changes which seemed to be undermining the economic security previously offered through the welfare state. The barter networks worked through what Ramada (2001) calls a ‘‘chaordic’’ (truss-like) structure made up of ‘‘nodes’’ where traders (called prosumadores – ‘‘prosumers’’ – after Alvin Tofler’s consumers and producers) exchange goods using creditos as a unit of exchange. By 2002, barter markets had spread over Argentina: four and a half thousand markets were used by half a million people spending six hundred million creditos, it was claimed by organizers (Norman 2002). The real figure is unknowable. Initially a movement which grew among the ‘‘new poor’’ – those disempowered and marginalized by the shrinking protected and organized sectors of labor – barter grew into an alternative source of survival for a wide range of social groups who were experiencing social and economic exclusion at an increasingly rapid rate in 2001/2. The following prosumadores, interviewed in 2003, give a flavor of who used trueque and why. Monica, in her early 40s, first started going to the markets after she lost her job and became depressed. In the beginning she went around selling watch straps and other similar produce left over from the shop she used to have. When trueque was at its height in 2002, she used to be able to support herself completely through the three different nodes she visited each day of the week. The ‘‘donut ladies’’ made donuts every day for sale that were sold out within half an hour. The donuts sold for 15 creditos a dozen, with all the ingredients bought at the market in 2002. A third microemprendir (microentrepreneur) sold pancakes. With the takings of her pancake microenterprise she took home enough vegetables for three days, a shaver, a torch (flashlight), garlic, 12 little pizzas (enough for one family meal), juice, a packet of biscuits, toilet paper, four lemons (enough for a week); and she still has some creditos left over. When trueque was at its height in


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2002, just visiting nodes on Saturdays and Sundays she could get enough to eat for the whole week, even too much for the week: ‘‘for me it was like a job . . . that year I could live off the trueque, more or less.’’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, barter was subjected to high-level acts of infiltration by Perońist organizers who viewed it as an alternative to clientelism. Worse, the accusation is that Perońism tried to destroy barter by forging large numbers of notes, carrying out violent attacks on organizers who would not be associated with Perońist controlled markets, and, the coup de grace, two police raids on the NGO’s headquarters which impounded millions of newly printed notes. In November 2002, Canal 9, a news channel controlled by associates of Menem, ran an ‘‘expose´’’ (sic) of the ‘‘great barter rip off.’’ As a result of these attacks, by the end of 2002 confidence in barter had collapsed and the network was in a state of virtual collapse with less than 10 percent of its former levels of economic activity. By 2004, the economy had recovered for the middle classes such that barter had ceased to play any significant role in alleviating poverty, although uneven recovery meant that the pickets were still a vital support mechanism for the unemployed.

Conclusion This chapter shows that in Argentina debates about the extent of state regulation, about choices between a focus on exports or production for local consumption, and about the appropriateness of differing levels of welfare have being going on for over a century – more if we include the nineteenth-century wars between Buenos-Aires-based commercial elites that focused on external links to Europe and hacienda-based elites in the interior that saw the future based on local production. Argentina failed to develop any settled coalition that was capable of overseeing a sustained accumulation strategy. Only in the 1990s with the advent of Menem, supported by his ‘‘Chicago boys,’’ did any focus on neoliberal restructuring emerge. Beyond Menem’s corrupt networks, and those stashing their money in foreign bank accounts, the benefits of restructuring did not spread and the ways and norms of efficient capitalist markets were not developed. Elites too often tried to solve their problems through inflation, reneging on the debt, or stealing savers’ money. The courts and legal system could not be trusted. Politicians seemed to think only of themselves, while through the 1990s Perońist provincial bosses printed local money to maintain state employment. If, as Fukuyama, Putnam, and de Soto claim, trust in the rule of law and the




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sanctity of contracts is the bedrock of successful capitalism, Argentina failed the test. Does the term ‘‘neoliberalization’’ explain the recent processes of economic transformation in Argentina? Is Argentina now neoliberalized, inserted into the new hegemonic ‘‘planetary vulgate’’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001)? Certainly, in the 1990s Argentina embraced privatization, but not in a transparent way that led to the creation of a new, vibrant private sector able to focus Argentina on export orientation. Certainly, a rural export boom based on genetically modified soya for the Chinese market suggests that a focus on primary produce is again leading to growth, helped by high commodity prices and the newly competitive peso. Those industries that had restructured when the peso was high and foreign, hightech industrial plant affordable (mainly in the agricultural sector) were well placed, but GM soya also seems an exemplar of a commodity that might not maintain either its price or its attractiveness in the long term. Other sectors seem to have done less well – how much Argentine wine is there in your supermarket? The legacies of privatization remain as the privatized power and telecommunications sectors and the airlines are subject to constant discussion about what are acceptable levels of service, prices, and levels of profit, with a subtext of renationalization in the background.5 Deregulation and redundancy for state employees are both key facets of neoliberalism, and we saw them in spades. But unionized employees who did not lose their jobs kept their employment conditions and did not join the protests – although millions did lose their jobs. Some who left federal state employment rolls joined provincial ones, paid for by the issuance of patacones. The IMF consequently argued that labor flexibility had not been followed through, that the power of the CGT allied to provincial bosses limited change, and when linked through to unemployed people to form the pickets, significantly challenged neoliberalism. Fiscal responsibility seemed to be entrenched in the peg, but even the IMF felt this was too restrictive, while an over-tight monetary policy was subverted by patacones at provincial level, and trueque at an individual, community level. The recession of the 1990s was not the result of neoliberalization per se, but of an over-restrictive monetary policy. Similarly, the crisis of 2001 can be seen as a salutary lesson in the ability of international financial markets to discipline a financially irresponsible government – one prepared to raid private pension funds illegitimately, which was not following policies investors felt would be likely to succeed. In a free market, they took their money elsewhere. Neoliberalization and ineffective economic policy should not be conflated.


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None the less, Argentina survived the crisis. The military stayed in their barracks under circumstances that were far more trying than those which ‘‘legitimated’’ their intervention in the past. The political system survived. Five presidents came and went in quick succession, but according to the rules, and no strongman emerged (Schamis 2002). The current president, Ne´stor Kirchner, has gone about the stabilization and normalization of the country in ways that have tried to mitigate the problems of those who had suffered most from the crisis, and, to a large extent, in ways that have emphasized negotiation with the subaltern organizations that emerged as resistance to neoliberalization. While there is a debate about the extent that Kirchner’s policies do add up to something more than a bland Perońist commitment to ‘‘production,’’ either as an alternative to the Washington Consensus or to no more than neoliberalization with a veneer of inclusion and consensus, Argentina provides a fascinating case study of processes of neoliberalization. Argentina is geographically a country that is in the global South, but in the early twentieth century it had achieved development on a par with Canada, Australia, or New Zealand (despite its status, for Lenin, as a ‘‘quasi colony’’ of the British Empire). By the end of the twentieth century it had gone ‘‘backward’’: as Lo´pez Levy (2004) reminds us, Argentina shows us that development cannot be assured, and levels of development can go significantly down as well as up.

Notes 1 Argentine families traditionally eat gnocchi, potato-based pasta, at the end of the month when money has run out. Gnocchi employees only come to work on pay day, employed on a kickback basis by the political bosses whose clients they are. See Auyero (2000) for a detailed ethnographic account of Perońist clientelism in Argentina, especially p. 4. 2 Casting a blank ballot was a well-established Perońist tactic in elections after the 1955 ‘‘Liberating Revolution,’’ when the Perońists were banned and having a picture of Peroń or Evita on display at home was an offense punishable by arrest. 3 A recent cartoon in Buenos Aires has a taxi driver telling a cartonero, someone who scavenges for paper to recycle, that he used to be an architect. The cartonero replies that he used to drive a taxi. 4 Duhalde famously said that if he had not been President, he would have been a picket. 5 Although there have been no examples of re-regulation or re-nationalization as has occurred in the UK rail sector and in New Zealand.



Part III States and Subjectivities





Introduction to Part III

Throughout this collection we have argued that neoliberalism is a more complex political project than its supporters (and even some of its critics) would have us believe, and that thinking relationally allows us to overcome some of the dualisms that characterize some of the work on neoliberalization. For instance, neoliberalization often demands more, not less, state intervention, requiring both a quantitative and a qualitative shift in state functions (O’Neill 1997; Peet with Hardwick 1999; Campbell and Pederson 2001). This suggests that new types of state formation come into being under neoliberalizing conditions. At the same time, we have stressed the importance of promoting the complexity of what is understood by neoliberalization, both in terms of considering how its specificities are particular confluences of tangled networks, processes, and practices, and that neoliberalism is differentially articulated with other cultural, economic, social, and political formations. In this regard, two of the authors in Part III of the book, Catherine Kingfisher (2002) and Wendy Larner (e.g., 2003) have each already made important contributions in their insistence that neoliberalisms are contingent and even contradictory projects in conversation with other processes and discourses (such as Neoconservativism and Third Wayism). The topic of states and subjectivities has already been raised as a theme by some of the authors in the chapters in Parts I and II (Katharine Rankin and Yogendra Shakya, for example), but it is more central to the chapters in Part III. Subjectivities are produced in and through a whole range of discursive and material practices – cultural, economic, social, and political – the meanings of which are constantly under revision. The rise of the ‘‘new regime of the self’’ under neoliberalism


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INTRODUCTION TO PART III

is marked by responsibilization, individualism, autonomy, and selfregulation (Rose 1996). This neoliberal subject, or what Catherine Kingfisher in her chapter calls ‘‘neoliberal notions of proper personhood,’’ is associated with the shifts in the role of the state, the contours of citizenship, and the relationship between the collective and the individual. It is common to think of subjectivities in terms of identities and human subjects, but some geographers have infused the concept into their musings about space (Gibson-Graham 2003; Massey 2005), while other scholars have developed the ideas in the context of subjectivities of the state (Bourdieu 1999; Mitchell 1999), reminding us of the role of agency and cultural logics in constructing ‘‘the state.’’ Rather than being something autonomous ‘‘out there’’ acting upon society and individuals, the state is understood as mutually constituted with social relations and materialized through socio-spatial practices in a range of scales, sites, and spaces. In this regard, the governance and governmentality literatures together have much to say about neoliberal state making (Sparke 2006). One way that states put neoliberalism to work is through what can be called New Public Management, a set of principles and practices that assume that governments (at all levels) can be run as a business, reducing costs by encouraging privatization and private sector management techniques (Common 1998). This is addressed directly by Kim England, Joan Eakin, Denise Gastaldo, and Patricia McKeever in their discussion of managed competition in Ontario’s home care section. It is also taken up by Wendy Larner, Richard Le Heron, and Nicholas Lewis in that one extension of the business-like ethos of New Public Management is the regulation of the government (as opposed to the more usual regulation of business by government) as benchmarking, league tables, and auditing become common practices of managing the state (Saint-Martin 2000). And Catherine Kingfisher’s analysis of the locational conflict over a homeless shelter is informed by notions of urban neoliberalism complete with its planning strategies of competitive performance and marketability. England, Eakin, Gastaldo, and McKeever address the consequences of home healthcare restructuring in Ontario during a period when provincial policy formulation was clearly marked by a neoliberal agenda. The provincial government imported ‘‘managed competition’’ into home care and more fully opened up the sector to the private sector, while simultaneously cutting funding and capping the amount of care available to recipients. In addition to examining that process, England et al. look at home care workers such as nurses and




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personal care assistants to explore how managed competition changed their experience of work. However, as is often the case, there was a mismatch between the economic myth of managed competition and the lived realities. In the rush to make home care a ‘‘streamlined, efficient system,’’ a multiplicity of contradictions became apparent, including, for instance, more, not less, state bureaucracy. Efforts are now under way to repair the home care system with infusions of funds, but for the time being managed competition remains. Catherine Kingfisher argues that neoliberalism should be theorized as a specifically spatial-cultural process entailing articulation with, and sometimes recapitulation of, other cultural formations. The specificities of these assemblages may reveal or eclipse alternative imaginings. She explores some of the specific processes of neoliberalization through an ethnographic analysis of the conflict over the location and management of a new homeless shelter in a mid-sized Canadian prairie town engaged in downtown revitalization. In particular, Kingfisher addresses how neoliberal notions of ‘‘proper personhood’’ are articulated through dominant discourses about living in the Prairies. She then relates these to the emergence of the ‘‘problem’’ of homelessness as a cultural process that is informed by the public spectacle of ‘‘Otherness,’’ especially Aboriginal men, in specific locations in the city. The confluence of these literal and figurative spatializations in the location and program planning of the new shelter produces a site of therapeutic intervention designed both to remove homeless ‘‘less-persons’’ temporarily from the social landscape and to transform them into selfgoverning individuals fit to occupy social space. Wendy Larner, Richard Le Heron, and Nicholas Lewis also urge us to be very wary of approaching neoliberalism and neoliberalization as a monolithic project. They challenge us to think instead of multifaceted assemblages of processes and political struggles. They put their ideas to work in the context of New Zealand, an early and remarkably quick convert from social democracy to the neoliberal experiment, but which is now apparently in an era of ‘‘After-Neoliberalism.’’ However, this does not signal a return to Keynesian Welfarism; instead, the political projects of the ‘‘new New Zealand experiment’’ take forward some neoliberal rationalities and technologies. It does mean the active building of new networks and articulations with other emergent political projects. As a consequence, new political spaces, social relations, and subjectivities are emerging. Larner, Le Heron, and Lewis develop their argument in the context of five political projects (globalization,


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knowledge economy/knowledge society, sustainability, creative industries, and social development). What each of these chapters does is demonstrate that there are multiple and even contradictory versions of neoliberalism, and show that neoliberalisms in the plural are not all-encompassing and homogeneous, but rather contingent, contradictory, and partial. They also show how the specificities of neoliberalisms are confluences of tangled networks, processes, and practices that are not only economic, but hybrid assemblages of diverse practices, political projects, and various cultural forms that create new spaces and understandings.



7 Neoliberalizing Home Care: Managed Competition and Restructuring Home Care in Ontario Kim England, Joan Eakin, Denise Gastaldo, and Patricia McKeever

It’s filtered down – like the misery has come down from the government to the upper echelons of the CCAC has now filtered down to the coordinators and unfortunately the coordinators are having to carry out what the bosses have said and it’s coming onto us (home care nurse).

This home care nurse is reflecting on the recent restructuring of the province of Ontario’s publicly funded home care around the principles of managed competition. She refers to ‘‘the CCACs’’ or Community Care Access Centres, a governance structure first implemented in 1996 as part of this new system for administering and delivering home care in the province. The CCACs are 43 regionally based organizations that govern the delivery of home care services and admissions to long-term care facilities in their region. The restructuring of home care was introduced as part of a wider set of neoliberal-oriented social policy changes in the mid-1990s by the then recently elected Conservative provincial government. These CCACs were organized around the market-oriented


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logic of managed competition, a popular transnational health policy reform. The CCACs were required to develop business plans and issue requests for proposals from local home care service providers, not only from the nonprofit sector, which had traditionally delivered the services, but also the for-profit sector. The restructuring of Ontario’s home care system is an example of introducing private sector management techniques into the public sector. It also reflects the deployment of a neoliberal rhetoric of accountability, effectiveness, and efficiency that has increasingly become the hallmark of public health care administration around the globe. Ontario is a useful case study to excavate the neoliberalization of health care services because it was unique in Canada for shifting from delivering home care mainly through the public sector to ‘‘experimenting’’ with privatizing home care. Our chapter is framed around an understanding of neoliberalization as processual, and as socially constructed, contextual, and contingent rather than an external monolithic force (Kingfisher 2002). This informs our focus on demonstrating the ‘‘messiness’’ of, and contradictions within, a particular neoliberal project – the restructuring of home care provision – in order to emphasize the ‘‘historically specific and contradictory aspects of neo-liberalism’’ (Larner 2000: 20). Stressing the production of neoliberalism challenges representations of neoliberalism as all-encompassing, as a unitary, coherent, ready-made apparatus to which ‘‘there is no alternative.’’ Moreover, by conceptualizing neoliberalization as a process, we are insisting that not only is it not inevitable, but it actually requires a great deal of hard work to create and maintain it. As John Clarke (2004b: 30) points out, ‘‘neo-liberalism tells stories about the world, the future and how they will develop – and tries to make them come true.’’ In this chapter we look first at managed competition as an example of transnational ‘‘policy transfer,’’ the increasingly common neoliberal technology of extracting policy knowledge from one context to put it to work in another. We explore the conditions under which a provincial government could even, in the first instance, envision a policy where home care becomes ‘‘accountable’’ to the market in a political system supposedly committed to publicly funded universal health care. Second, we explore the hard work (struggles even) of the Conservative Ontario government to introduce managed competition into the delivery of home care. To paraphrase Clarke, we trace their attempt to tell a story and try to make it come true. Finally, what of the front line workers whose job it is to provide home care to ‘‘actually existing’’ home care recipients on a daily basis? After all, bringing ‘‘the neoliberal political project’’ to life needs not only the global managers, policy analysts, and politicians that


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most commonly receive attention; it also needs ‘‘ordinary’’ workers. And in the case of home care, those workers are overwhelmingly women; a fact which underscores that the neoliberal project is brought to life in deeply gendered ways and that policy agendas and their outcomes are far from being socially neutral (Gibson-Graham 1996; Roberts 2004).

Neoliberalizing Health Care, Policy Transfer and Managed Competition For some time now, health care reform has been high on the political agendas of many countries. In some cases, especially in the global South, health reform programs are closely interwoven with the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (among other multilateral lending agencies) that require, for example, the privatization of, and cutbacks in, social services as a condition for receiving loans. In other cases, mainly in advanced industrial countries, health care reform has been part of a broader ‘‘crisis of the welfare state,’’ where nationstates have narrowed the scope and volume of their social welfare responsibilities. Of course, there have been several waves of ‘‘health care reform’’ over time, including that which first ushered in publicly funded health care systems in Keynesian welfare states like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. What marks out much of the contemporary round of reform is the erosion of health care as a public good, and the increase in market-oriented, for-profit delivery mechanisms. As these neoliberalized policies have proliferated, health and social care systems have been reconfigured to minimize public expenditures. Hospitals and long-term care facilities have either been closed or reduced in size and function, and many social care services have been terminated or reduced. In explaining the shift from welfarism to neoliberalism, Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller (1992: 189) suggested that those ‘‘aspects of government that welfare constructed as political responsibilities are, as far as possible, to be transformed into commodified forms and regulated according to market principles’’. And in considering what she calls ‘‘the neoliberal mindset,’’ Sue McGregor (2001: 83) argues that: The neoliberal agenda of health care reform includes cost cutting for efficiency, decentralizing to the local or regional levels rather than the national levels and setting health care up as a private good for sale rather than a public good paid for with tax dollars.


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Health care policy of any ideological persuasion reflects government decisions regarding cost, quality of care, accessibility, delivery, and program evaluation. In the growing literature on comparative health care policy, cost-cutting and cost–benefit analysis and the like figure prominently as innovative ‘‘best practices’’ (and some argue this is at the expense of issues of quality and/or accessibility). To be sure, many nation-states were attempting to rein in the costs of health care well before such political projects were marked as neoliberal. Since the late 1960s, at least in North America, there have been concerns about the escalating costs of health care. In their assessment of ‘‘cost containment’’ as a health care practice, Evans, Barer, and Hertzman (1991) point to 1970 as a watershed year for the US and Canada. Previous to then, ‘‘meeting needs’’ and expanding the flow of resources into health care were the principal policy concerns; whereas after that, ‘‘cost containment’’ became an increasingly important part of the agenda. Since then, other fiscally oriented concerns have been added to the mix: deficits, debts, and policy preoccupations with stringent cost-cutting in the public sector; and most recently, doubts about whether health care dollars are being spent wisely (McDaniel and Chappell 1999; Evans 2000). The particular mark of neoliberalization is in the reshaping of health care policy through privatization, marketization, and decentralization as the (perhaps even the only?) way to make health care more ‘‘cost-effective’’ and ‘‘efficient,’’ often with an air of ‘‘there is no alternative’’ rationality. From the former Soviet Bloc (see Filinson, Chmielewski, and Niklas 2003 on Polish health care reform), across Europe (see Cabiedes and Guillen 2001; Light 2001) to Latin America (see Iriart, Merhy, and Waitzkin 2001 on several Latin American case studies), cost containment, introducing purchaser–provider splits, exposure to market forces, user-fees, contracting out, and generally introducing market competition have become the hallmarks of contemporary health policy. As part of the expansion and deepening of neoliberalization, policies and programs that can be construed (even tangentially) as delivering ‘‘best practices’’ often get dis-embedded from their original spatial and institutional context, get put into circulation via policy networks, and then are adopted in another context (Dolowitz 1998; Jessop and Peck 2001; Peck and Theodore 2001). The sort of ‘‘knowledge transfer’’ and learning from elsewhere (‘‘elsewheres’’ at a range of scales, domestically and internationally) has, in recent years, spawned a multitude of national and international conferences and transnational networks of government officials and non-state actors, including think tanks and international consultants (Stone 2004a). This process of policy transfer




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means that neoliberalization is also actively produced in different places through transnational networks of consultants, experts, policy makers, and the like. A particularly popular approach to contemporary health care reform currently in circulation is managed competition. Despite its beginnings as a complex economic theory, managed competition has come to mean a loose cluster of market-oriented policies and strategies of governmentregulated competition among the providers and, in some cases, insurers of health care. Donald Light (2001: 1159) suggests that ‘‘by the early 1990s, managed competition had become the leading new conceptualization of state control over health care waste and costs, not only in advanced wealthy nations but by fiat in poor nations, where market structures alone could consume much of the health care budget for treating the seriously ill.’’ The goal of health care policies informed by managed competition is that by creating ‘‘quasi-markets’’ the fabled benefits of private-sector competition can be enjoyed in the public sector, including not only cost-saving but also making providers more accountable, offering more consumer choice and higher quality care (Light 2001; Dolfsma, Finch, and McMaster 2005). Managed competition was first associated with the US-based health economist, Alain Enthoven, the ‘‘father of managed competition,’’ who was part of the so-called Jackson Hole, Wyoming, think tank that informed US President Bill Clinton’s Administration’s health care reform proposals in the early 1990s. Enthoven explored how health care costs could be contained within a social insurance context for health care. His theory, in its most complete form, is that in a market regulated by the federal government, the quality and efficiency of health care delivery would improve if independent groups had to compete for health care ‘‘clients’’ (Enthoven 1988). Enthoven’s ideas were received with great interest not only in the US, but across the world. The diffusion of his ideas owes a great deal not only to Enthoven’s busy lecture and consulting schedule, but also to the networks of international consulting firms and policy decisions by international agencies (including the Word Bank, US AID, and the IMF) (Light, 2001). Variations on his ideas (often in consultation with Enthoven himself) were put to work in, for example, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the UK, and there is a now a sizeable literature documenting and assessing those ‘‘experiments’’ (see, for example, Le Grand 1999 on the British National Health Service; and Schut and van Doorslaer 1999 on the Netherlands and Belgium). In Canada, his ideas have been deployed at the provincial level because of the particularities of Canada’s political structure, which we describe in the next section.


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The Rise of Managed Competition in Home Care in Ontario Our account of home care reform draws on textual analyses of a range of policy documents, position pieces by various home care provider stakeholders, Ontario newspapers, and the Ontario Legislative Assembly Hansard1 that refer to the CCACs and home care restructuring. The four authors are also involved in a large ethnographic study of Ontario homes that have been receiving publicly funded services for people with chronic illness and disabilities. The ‘‘Hitting Home’’ project is a transdisciplinary, multi-method study investigating various dimensions of long-term care provision in the home. We conducted 17 cases studies of homes across Ontario receiving long-term home care services.2 The cases included interviews with care recipients, primary family caregivers, and paid caregivers. In this chapter we include excerpts from the 29

Plate 7.1 Personal support worker helping with the basic activities of daily living (ß Getty Images)




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interviews with paid caregivers – nurses, attendants, personal support workers (also known as homemakers), respite caregivers, and in one case, a physiotherapist (see Angus, Kontos, Dyck, McKeever, and Poland 2005 and Dyck, Kontos, Angus, and McKeever 2005 for analyses of the data about care recipients and the meanings of home). To trace the manifestation of neoliberal ideologies in government policies and programs in Ontario means addressing the regulatory framework of health care policy in Canada. The rise of publicly funded universal health care (often referred to as Medicare) occurred at a significant point in Canadian history, when many Canadians believed that welfarist measures could be instituted to address social and economic inequalities and construct a more equitable society. Several key pillars of the welfare state at the federal level were enacted in the mid1960s. In addition to Medicare (1966) was the Canada Pension Plan (1965) and the Canada Assistance Plan (1966, basic public assistance). Canada’s health care system is a single payer system, not ‘‘socialized medicine’’ as it is often portrayed (by those on the Right and by foreign commentators, especially Americans who oppose the application of Canadian-style health care reform to the US). While it is publicly financed, the delivery of care is not state-run. Patients can choose their physicians who are paid on a fee-for-services basis according to a periodically negotiated fee schedule (in other words they do not receive a direct salary from the province). The setting and administering of national standards for the health care system are embedded in the terms and conditions of the 1984 Canada Health Act by way of five principles: health care is to be comprehensive (covering all hospital and medically necessary care), universal (covering all citizens and permanent residents), accessible (no limits on services and no extra charges to patients), portable (each province must recognize the others’ coverage), and publicly administered (under control of a public, nonprofit organization). However, the Canada Health Act is a federal law and under Canada’s Constitution there is a carefully guarded division of powers between the federal, provinces/territories, and local jurisdictions of government, and the management and delivery of health care is a provincial responsibility. The federal government negotiates health plans with each of the provinces/territories and plays a critical role in terms of financing via federal–provincial cost-sharing which, in the context of the Canada Health Act, allows it to exert some pressure to harmonize standards across the provinces. Each province/territory has a public insurance program (for example, Ontario has the Ontario Health Insurance Plan, and British Columbia has Health Insurance BC) that covers all residents


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and is financed from general tax revenues. There is, then, not one single health care system in Canada, but multiple systems, one for each province and territory. So it is at the provincial level that Canadians have seen ‘‘challenges’’ to the principles (or perhaps more accurately the spirit) of publicly available, universal health care, such as a recent Supreme Court challenge emanating from Que´bec over the introduction of a so-called two-tier (public and private) health care system. Home care is one of the fastest-growing areas in health care today, not only in Canada but elsewhere too (see Parent and Anderson 2003 for a consideration of home care in international perspective). In Ontario, there are numerous reasons for this growth. As in other global North settings, people are living longer, but for some time now there has also been a ‘‘cost-containment’’ strategy of hospital closures and mergers, fewer beds in those that remain open, and shorter hospital stays (Abelson et al. 2004; Cloutier-Fisher and Skinner 2006). Home care was not that common until the 1970s, but since then there has been a dramatic growth. The critical point we want to consider here is not merely the growth in home care (and therefore a growing ‘‘market’’), but its place within the broader health care system. The possibility for market-oriented principles to be applied to Ontario’s home care sector goes back to the way Canada’s public health care program was designed in the very first instance. The geography of where health care took place was pivotal. When Medicare was created in the 1960s, medical care was generally provided by physicians and the principal site of care was the hospital (the numbers of which had grown enormously in the 1950s). So Medicare was formulated around that model of health care delivery, a design that continues to impact the ways in which all sorts of health care is delivered today. Concerns about the accessibility of health care (among other things) led to the Canada Health Act of 1984 which requires that provinces provide universal health care for what are vaguely described as ‘‘medically-necessary services’’ provided in hospitals and by physicians. Thus the regulatory framework put in place means that services provided in the home or by health professionals other than physicians are not specifically covered by the Canada Health Act in terms of Medicare coverage. Thus the same care that is publicly financed in hospital is technically considered ‘‘de-insured’’ when it takes place in the home (Baranek, Deber, and Williams 1999; Armstrong and Armstrong 2003). Thus home care services are not included in the Canada Health Act, and this means the provinces and territories can decide on the extent and nature of home care provision in their jurisdictions, without federal oversight. Unsurprisingly then, there is a range of models in use




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across the country (National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women 2002a). In recent years this ‘‘gray area’’ has offered neoliberal-inspired provincial politicians and policymakers an opportunity to choose to pursue what is often tagged ‘‘greater flexibility’’ (i.e., ‘‘market reform’’ and introducing market-oriented practices) in the ways that home care is delivered, how it is financed, and how (increasingly scarce) resources are allocated (Parent and Anderson 2001). Funding for home care can be capped, services can be based on either co-payments or user fees, and home care can be offered by forprofit corporations; in other words, provincial governments can choose to design a home care system that is privatized and marketized in ways that they cannot with services more clearly in the embrace of the Canada Health Act. And when the Ontario Progressive Conservatives (the Tories) won the provincial election in 1995, that is exactly what they chose to do. As Robert Evans (2000: 896) puts it, in the context of Canadian health care more broadly, ‘‘The strategy seems to be to use the distinction between insured and uninsured services ‘creatively’ to stay within the letter of the federal legislation while driving a truck through its principles.’’ Put another way, and in the words of one of the nurses interviewed for the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ project: The hospital is covered by OHIP and that’s covered by the government. Why don’t they do the same thing with community? They don’t want to do that in the community. They don’t want to have that in one umbrella where the government has to pay for most of it. What they’re trying to do, what the government is trying to do is get out of there and have people in the community, more and more people in the community pay for their own services.

Neoliberal Provincial Politics In the spring of 1995 the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, under the leadership of Premier Mike Harris, ran a provincial election campaign promising a ‘‘Common Sense Revolution,’’ a neoliberal manifesto for wide-ranging social policy change and government restructuring. The following January (1996), the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, Jim Wilson, announced the government’s plan to introduce managed competition into home care delivery. The cornerstone of the Tories’ model was 43 Community Care Access Centres which were mandated to come into effect on April 1, 1997. In the weeks leading up to April 1, Jim Wilson faced pointed questions in the Ontario Legislative Assembly


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(as he and his successors did long after the CCACs came into effect). One particularly lively exchange took place in late February 1997 regarding reports of the CCACs spending too much on start-up costs (for instance, hiring consultants and staff, signing leases, and purchasing or leasing equipment) (Hansard, February 25, 1997). In early February 1997 a memo had been sent from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care telling the CCACs to put a ‘‘halt to your activities’’ pending the development of, and then Ministry approval of, a ‘‘business plan’’ from each CCAC. The entire board of one CCAC had resigned in response. Marion Boyd (who, in the previous provincial government, had been a Cabinet member, Minister of Community and Social Services, and then Attorney General of Ontario) asked Wilson about this decision. Boyd:

Minister, with only one month before their mandate comes into effect, the CCACs have been ordered to drop everything to fulfill your bureaucratic requirement . . . Can you guarantee us here today that on April 1 the CCACs which you created to deliver these growing and vital services will actually be in place? Wilson: I remind all members that there was great praise for the development of the community care access centres from the service providers. They’re far more preferred than the multi-service agency model the previous government was trying to put in place. The idea of the business plans is to ensure that we get rid of the excessive administration in home care throughout the province. We have 73 home care and placement coordination offices today. They will be replaced by 42 community care access centres, and we want to see the business plans – and I think it’s a reasonable requirement for any business that’s using taxpayers’ dollars to deliver services – so that we can ensure that they do not spend an excessive amount of money on administration – we’re trying to correct the problems of the past – and that every dollar is driven to home nursing services, home care, Meals on Wheels, occupational therapy, physiotherapy. That’s why we want to see the business plans, just to ensure that they’re not building empires. We’re getting rid of the empires of the past and replacing them with streamlined efficient delivery systems. Boyd: You’re full of fine words, Minister, but the reality is that the CCACs are in real difficulty in looking at fulfilling their mandate . . . There’s chaos in long-term care everywhere . . . Now you’ve stopped the whole process of implementation just because of a bureaucratic requirement. Will you deny that you’re considering reversing a whole year’s work on long-term-care reform and will you deny that the ministry is currently considering options that would cancel the implementation?



Wilson:

Boyd: Wilson:


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Again, when you’re using taxpayers’ dollars, it’s a very reasonable request to ask for a business plan. Many of the community care access centre boards had already developed business plans, so it didn’t apply to all of them, just those that had not submitted anything to the Ministry. Every dollar has to be spent on services, not excessive administration. An example is that in some communities it may be appropriate to have the offices for the community care access centres in the empty parts of the hospital buildings or in health care facility buildings where we have physical space. Why didn’t you think of that six months ago? We did think of that, I say to the honourable member. It’s just that some of the boards didn’t quite get the message so we’re asking them to submit a business plan and to make the absolute best use of the taxpayers’ dollars to ensure that every dollar is available for care and not administration (Hansard, February 25, 1997).

Wilson’s remarks lay bare the neoliberal agenda of the Conservatives’ plans for home care. Following his barb about the multi-service agencies of ‘‘the previous government’’ (i.e., when Boyd was a Cabinet Minister, etc.), he proceeds to describe how his party’s approach will ‘‘get rid of the excessive administration in home care throughout the province’’ (notice he mentions excessive administration, and its associated costs, three times in this exchange), this includes reducing the number of offices from 73 to 42, deploying business plans to make sure CCACs are ‘‘not building empires,’’ and more generally ‘‘getting rid of the empires of the past’’ and introducing ‘‘streamlined efficient systems.’’ Finally there are the references to ‘‘taxpayers’ dollars’’ with the implication that the Tories’ accountability is to taxpayers, not to Ontario residents more broadly. Well known to the readers of this book is Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell’s (2002) distinction between ‘‘roll-back neoliberalism’’ (the hollowing out of the welfare state, marked by deregulation, privatization, and dismantling the welfare state) and ‘‘roll-out neoliberalism’’ (involving active state-building in terms of new institutions and new regulatory reforms, including workfare, deepening market relations, authoritarian penal state forms, and the marketization of social life). Exemplifying the notion of roll-back neoliberalism, the Conservatives’ ‘‘Common Sense Revolution’’ was marked by fiscal austerity and (supposedly) state retrenchment. But as is increasingly recognized now, not only in Ontario, but elsewhere too, rather than involving the much-touted ‘‘retreat of the state,’’ neoliberalization often involves more, not less state intervention, such that there might be a quantitative decline in


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state functions, but there has also been a qualitative shift (O’Neill 1997; Peck and Tickell 2002; Mitchell, Marston, and Katz 2003). Indeed Peck (2004) argues that privatized and deregulated markets are not self-regulating and so they need to be managed. Thus rather than more market and less state, there has been market re-regulation, in other words more not less government intervention. In the case of Ontario, Roger Keil (2002: 588) argues that the Harris neoliberal Tories: created a political environment reminiscent of Thatcherism and Reaganism . . . Popularist in its appellations, the Tory program was a textbook case of a neoliberal policy strategy and project. It contained many internal contradictions. Despite its embrace of a rhetoric of small government, the Harris cabinet was, in effect, perhaps the most interventionist government (Ontario) had ever seen.

Immediately upon entering office, Harris set about meeting his neoliberal ‘‘textbook case’’ campaign promises, introducing drastic welfare cuts and workfare reform, reducing the personal income tax rate, watering down (‘‘liberalizing’’) labor laws, reducing the public sector workforce, and amalgamating local governments (Keil 2002; Bradford 2003). Until it was reworked around the ‘‘policy transfer’’ of managed competition, home care in Ontario was provided through the Home Care Program (HCP), usually administered by Public Health Departments in regional municipalities. Almost all the services had been provided by nonprofit, government-funded organizations which have very long histories in the province, and were the employers of a sizable proportion of the paid caregivers interviewed for the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ project. Although it was a publicly funded and publicly administered system, the Home Care Program had long been a mixed system. Private, forprofit companies had always operated within in the home health care sector, albeit in a subsidiary role to the public sector3 and often concentrated on ‘‘hard-to-serve’’ clients and less popular shifts (nights and weekends) (Ruggie 1996). On entering office, the Tories quickly fulfilled one campaign promise by repealing the 1994 Long-term Care Act which had only recently been introduced by the previous New Democratic Party (NDP, socialdemocratic) government, in which Marion Boyd (quoted above in the exchange with the Health Minister) had served several roles. The Act was set to put in place the NDP’s plan to amalgamate about 1,200 different home care services into 200 provincially administered ‘‘onestop shopping’’ multi-service agencies (MSAs) based on public provision.




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However, they were elected out of office by the Tories before they could fully implement this plan (Skinner and Rosenberg 2005). Even before the election, the NDP’s plan had been criticized for making home care ‘‘too bureaucratic’’ and spelling the end of nonprofit organizations, and the Tories picked up on this as a campaign item. The speedy repeal of the Act by the Tories met with approval from at least some home care providers. Newspaper articles with headlines such as ‘‘Tories to scrap NDP care plan’’ (Toronto Star, July 12, 1995) and ‘‘The Mike Harris Plan: Tories kill NDP health care law’’ (Ottawa Citizen, July 13, 1995) included quotes from representatives from several nonprofit agencies describing themselves as ‘‘delighted’’ but wanting ‘‘the momentum for change to continue.’’ However, perhaps subtly signaling what was to come, Premier Harris is quoted in the Ottawa Citizen story as saying ‘‘This decision sends out a signal to all volunteers, these agencies – profit and nonprofit – will all be welcome to continue to provide the services and be eligible to provide those services in the future. We haven’t looked at it from a cost-saving angle at this particular point in time. We’re looking at providing a better service and keeping the players providing the service in that field.’’ Mike Harris charged Jim Wilson, the Minister of Health and LongTerm Care, with (quickly) developing a new plan for home care. Wilson’s response was to import the framework of managed competition and marketize home care. Once the plan was unveiled, newspapers began running stories with headlines such as, ‘‘Ontario opens home care for elderly to lowest bidders’’ which appeared on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen (January 26, 1996). This was not going to be the smooth policy transfer neoliberals dream of; there was what Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2004: 1) calls ‘‘the sticky materiality of practical encounter’’ to contend with. The Tories’ answer to the NDP’s multi-service agencies was the CCACs that would replace the 38 home care programs and 36 placement coordination services. The CCACs are mandated to provide a simplified ‘‘single point of access’’ to ‘‘manage’’ and ‘‘coordinate’’ long-term care services in their region (this includes long-term care facilities, and schools, as well as in-home services). The CCACs employ ‘‘case managers’’ to assess ‘‘client’’ eligibility for home care services, deciding whether to ‘‘authorize’’ a service plan (which they subsequently monitor and may adjust), and arrange access to contracted services from a range of local community nonprofit and private, for-profit agencies. The CCACs themselves do not directly provide any services; previously the Home Care Program had directly employed nurses and homemakers,


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or contracted out (usually) to the nonprofit sector. Instead the CCACs are required to use competitive bidding via requests for proposals for contracts from local nonprofit and private, for-profit agencies to provide nursing, homemaking, personal support, and other services. There was a transition period from 1997 to 2001 to allow the nonprofit sector to adapt to managed competition (the rationale being that the for-profit sector had more experience at dealing with a competitive environment), after which ‘‘the market’’ would be wide open.

Managed Competition and Home Care Workers Managed competition is not only put into practice at the level of policy making, of course, it also impacts upon the experiences of those who work in the environment created by it – what several of our interviewees called the ‘‘front line workers.’’ Home care is a female-dominated industry, so in Canada, as elsewhere, those ‘‘front line workers’’ are disproportionately women, who provide more than 80 percent of the care (National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women 2002a, 2002b). Among the home care workers interviewed for the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ project, only one was a man (a nurse). So whether acknowledged by the architects of home care policy (and often it isn’t), the neoliberalization of home care in Ontario has a distinctly gendered complexion (National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women 2002a, 2002b). Restructuring home care in ways that emphasize market principles has produced greater burdens for women compared with men (women are also more likely to be home care recipients and family caregivers). As the National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women (2002a: 1) point out, ‘‘health care reforms have a significant impact on women as patients, health care providers, and family caregivers . . . (and) affects women’s health, work and financial well-being.’’ Although caregiving (paid or unpaid, for that matter) can be rewarding, health care reform has meant more and different work for women, with increasing workloads and increasing stress (Aronson and Neysmith 1997; Abbott 1998; National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women 2002a, 2002b; Armstrong and Armstrong 2003). For example, in the case of nurses, so-called flexible or contingent work arrangements have become more common in health care services, whether in hospitals, long-term care facilities, or home care (Aronson and Neysmith 1997; Health Canada 1999; Williams 2001).




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In this section we look at some of the ways that neoliberalized home care plays out on the ground by exploring how the work environment and experiences of nurses and homemakers have been influenced by the introduction of the competitive bidding process in Ontario.

Understanding competitive bidding In May 2001, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care informed the CCACs that funding for the 2001/02 fiscal year would be frozen at the 2000/01 levels; this also ended up being the case for 2002/03. The hours of publicly funded home care per capita available to clients had already been capped, and the eligibility requirements for receipt of home care were greatly tightened (Office of Ontario’s Provincial Auditor 2004). Publicly funded resources were being rationed and tightly controlled. As one nurse said: The government has said to the CCACs – first of all CCACs have been told that they are not going to be bailed out any more. They used to run out of money around Christmas time and the fiscal year would end in May. The government would bail them out for that period of time. They have now told them they are not bailing them out anymore.

As a result the CCACs had to reduce services, not only to remain within their budget, but also to offset rate increases in their service provider contracts. Across the province, between 2001 and 2003 (when funding was frozen at 2000/01 levels), the number of nursing visits decreased by 22 percent and the number of homemaking hours decreased by 30 percent (Office of Ontario’s Provincial Auditor 2004). The introduction of managed competition and the new (and often shifting) rules and regulations put into place both by the province and by individual agencies produced a sense of instability and confusion for the workers (and almost certainly for the clients too). One attendant noted: I think that when they make all these policies and procedures that they don’t really understand how it is to go in every day into somebody’s home and . . . and try to . . . to do your job and follow every procedure, you know, in the book. You know I find it difficult to follow all of the procedures in the book. I don’t know whether any of the other girls do or not, but, I think it’s pretty restrictive. I find it too restrictive.


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Describing the region of the province where she worked, one nurse commented, ‘‘there are so many nursing agencies out there now because of things being opened up for bids. There’s like six agencies, when there used to be – when I first started this job there was only two (nonprofit) agencies.’’ Also, the restructuring of home care took place relatively quickly, and often without sufficient public information about the changes. This left many workers to explain the new system to their clients, who in many instances they had worked with for years. Neoliberalizing home care, then, relies on the feminized ‘‘soft’’ skills of the workers to ease the transition for clients. The women workers are basically doing what women often do: picking up the slack and filling in the gaps left by the erosion of social services. They become the social safety net of the neoliberalizing system (Roberts 2004). For example, one nurse remarked: There’s not enough nurses, the patients in their mind are expecting and I feel – I would say 10 years, 15 years ago – I used to go in there and the family says, ‘‘Well I’ve paid my taxes, I’m entitled to this’’ and I thought to myself, wait a few years, this is going to change and it’s changing . . . They’re going to have to pay for every single thing. They have for-profit agencies, nursing agencies, and there is gonna be a time where Home Care is going to say, ‘‘we can only provide so much and the rest is going to be up to you.’’

But it is not just clients who are confused, so are many of the workers, such as, for example, one attendant who works for a public sector attendant care agency. She cares for Susan in the morning, and when she began working with Susan, she expected her agency to be sending someone for the afternoon slot, but she found out that a for-profit agency had ‘‘won’’ the contract that covered that slot. I don’t really know too much or enough about any other agencies. I always thought, actually, that (the CCAC) would first contact (her employer) because the services are free to the client, and then would contact other agencies. But often I think (that if) clients have to go with the other agencies first that they might have to pay something for it, and then be on the waiting list for our agency. But then I was told that Susan got (a for-profit agency) in the afternoon and not our agency, because (the for-profit agency) costs less money for the government. But I thought, ‘‘They’re a private business!’’ So I’m a little confused on where the money flows and who gets what and what’s cheaper and what’s for free.




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The attendant’s confusion about how the delivery of home care has changed is not surprising; on the face of it did not make sense to her (nor to others we interviewed) that there would be multiple agencies servicing the same client. It does beg the question, is this ‘‘stream-lined, efficient’’ home care, to borrow Health Minister Jim Wilson’s language? The competitive bidding environment is also eroding cooperation among agencies, as increasingly even a particular client’s program of care becomes ‘‘proprietary data.’’ As Abelson et al. (2004: 364) note, in the past collaboration among agencies had fostered shared learning (‘‘knowledge transfer’’ even) and the pursuit of best practices, but with a competitive bidding model, best practices are more likely to be viewed as a competitive advantage over other agencies and jealously guarded.

Workloads, wage differentials, and turnover Previous research indicates that as home care is restructured, women face increasing workloads and increasing stress whether they are paid caregivers or family caregivers (Aronson and Neysmith, 1997; Abbott 1998; Armstrong and Armstrong 2003). This is not surprising because in an effort to be competitive, even nonprofit agencies have increased the workloads of their workers, which for many means more stress and less job satisfaction. As an attendant who participated in the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ study remarked: ‘‘we are a little short-staffed I guess . . . we kind of do extra on top of our schedule.’’ Research conducted across different national contexts with home care nurses and personal support workers demonstrates the extraordinary stresses and extensive physical and emotional tasks they face (Aronson and Neysmith 1997; Abbott 1998; Twigg 1999) as well as the health and safety risks that this work involves (Kendra et al. 1996). Home care nurses in Ontario generally receive lower pay and fewer employment benefits, and enjoy less social status than their institutionbased colleagues (Neysmith and Nichols 1994; Aronson and Neysmith 1997; Canadian Health Services Foundation 2001). And this differential has to be located within the broader persistent pattern of the gender wage gap, especially for women in female-dominated work like nursing and other care work. A longstanding concern among feminist scholars (and activists) is the gender division of labor and the crowding of women into low-status, low-paid jobs (Fortin and Huberman 2002). The home care–hospital wage differential has been further exaggerated in a competitive bidding environment which has produced intense competition


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among agencies and driven down nurses’ wages even further below those of their hospital colleagues (Baumann et al. 2001). In 2000, there was a substantial gap between the wages offered in Ontario hospitals ($20–30) compared with home care ($19–25) (Parent and Anderson 2001). When asked if they were happy with their work, several ‘‘Hitting Home’’ participants complained about their wages and benefits, most making direct comparisons with their hospital colleagues. One nurse quickly responded: No. We’re quite significantly behind the hospitals and that has to change. That’s a whole new tangent. It has to change; it really does have to change. I mean, a little while ago Harris threw, I don’t know, 10 billion dollars at the CCACs and what they did with that money I don’t know, but we never saw a dime of it. I don’t think we’ve had a proper raise since 1987. And what they did with that money is they created the CCACs. It used to be called Home Care, now it’s called CCAC. So we didn’t see any of that money either. Hospitals are always – their wages are going up all the time. I mean I have a friend who’s been in nursing for eight years, she works in Emergency part-time at (a hospital) and she makes six dollars an hour more than I do. I mean that’s really inequitable . . . Supposedly that’s the direction it’s going to go because it’s cheaper, etc., etc. But just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean there are cheaper nurses, you know, cheaper knowledge or cheaper (experience), I used to be in Intensive Care so I carry those skills with me.

Notice that not only does she make the comparisons with hospital nurses, but she also puts the wage gap in the context of money bring ‘‘thrown’’ at the CCACs to create the architecture for competitive home care, but with little or none going to ‘‘front line nurses’’ (a point raised by a few of the other nurses too). This nurse is also well aware (as were many other nurses, homemakers, and personal support workers) that their wages were a significant factor in allowing for ‘‘cheaper’’ home care. One direct outcome of the competitive bidding process was that as the home care–hospital wage differential was exaggerated, more nurses and homemakers (especially those who train on the job to become personal support workers) began leaving home care (Parent and Anderson 2001). The competitive bidding regime has resulted in a destabilization of working conditions for home care workers. One of the attendants told us: There’s been a LOT of changes, a lot of changes. Yeah. A lot of changes in policies and procedures and a lot of changes in staff, like the office staff. And a big changeover for the workers, the girls, especially up in my area, there’s a really big turnover.




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Her last comment relates to the worrisome trend towards the high turnover among home care workers, homemakers, and personal support workers that we saw being tracked by various stakeholder groups. Many of the nurses we interviewed remarked that they had seen the same thing in nursing: ‘‘The nurses have gone. I mean every time you turn around, the nurses have gone’’ said one. When asked about how the home care system could be improved, another nurse responded: Give us more money. I know that sounds maybe petty, but it’s why they’re losing nurses. It’s why my case load is so heavy, is because we don’t have enough nurses; and they’re not gonna get enough nurses until they increase the pay. I mean there are registered nursing assistants at (hospitals) who make almost as much money as I do. That’s ridiculous.

This staff shortage was soon dubbed a ‘‘crisis.’’ Newspapers were replete with stories describing how people faced long waits for home care services or who were scheduled to be released (‘‘sicker and quicker’’) from hospitals, but had their return home delayed because there simply was not enough home care staff to care for them. ‘‘What if you can’t go home again?’’ asked the Ottawa Citizen (April 13, 2001) and included the alarming statistic that Ottawa home care agencies had lost 50 percent of their workers in 2000 alone. And in a Canada-wide survey of organizations providing home care, Parent and Anderson (2001) found that 43 percent of those employing nursing staff and 60 percent employing home support workers had difficulty retaining staff because they were leaving for better paid jobs in sectors other than home care.

Changing the experience of home care work An important theme to emerge from the interviews was how the day-today experiences of the workers had shifted. A number of the women complained about the increased amount of paperwork they had to manage; paperwork that went beyond the usual ‘‘charting’’ of the care, treatment, and progress of clients. The ‘‘Hitting Home’’ respondents had to fill out forms, phone the office on a regular basis, and check with the office to ensure that a client was ‘‘care coded’’ for a particular service, and if so, for what amount of time. Nurses are now required to get ‘‘authorized’’ for an unscheduled follow-up visit with a client; one said: ‘‘you’d have to call the CCAC and get authorized for another visit. That


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Plate 7.2 Quality of care versus cost-saving

would be two visits in a day and lots of times they won’t pay you for two visits.’’ Nurses responded that previously they had more autonomy and several, even some who remained very satisfied with their work, expressed frustration at what they saw as an erosion of that autonomy




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and a lack of respect for their professional judgment and on-the-job experience in being able to assess their clients’ needs for services. Certainly if we reflect on the neoliberal dream of less government intervention and more market, then all these interactions with ‘‘the office’’ are not suggestive of getting ‘‘rid of the excessive administration in home care throughout the province’’ as Health Minister Wilson promised in 1997. In fact this suggests more administration and more management, revealing yet another contradiction in the messiness of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism.’’ Among the other changed conditions of work were less ‘‘hands-on care’’ and fewer, if any ‘‘tea and sympathy’’-type visits that support clients who are psychologically or socially isolated. This was the sort of caring labor (and obviously highly feminized labor) that had brought some of our respondents into home care (rather than the more institutionalized hospital setting) in the first place. ‘‘Cost savings’’ of the financial sort are made by reducing the number of visits by home care workers and reducing the duration of those visits. Nurses who have been visiting some clients for over a decade told us they used to do so twice a week. Now they can only visit once a week and they expected in the very near future they would be visiting even less frequently. One nurse lamented: Oh yes, that’s really changed over the years. Because when we were working with Home Care previously we would be in and we would bath our people. And there was a lot more hands-on. There was a lot more hands-on. It was much more personal, and I found much more satisfying. Because what I find now is it seems like it’s the dollar orientated, not the people orientated. Now that’s how I feel about it. And I have a difficult time, with things now because you know we receive the (time) sheet which we never had (before). Now we have to keep track of how long we were in with the people.

Note that this nurse remarked that nurses no longer bathe their clients. This task and other supposedly ‘‘less skilled’’ aspects of home care work have been passed on (downloaded to use language of neoliberalized social policy) to personal support workers. Of course, that move in and of itself is a ‘‘cost-saving’’ measure, but further savings were made via cutbacks that mandated that long-term care clients who previously received three baths a week became entitled only to one. Dalton McGuinty, then leader of the (Liberal) Opposition, frequently asked questions about home care clients’ bathing entitlements of the Premier and the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. For instance, on December 13, 2001 (Hansard) he asked the Minister:


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Here is the case of Mrs Agnes Winterbottom from St Catharines. She’s in her 80s, she’s blind, and she’s had her home care hours cut. She was embarrassed to have to tell us what the cuts are going to mean to her. Do you know what they mean to her? She’s now only going to get one bath every seven days. She would like to get two baths a week. You have $500 million for private schools. You have $2.2 billion for large corporations. You tell me, . . . knowing there is that much money available out there, what directive are you going to issue to ensure that Mrs Winterbottom gets what she wants, which is nothing more than two baths a week?

In fact the number of bathing entitlements of home care recipients came to symbolize, for various stakeholders (politicians, workers, recipients, and advocates), the brutal extent and depth of the Conservative government’s budget freeze and capping of home care services. It is also noteworthy that it was this particular aspect of home care that captured the public’s imagination and received so much public attention, quite literally embodying competitive bidding. Almost always the body in question was a woman (like Mrs Winterbottom, and in fact McGuinty in that same narrative gave a second example, Mrs Gould, who ‘‘worked and paid taxes until she was 82 years of age’’ and who ‘‘wants a bath’’). Social policy is not gender-neutral, and women do dominate the home care client base, and so it makes sense that they dominate heart-rending appeals for clients to be treated with more dignity. How many baths home care clients were entitled to was repeatedly employed by non-Tory politicians and paid care providers alike as a means of trying to gain political traction with the Conservative provincial government. And of course, in the broader argument of our chapter, this interweaving of the state and the body, of (multiple meanings of) the public and private, the personal and the political, as well as embodiment nicely demonstrates that the neoliberalization of home care involves socio-spatial practices and relations that are located in a lattice of processes, practices, and discourses unfolding across a range of scales.

Conclusion We began our chapter noting that emphasizing the historic specificity and contradictory features of neoliberalism call attention to neoliberalization as a socially constructed, contextual, and contingent process. So we should be very clear about one aspect of the larger argument we are making in this chapter. Even before the election of the Tories, there




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had been longstanding concerns about duplication and lack of coordination in home care that resulted in confusion for clients and their families. There had even been an increased movement toward privatization by the two previous governments, especially through contracting out some services and de-insuring others. However, what the Tories did was to dramatically increase the pace and extent of the process and give it a neoliberal spin (Armstrong and Armstrong 2003). While many aspects of the Conservatives’ ‘‘Common Sense Revolution’’ were unprecedented in Ontario, their decision to restructure home care did not appear out of thin air, but was the latest in a series of attempts by the provincial government (whatever its political persuasion) to transform home care. Since the mid-1980s, sequential governments had addressed the increasing cost of home care and recognized the need to better coordinate a ‘‘patchwork quilt’’ of services. Different models of reform were floated by the three provincial governments, reflecting very different political rationalities; Liberal (centrist, 1985–90), NDP (socialdemocratic, 1990–5) and Conservative (1995–2003) (there is now a Liberal government, which we comment on below). The ideological orientation (for instance, the relative importance of equity versus efficiency as a guiding principle) of these models, and the merits and disadvantages of each has rightly captured a great deal of attention from activists, practitioners, and scholars alike (for example, Baranek et al. 1999; Cloutier-Fisher and Joseph 2000; Skinner and Rosenberg 2005). But what we want to stress is that since the 1980s successive provincial governments (Left, Right, and Center) have proposed overhauling home care in some form. The ideological underpinning may have differed, but in each case the specifics of what needed to be restructured revolved, to a greater or lesser extent, around better coordinating services, eliminating duplication, and cost management; and each model considered the respective roles of the public, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors in delivering services. Thus home care had been ripe for restructuring for some time – it just so happened that the Tories’ version was the one that ended up being put into practice; and it pivoted on neoliberal rationalities and technologies, introducing private sector management practices (in the name of cost saving and efficiency) into a system that had long been the purview of the (mostly publicly funded) nonprofit sector. The introduction of managed competition into home care has ushered in a number of large, private for-profit corporations that in some parts of the province now control the majority of the market-share at the expense of nonprofit agencies that had provided services there for


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decades. In the past several years, the newspapers have repeatedly reported the now familiar tale of nonprofit agencies losing contracts in a particular community, closing their offices, and laying off staff. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that Ontario’s home care ‘‘market’’ is gradually consolidating into the hands of a few large for-profit providers. According to the Ontario Health Coalition (2005), across 40 of the CCACs in 2004, a mere six corporations held 76 percent of the contracts. In contrast, eight agencies held 66 percent of the contracts in 1995, before the introduction of managed competition. The irony is that this is a market oligopoly (and in particular, a private sector oligopoly) even though the Health Minister at the start of the Harris Government claimed the (textbook neoliberal) goal for managed competition was ‘‘getting rid of the empires of the past and replacing them with streamlined efficient delivery systems.’’ As is often the case, there was a mismatch between the economic myth of neoliberal policy and the lived realities of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalisms.’’ In the rush to make home care a ‘‘streamlined efficient delivery system,’’ a multiplicity of contradictions became apparent, including more, not less, state bureaucracy. A new crisis emerged around the exodus of health care providers, market-oriented management practices, and the burden of increased bureaucracy, which erupted into a series of strikes and public outcries over the quality of care. In October 2003, the Conservatives were soundly defeated by the Liberals. The new Premier, Dalton McGuinty, had been one of those who had asked insistent questions about how the Tories were restructuring home care (for instance, Mrs Winterbottom and her weekly baths). Campaigning under the slogan ‘‘Choose Change,’’ the Liberal campaign promises included a commitment of new investment in home care (especially for what they called ‘‘the frail elderly’’) and that home care would remain an option for people as long as it did not exceed the cost of a nursing home. However, there was no promise to end for-profit home care, or to extend the principles of the Canada Health Act to cover home care that many activists had hoped for. Whereas Harris moved quickly on his campaign promises (perhaps too quickly?), McGuinty has been accused by some of dragging his feet. For example, in the summer following the 2003 election, the Ontario Community Support Association (representing 360 community support agencies such as Meals on Wheels, and personal and home support programs) issued a press release announcing ‘‘Community-based agencies continue to fall victim to the flawed home care selection process.’’ They insisted that ‘‘Ontarians ‘Chose Change’ on October 2, 2003. They did not get ‘Change’.’’ They reminded McGuinty




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and the Liberals that as the official opposition party they had been ‘‘adamant in their condemnation of the Tories’ home care procurement process’’ and called for an immediate halt to competitive bidding and an independent review of the system. Over the summer of 2004 there were large, loud protests by providers, home care activists, and unions in Ottawa, St Catharines, and Toronto about the competitive bidding process and the increasing erasure of nonprofit providers in the home care ‘‘market.’’ That autumn, the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care announced a review of the competitive bidding process. Opponents of managed competition wanted to place a moratorium on the competitive bidding process and allow the CCACs to hire staff directly. In 2005 the Minister announced that managed competition would remain for now, but that other points of concern (the erosion of community control in the CCACs, and concerns that costs trumped quality of care in the assignment of contracts) would be explored in an independent review of home care. Perhaps this is the beginning of a reversal. Or perhaps home care will be reformed (again) in line with the ‘‘friendly face’’ of ‘‘soft’’ neoliberalization and ‘‘partnering’’ ethos of Third Wayism described by Larner (2000) and Peck and Tickell (2002), or perhaps even in keeping with the policymaking associated with the ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ political program described by Larner, Le Heron, and Lewis in this volume? That remains to be seen. Regardless, the case of introducing managed competition into Ontario’s home care sector demonstrates that importing policies and programs from elsewhere, neoliberal or otherwise; does not guarantee similar outcomes in a different place. The case of Ontario home care shows that the politics of neoliberalism do not always prevail, or may do so only for a short while; and that the creation of a neoliberal ‘‘common sense’’ is not smooth and neoliberalism is far from inevitable.

Acknowledgments The authors are part of a larger group of scholars, the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ research team led by Principal Investigator Patricia McKeever, and includes CoInvestigators J. Angus, M. Chipman, A. Dolan, I. Dyck, J. Eakin, K. England, D. Gastaldo, B. Poland, and Research Coordinator K. Osterlund. We would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada under the Strategic Grant Competition: Society, Culture, and the Health of Canadians, Operating Grant


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#828991018. We also thank the fieldworkers of the project, Tracy Irvine, Pia Kontos, and Karen Spalding. We benefited from the very useful feedback from Catherine Kingfisher and Kevin Ward on an earlier version of the chapter, and we would like to acknowledge the generosity of the National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women who granted permission for us to use one of their cartoons in this chapter as Plate 7.2. Most of all we are deeply grateful to the participating households, workers, and partnering Community Care Access Centers in the Province of Ontario.

Notes 1 Hansard is the official transcript record of debates in Canadian parliament and provincial legislative assemblies (as it is in the British, Australian, and New Zealand parliaments). 2 The households were recruited through three Community Care Access Centres (CCACs) from urban, rural, and northern Ontario. These CCACs were among the consulting community partners involved in the ‘‘Hitting Home’’ study (others represented service providers, family caregivers, and care recipients). Our data collection techniques were designed in collaboration with our partners. The interviews followed focused interview guides developed to minimize intrusiveness and time expenditures for participants. Three senior doctoral students (Tracy Irvine, Pia Kontos, and Karen Spalding) were trained as fieldworkers and gathered the case study data. Altogether, about 60 interviews were conducted, half of them with home care workers as several households received services from a nurse and an attendant or a personal support worker. 3 For a few years prior to the introduction of CCACs, regulations mandated that the for-profit sector could receive no more than 20 percent of the funding under the so-called 80/20 rule.



8 Spatializing Neoliberalism: Articulations, Recapitulations, and (a Very Few) Alternatives Catherine Kingfisher

It is a truism that we often define ourselves in reference to less exalted Others. This is part of the process of cultural production and maintenance. Reflecting on his work on the political technology of the self in the West, for instance, Foucault comments that, ‘‘through studying madness and psychiatry, crime and punishment, I have tried to show how we have indirectly constituted ourselves through the exclusion of some others: criminals, mad people, and so on’’ (Foucault 1988b: 146). Earlier, Douglas, writing on pollution and taboo, argued that, ‘‘ideas about separating, purifying, demarcating and punishing transgressions have as their main function to impose system on an inherently untidy experience. It is only by exaggerating the difference between within and without, above and below, male and female, with and against, that a semblance of order is created’’ (Douglas 1966: 5). These efforts at differentiation and exclusion, by means of which the ‘‘inside’’ and the ‘‘normal’’ are produced, occur on an ongoing basis, via the mundane interactions which constitute the day-to-day reproduction of institutional arrangements and systems of meaning. There are also places and times of intensified activity – for example, the physical borders between First Nations1 reserves2 and surrounding towns, or in the lead-up to military confrontations. In the spring and summer of 2002, the citizens of a small Canadian prairie city, Woodridge,3 participated in just such a


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concentrated period of cultural debate and production, as Victory Mission, the local homeless shelter, was closed down, igniting a heated controversy regarding where and how to now manage the homeless and their needs (I use the word manage, as opposed to serve, to flag that the debate was more concerned with control than service). Although City officials and homeless advocates claim that the homeless population in Woodridge is diverse, the shelter controversy focused on the presence and activities of a specific group of homeless, Aboriginal male addicts – a label serving simultaneously as descriptor and stereotype.4 The unsettling nature of this group of homeless for the housed was threefold. First, the ‘‘problem’’ people in question were Native, and, as I make clear below, Natives continue to occupy the status of Other in Woodridge and as such their presence is discomfiting to ‘‘normals’’ (Foucault 1979, 1988b). Second, as homeless, they ‘‘represent the incursions of increasing impoverishment into public space’’ (Susser 1996: 417). Neoliberal policies of marketization, privatization, trade liberalization, and restructuring are contributing to economic hardship for many (albeit economic paradise for some), and the homeless embody dominant society’s confrontation with this unpleasant reality. Finally, and most importantly for the purposes of this chapter, Native homeless embody the antithesis of neoliberal notions of personhood. Ironically, it is precisely at this juncture – just when the capacity of the poor and almost-poor (and terrified-of-becoming-poor) to have control over their lives diminishes – that governments place renewed emphasis on individual responsibility and self-sufficiency. Thus the homeless, who embody both the incursion of economic hardship into the very heart of the city and the antithesis of neoliberal self-sufficiency, become social signifiers of disorder (Hopper 1988: 162–3). ‘‘There is energy,’’ Douglas (1966: 141 and 116) claims, in the ‘‘margins and unstructured areas’’ of society – an energy that ‘‘provides the material of pattern,’’ of normativity. Woodridge’s shelter controversy can thus be usefully analyzed as what Tsing (1993: 15) refers to as a ‘‘border skirmish,’’ a site of cultural production where neoliberalism can be seen as an unfolding process. The past 20 years have witnessed a tidal shift in Canada away from a liberal progressive form of governance, which viewed social ills in terms of structural and collective causalities and remedies, toward a neoliberal form of governance, which highlights individual causalities and decentralized and individualized remedies (Brodie 2002). Part of a global shift, this new orientation is characterized by increased emphasis on self-governance in an ideally ungoverned (‘‘free’’ and highly consumerist) market economy (Kingfisher 2002). In such a context,


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non-self-governing, non-productive individuals – e.g., the homeless – present both a problem and a project: a problem because they challenge emerging neoliberal notions of proper personhood and sociality; and a project, because it is precisely by means of their symbolic and literal removal, eviction, and/or transformation that neoliberal notions of personhood, sociality, and economic organization are produced and asserted. The ideal adult neoliberal person is self-governing, autonomous, entrepreneurial, and able to transcend the dependencies engendered by the Keynesian welfare state. The liberal conundrum of how to govern a ‘‘free’’ people is addressed in a neoliberal regime by means of indirect (at-a-distance) forms of governance dispersed through various educational, counseling, and state provisioning systems, on the basis of the principle that the most powerful way to influence behavior is to alter its terrain and thus the very nature of ‘‘free’’ choice. ‘‘[I]ndividuals are free,’’ Rose (1998: 168) points out, ‘‘to the extent that they choose a life of responsible selfhood.’’ Creating the ‘‘freedom’’ to make ‘‘good’’ choices thus becomes ‘‘the rationale for all manner of coercive interventions into the lives of those seen as unfree or threats to freedom’’ (Rose 1998: 16) – again, in this case, the homeless. The shelter controversy in Woodridge thus reveals a great deal about how ‘‘freedom’’ and ‘‘choice’’ are configured for marginalized people in a neoliberal regime noted for its unequal distribution of hardship and prosperity (Kingfisher 2002). Neoliberalism, however, does not unfold in a vacuum, but by means of articulation with received cultural formations. The shelter controversy in Woodridge must accordingly be situated not in the context of a generalized neoliberalization per se, but in relation to a specifically Woodridge/Canadian prairie version and process of neoliberalization, which, I argue, is unfolding via dialogue with already-present valorizations of prairie notions of rugged individualism and industriousness5 – which, in turn, are constituted in conversation with, and in opposition to, racist constructions of non-industrious, parasitic Aboriginality. The latter entails the resurrection of nineteenth-century discourses of containment and assimilation. For instance, in his 1841 lectures on Colonization and Colonies, Herman Merivale (Oxford professor and later British under-secretary for the colonies) asserted that complete assimilation was ‘‘the only possible euthanasia of savage communities’’ (quoted in Upton 1973: 54; also see Carter 1990; Miller 2000). Such discourses took material form in the reserve and residential schooling6 systems (Tobias 1983; Miller 2000). When placed in this historical context, current processes of neoliberalization in Woodridge are representative not of a rupture with preexisting cultural formations, but rather of their


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intensification and recapitulation. These processes, however, have also engendered the emergence of alternative discourses of civility, community, and care – although I will argue that these more ‘‘caring’’ discourses were in the minority. My point is simply that neoliberalism is not an allencompassing, homogeneous, unitary phenomenon, but rather, like any other cultural formation, is contingent, contradictory, partial, particular, in constant conversation with other cultural formations and discourses, and unfolding in the context of controversy and contestation (Kingfisher 2002). This chapter explores such conversations, articulations, and contestations in the context of the debate about homelessness in Woodridge, with analytic emphasis on 1) the emergence of the ‘‘problem’’ of homelessness as a cultural process centered on the public spectacle of ‘‘Otherness’’ in specific locations; 2) the metaphorical borderland between the homeless and the housed as a site of cultural production representing a contextually specific articulation of dominant Canadian prairie and neoliberal notions of proper personhood and sociality; and 3) the bringing together of literal and figurative spatializations of neoliberalism in the location and program planning of the new shelter, which represents a site of therapeutic intervention designed both to temporarily remove homeless persons from the social landscape and to transform them into self-governing individuals fit to occupy social space. My basic argument is that neoliberal notions of proper personhood and sociality were deployed and asserted in Woodridge via the eviction/transformation of the Other, which was accomplished via spatial arrangements that recapitulate the historical treatment of Natives. My discussion is based on four months of ethnographic research undertaken during the height of the controversy over the closing of Victory Mission, the opening (and closing) of a drop-in center, and the decision about the location of the new shelter. Methods consisted of participant observation in City Council meetings and public hearings, the collection of City and media documents, and 28 interviews with members of the City Council, Administration, and the Housing Commission; as well as business owners, shelter workers, and advocates for the homeless.7

Setting Woodridge, situated in and serving a large agricultural region in the Canadian prairies, is both politically conservative and strongly religious.




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It is also a fairly homogeneous place; consisting mostly of people of European descent (‘‘Asians’’ comprise approximately 6 percent of the population, and Natives approximately 3 percent, despite the close proximity of Woodridge to several large reserves). There are indications that both poverty and homelessness are on the rise in Canada in general and in medium-sized cities like Woodridge in particular (Begin 1996; Bunting and Filion 2000; Lee and Engler 2000). Although average household income in 2002/3 was $45,544, only slightly below the national average of $48,552; and while by some measures the economic situation in Woodridge has been improving (unemployment, for instance, went down from 7 percent in 1994 to less than 4 percent in 2002), by other measures all is not well. For instance, the percentage of total income coming from government transfer payments increased a full percentage point between 1991 and 1996, despite provincial welfare reforms (including increased eligibility requirements and reductions to benefit levels and other support) designed to move people off the welfare rolls into employment. In 2001/2, 7.7 percent of Woodridge’s private households subsisted on annual incomes of less than $10,000. With onebedroom apartment rentals averaging $525 in 2002 – an increase of $75 per month from 1997 – even those living on less than $20,000 would be hard pressed to make ends meet. Moreover, apartment vacancy rates dropped from almost 3 percent in 1996 to just over 0.5 percent in 2000. In 2001, when 19 percent of the population was living in poverty, there were 956 people on waiting lists for affordable housing, and 504 people were turned away from shelters for lack of space. Finally, and perhaps most staggering, is the economic gap between Aboriginals and nonNatives. The median total income of persons 15 years and older on the closest reserve, for instance, is $7,772, compared to $23,025 for the province. On the two closest reserves, between 31 and 36 percent of income comes from government transfers, and in Woodridge proper, 31.3 percent of the income received by Aboriginals comes from government transfers (City of Woodridge 2001, 2002, 2003; Statistics Canada 2001). Thus, while Woodridge could be neutrally described as a typical prairie town, homogenous, strongly religious, and politically conservative, a more nuanced description would depict Woodridge as a segregated, racially polarized city in which poverty rates and housing costs are on the rise while the availability of affordable housing is on the decline. This second description would additionally point out that the local reserves continue to suffer from economic and cultural violence.


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Controversy The acute problematization of homelessness in 2002 reflected the confluence of several factors. The most publicly salient was the local homeless shelter. Opened in the early 1990s with the support of a local evangelical congregation and run by an evangelical husband–wife team, Steven and Martha Fletcher, Victory Mission was by and large left to its own devices by the City government until the late 1990s, when several phenomena converged to make the patrons of the shelter both more visible and more problematic. First, a group of businessmen with establishments close to Victory Mission complained to the City Council about the disruptive presence of the homeless, whose often intoxicated behavior was considered a nuisance and detrimental to business. As one of the businessmen who spearheaded the complaint explained: So [in] ’94 Victory Mission opened and . . . almost immediately we started to see major problems. I saw a drastic increase in . . . public drunkenness . . . there was a lot more panhandling going on, and there was always an element of prostitution in the area, but it increased, it magnified tremendously. . . [Victory Mission] became more of an enabling agency (Tom Jones, non-Native business owner and member of Housing Commission, October 29, 2002).

This view of Victory Mission as ‘‘enabling’’ had wide currency among those with whom I spoke, indicating that the purported ‘‘solution’’ to homelessness had become part of the problem. This is not an unusual local reading of, and response to, homeless shelters in general (LyonCallo 2001; Forte 2002). The second contributing factor was the erosion of the economic viability of Woodridge’s downtown. This erosion took the form of competition from big-box outlets, such as Wal-Mart, located on the outskirts of town. These outlets drew customers away from downtown, and thus contributed to an increasingly high failure rate among smaller downtown shops. Significantly, Victory Mission was located on the margins of what was locally referred to as the ‘‘downtown core,’’ and two areas in particular were said to suffer negative impacts of the behaviors of the Mission’s patrons. The first was Centre Park, a city block sized park located between a popular shopping mall and downtown shops. The homeless, who congregated in large groups, frequently for long periods of time, and who were regularly seen to be drinking, often occupied the park. The second area consisted of approximately six




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blocks of shops and cafe´s, in front of which the homeless panhandled, and behind which they urinated and engaged in other properly ‘‘private’’ activities. The concern, voiced by business owners and homed residents alike, was that ordinary citizens did not feel safe in the downtown core, and that this was bad for business. Curiously, then, local reasoning did not hold that the attraction of big-box outlets (or indeed, the mall across the street from Centre Park) had lured people away from the smaller downtown shops, but rather that people were repelled from the downtown area by the presence of the homeless. Thus business attention, partly via downtown revitalization studies and plans (I cannot directly cite these owing to issues of confidentiality), was turned to a particular group of street people, mostly Aboriginal, mostly male, and mostly addicted, who were denying ‘‘normal’’ citizens their ordinary rights as members of the Woodridge community. This focus both reflected and contributed to the constitution of Natives as Other. Finally, the availability of significant federal and provincial funds to address homelessness prompted the City to establish a Housing Commission, a large consortium of businesspeople, church members, and social service providers with an interest in housing-related issues. Membership spanned the political spectrum and included those both more and less sympathetic to the homeless, although it did not include the homeless themselves. Fueled by the Housing Commission’s view that an additional shelter was needed to respond both to increasing numbers of homeless and to the problems caused by the residents of Victory Mission in the downtown core, the City decided to establish a new shelter and opened discussions about where to locate the new facility. Decisions regarding the shelter location took on heightened urgency when Victory Mission was suddenly closed down owing to the decrepit and unhealthy state of the building. The Mission responded by opening a drop-in center in the downtown core, adding to an already tense NIMBY debate. Eventually, a new shelter was opened on the outskirts of the downtown core, and while Victory Mission was initially given permission by the City to open its drop-in center, the permit was rescinded after only three weeks. All of these events were marked by considerable tension and sometimes acrimonious debate in City Council meetings and public hearings, in the local newspaper, and on the street. The homeless did not participate directly in these debates; instead their voice took the form of their presence in the downtown core. In what follows, I argue that the homeless controversy engaged fundamental questions of the nature of personhood and community in the


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context of an emergent neoliberalism. I organize my discussion around three themes that emerged from the data. I begin with an analysis of the concerted production of public performances of Otherness in the downtown core. I then turn to an analysis of the response of the dominant public to this salience, which was one of fear. Finally, I explore efforts to manage this constructed object of fear via eviction and/or transformation.

Situated Public Spectacles of Otherness As one social service worker I spoke with observed, the shelter controversy reflected the public’s reaction to the specifically visible homeless: The majority of the public doesn’t know or see the other homeless public . . . [or] see the people at risk of being homeless next week because they’re not going to make it to the end of the month with their bill payments . . . or the women who are leaving abusive relationships . . . They don’t see that public. What they see is the visible, the street population, and that’s only one portion of the homeless. And that’s probably, it is the most visible. It’s probably the one that causes you the most concern because they tend to panhandle. They tend to approach people. You do see them staggering around the downtown core. So, yeah, that’s where I would say the majority of people’s impression of homelessness comes from (Jan Rivers, non-Native social services worker, November 5, 2002).

If it is the case that the homeless are indeed a diverse group – as claimed by the City (see Kingfisher, 2007, for further discussion) – then the question becomes one of how the salience of addicted Aboriginal men is socially produced. Taking my cue from Jan Rivers, I argue that this visibility is an artifact of a number of factors, ranging from the presence of Natives versus non-Natives in Woodridge to dominant notions of appropriate gender roles and identities. ‘‘The symbolic expression of community and its boundaries increases in importance,’’ Cohen (1985: 50) argues, ‘‘as the actual geo-social boundaries of the community are undermined, blurred or otherwise weakened.’’ One interviewee mirrored this observation when he claimed that the genesis of the so-called problem with Aboriginals in town could be traced back to the 1960s, when ‘‘[Native] adults no longer required a pass to leave the reserve and come into Woodridge’’ (Dan Goldsmith, non-Native City Councillor, December 6, 2001). This increased ‘‘freedom to travel from the reserves to the city’’ contributed, according to Mr Goldsmith, to increased problems with alcohol among Aboriginals.




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The difficulties began, then, when ‘‘some of those controls disappear[ed].’’ In keeping with Cohen’s analysis, the ‘‘controls’’ referred to here include not only those on alcohol and mobility, but also, and more generally, those regulating the borders among place, race, and culture, i.e., town and reserve, non-Native and Native, dominant and marginal. Despite the de jure opening of these borders, Woodridge remains a de facto segregated town, in which Natives continue to be barred (albeit informally) from particular spaces and statuses. For example, several people with whom I spoke noted that Aboriginals have difficulty securing housing in Woodridge; once a landlord discovers that their potential tenant is Native, so the story goes, they claim that the property has already been rented out (Jon Winston, non-Native social services worker and member of Housing Commission, November 12, 2002; Mary Swift River, Native social services worker and member of Housing Commission, October 24, 2002; Cynthia Bear Fat, Native homeless advocate and provider, December 10, 2002). Interviewees also pointed to the low numbers of Aboriginals in paid employment in Woodridge: I look at them [the Native homeless] and think, well, these people . . . know how to be an electrician, a plumber, some of them are artists, some of them were chiefs and all that. They have all that but nobody’s given them the opportunity. . . they are Native . . . [so] no one will hire them . . . If you go into a business you won’t see an Aboriginal, maybe just a few that you’ll see working behind the counter. . . Woodridge is redneck (Mary Swift River, Native social services worker and member of Housing Commission, October 24, 2002).

Indeed, rates of Aboriginal employment in town are so low that City officials routinely discuss undertaking ‘‘Native employment initiatives.’’ The lack of a clear Native presence in other sectors thus makes the race/ ethnicity of the homeless occupying the downtown core all the more salient: If I saw three Aboriginals drinking in Centre Park but then went into Safeway and saw a First Nations person at the till that would balance my perspective, but you don’t see that (David Horne, non-Native social services director and member of Housing Commission, October 21, 2002).

The muted presence of homeless Native women and non-Native homeless is also a factor in public spaces in town. There are two other homeless shelters in Woodridge, both serving women (with one serving Native women in particular), yet the patrons of these shelters are not


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perceived as public nuisances, and the shelters themselves barely register as matters of public concern. Those doubled-up in apartments or couchsurfing are similarly invisible. In addition, different approaches to sociality among Native versus non-Native homeless may serve to underscore the visibility (and Otherness) of the former: I think the difference maybe is . . . that the [homeless] Aboriginal folks seem to tend to move together in groups of four or five or ten . . . whereas the [homeless] white guys that I see around seem to be . . . more alone (David Horne, non-Native social services director and member of Housing Commission, October 21, 2002).

The salience of Aboriginal addicted men in the downtown core is also an artifact of how non-Natives use time and space, which in turn is reflected in the built environment. The violation of norms regarding the appropriate uses of time and space entails the violation of norms of comportment and of basic notions of what it is to be a proper responsible (neoliberal) adult person. Braroe’s Indian and White (1975), which explores relations between Cree and non-Natives in Short Grass, a southwestern Canadian prairie town, provides some insights relevant to the Woodridge case. In Short Grass, Braroe states, ‘‘the idea of constant toil as the sole honourable means to success – the familiar Protestant Ethic – is widely shared and explicitly verbalized’’ (1975: 95), as it is in much of the Canadian prairies. Natives in Short Grass, who, like in Woodridge, congregate in groups for long periods of time, violate this ethic. As Braroe (1975: 102) points out: It appears to be a widespread and general rule in Western society that one should not only be engaged in some legitimately identifiable activity when in the presence of others, but should also demonstrate an involvement in some situation at all times, even if this is merely journeying somewhere or awaiting something . . . a person whose involvements and intentions are not apparent is always suspect.

The performance of having something legitimate to do is key.8 Natives ‘‘hanging out’’ in Centre Park break tacit rules concerning the performance of one’s business, and thus of industry, self-reliance, and responsibility. Drinking Natives further violate notions of thrift. In addition, panhandling violates norms of privacy and personal space. Homed residents in Woodridge are offended when approached on the street for money, and often describe this behavior as ‘‘aggressive.’’ Street space in Woodridge, then, is not to be used as a ‘‘hangout,’’ but rather




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as a conduit for people ‘‘going somewhere.’’ In contrast to larger urban centers, Woodridge is not known for having large crowds on the street, thus rendering Aboriginals who are ‘‘standing around’’ all the more noticeable (Charlene Donahue, non-Native City Administrator, October 17, 2002). While Susser (1996) notes that the homeless in New York City, for example, repopulate coveted niches at night when everyone else goes home, in Woodridge the homeless fail to wait until nightfall. Closely related to local conventions regarding space are those regarding the appropriate places for particular behaviors. Bodily elimination and sex, for instance, are locally regarded as ‘‘private’’ activities, conducted away from the hearing and sight of potential spectators. Less obvious are consumption and socializing. Eating (or drinking), when not conducted in the home, is properly conducted in public spaces marked off for those specific purposes (restaurants, picnic areas). Likewise with socializing. One interviewee, drawing on both absolute (no place to sleep) and relative (unsafe, insecure housing) definitions of homelessness, referred to ‘‘street people’’ as: people who utilize the street – what we call the streets or public places – to conduct their social life. You and I9 would invite someone home, [but] their home environment is not, they don’t consider it safe, attractive, or whatever. So they use the parks, the kiosks in the malls, the drop-in center, as their living rooms (Matthew Gill, non-Native homeless advocate, October 22, 2002).

In congregating in the local park (as opposed to a living room) for long stretches of time with seemingly no business, in drinking in the park (rather than in a bar), in urinating or defecating in the back doorways to businesses (as opposed to in a toilet), and in engaging in sex in a parking lot (as opposed to at least in a car or hotel room, let alone a proper bedroom), this particular group of homeless is engaging in private activities in public spaces. This is unacceptable human behavior by dominant local cultural standards, and it serves to increase the visibility of these men dramatically. As Hopper (2003: 62) puts it, ‘‘[t]he public domain becomes personal theatre, site of those private practices and stigmatized bodily functions that are normally carried out in the hidden reaches of home.’’ This is deeply threatening to the housed: By being out of place, by doing private things in public space, homeless people threaten not just the space itself, but also the very ideals upon which


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we have constructed our rather fragile notions of legitimate citizenship. Homeless people scare us: they threaten the ideological construction which declares that publicity – and action in public space – must be voluntary (Mitchell 1997: 321).

The distinction between proper and improper comportment was indexed in Woodridge by references to ‘‘positive’’ versus ‘‘negative’’ users of the downtown core, as illustrated by the following exchange I had with a non-Native police officer, Cam Campbell: Cam: Catherine: Cam: Catherine: Cam: Catherine: Cam: Catherine: Cam: Catherine: Cam:

Catherine: Cam: Catherine: Cam:

they [the homeless] wanna go downtown, and downtown is where they, you know, where they all kind of meet and socialize it’s their meeting place, yep and they’ll go to the park, the park itself is a nice place, you know, why not hang out there yeah and, like I say, they’ve kind of taken it over as their own uh huh and so it’s kind of like their park right that’s where they go and hang out and that’s not going to change? no, you got to bring – we always mention, make mention of them as negative users because, uh, that’s more or less, you know, the polite way to describe them. But with the downtown, what the park needs is more positive users . . . like when you have a children’s festival, or when you have a bright lights festival and stuff, people come in there, there’s not a problem right because either [the homeless] disappear in the crowds, or they get chased out of there and they’re never usually a problem right so, if you’ve got more people on a regular basis using the park . . . then they’re outnumbered

This distinction between ‘‘positive’’ and ‘‘negative’’ users/uses of space was also revealed in the built environment. For instance, in contrast with other parks in town, Centre Park no longer has public toilets.10 They were removed because they were ‘‘misused’’ as places to sleep and do drugs. Nor are homeless Natives welcome just across the street from Centre Park in the mall, where space is organized to encourage specific practices of consumption. One interviewee recounted how he went to a fast food restaurant in the mall, and saw that ‘‘there was two of them




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[homeless Natives] being wrestled down onto the ground and handcuffed, because [they] shouldn’t be in here’’ (Kent Brown, non-Native business owner and member of Housing Commission, November 1, 2002). A more sympathetic respondent remarked, ‘‘I would say at the minimum we need some public washrooms . . . they’re kicked out of the mall . . . you know, there are very few options’’ (David Horne, non-Native social services director and member of Housing Commission, October 21, 2002). The built environment, then, is such that the homeless are forced to engage in certain private activities in locally inappropriate public spaces. Perceptions, however, do not focus on the organization of space, but rather on some purported characteristics of the homeless themselves. In addition to violating public/private distinctions and norms regarding (neoliberal) industriousness and thrift, addicted Aboriginal men also violate gender norms. It is worth noting in this regard that the feminization of poverty is both substantive and nominal; i.e., it refers not only to an exponential rise in the numbers of poor women, but also to a characterization of the poor, as a category, as ‘‘feminine,’’ and as suffering from the ‘‘feminine’’ attributes of irrationality, need, lack, and so on (R. Smith 1990; see Kingfisher 2002, chapter 2, for further discussion). At one level, homeless Aboriginal men in Woodridge are feminized, taking on exaggerated characteristics of need and dependency, but dissociated from more positive essentialized ‘‘feminine’’ characteristics, such as nurturance. What seems to be accentuated here is an infantilized dependent femininity – a complete and total inability to care for oneself. This incapacity, however, is not just distasteful; it is also threatening, and what makes it threatening is that the individuals in question are men, not women or children. At the same time that they represent a feminized dependence, then, homeless Aboriginal addicted men are also hypermasculinized, displaying exaggerated characteristics of threatening aggression, without the positive male attributes of provider and protector. The following comments, made in response to criticisms of residential schools, underscore the specifically masculinized and sexualized nature of this threat: [t]he reality is that there is pain inflicted by. . . [residential schools], yes, but there is more pain inflicted by their own people. We had fathers raping daughters, we had uncles raping daughters, we had brothers and cousins and uncles raping wives, OK? That has nothing to do with the white population, that was simply internal abuse (Matthew Gill, non-Native homeless advocate, October 22, 2002).


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Such inflated forms of ‘‘internal abuse’’ (removed by the interviewee from the wider context of cultural genocide) are manifestations of a masculine aggressive sexuality run amok. Passaro’s (1996: 1–2) insights into the gender status of homeless men in New York are instructive here. As she describes them, homeless men are seen as both ‘‘dangerous, violent, and aggressive,’’ and as ‘‘failed men, in traditional gender terms, because they are dependent and unable to support themselves.’’ These men, then, display the most negative characteristics of each gender simultaneously; they are both aggressive and dependent. They are border crossers, or gender-benders, in an accidental and clearly negative sense. The discussion above indicates that the salience of homeless Aboriginal addicted men is an artifact of particular social, material, and ideological processes, rather than of characteristics inherent to the male Native population itself. The visibility of this population is the concerted production of both Others and non-Others, in the context of an emergent neoliberalism in which public space and activity are redefined around consumption. First, Aboriginals have been historically barred from certain places and activities, and are still barred, albeit informally, from particular spaces and statuses in Woodridge. Historically, this restriction from certain places reflects efforts to restrict Natives to certain places (e.g., reserves, residential schools). This has contributed to a relatively small Aboriginal presence in Woodridge, underscoring the visibility of Native street people, who, I have suggested, are compelled to be on the street, and are forced to engage in private behaviors in public spaces, thus offending the sensibilities of passers-by. In addition, dominant norms of comportment and gender roles are such that homeless addicted Aboriginal men inevitably fall short. The ‘‘standards of practice,’’ as Barth (1969: 31) puts it, are set by the majority group; ‘‘[t]here is thus a disparity between values and organizational features: prized goals are outside the field organized by the minority’s culture and categories.’’11

Fear and Loathing in Woodridge ‘‘We need to reclaim Centre Park. We need to reclaim our downtown.’’

Statements such as the above, made at a public hearing about the drop-in center, clearly indicate that the presence of Aboriginal street people in the downtown core was seen as an invasion, or occupation (see N. Smith




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[1996] for a discussion of similar revanchist tendencies in New York). The public response to this occupation was fear, as illustrated by two sets of excerpts from the public hearing. The first is from the testimony of the owner of two women’s clothing stores in the downtown core: Now both of these businesses involve ladies coming and going. And we hear many, many complaints from our customers [who are] continually frightened, due to the fact that there are people loitering in front of stores, and this happens frequently. We’ve had . . . homeless come into our stores . . . we all too often have to call 911 as well. It seems to be getting out of hand . . . They [the homeless] don’t have to be right beside us, when we are trying to . . . run a business and have customers come and go and children come and go safely (Janice Whitehead, non-Native business owner, July 29, 2002; emphasis added).

The second excerpt was produced by the owner of a boutique and set of apartments located approximately one block from the former Victory Mission: You almost have to lie to the tenants and the customers: ‘‘don’t worry about it, it’s safe down here, come on, come on in.’’ Like, my staff aren’t only customer service reps, they are policemen, they are ambulance people, they are everything. Like, we see it all down here . . . Man, like, we lose tenants and customers over noise, vandalism, break-ins, um, their fear of people in the street . . . I really think putting it [the drop-in center] on 3rd Avenue is going to hurt the walk-by traffic immensely. . . No one is going to want to walk down 3rd Avenue (Heidi Kennedy, non-Native business owner, July 29, 2002; emphasis added).

There are a number of interesting things going on in these excerpts. First, while both women repeatedly refer to issues of fear and safety, the fear is expressed not only in relation to vandalism and break-ins, but also to noise, people in the street, and loitering – i.e., to the simple presence of the homeless. Further, both women recount calling 911 or needing to act as policemen when a homeless person entered their stores, despite the fact that both are open to the public. Finally, this fear is experienced by or on behalf of non-homeless, and in particular women (‘‘ladies’’) and children, who are constructed as vulnerable and in need of protection from hypermasculinized Aboriginal homeless men. The issue is clearly one of protecting business from the harm caused by the aesthetic offense of homelessness. The ‘‘alien, embarrassing, disturbing presence’’ (Hopper 2003: 127) of the homeless is thus dangerous to the social order and to the everyday conduct of business in Woodridge,


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threatening received notions of community and sociality, and, by extension, of what it means to be a person. While homeless Native addicted men are obviously human beings, they are not fully adult by prairie/ rugged individual or neoliberal standards. They thus challenge established classifications (Hopper 2003: 45) of person/nonperson, human/ animal, male/female, and public/private, and are, accordingly, construed as less-persons, compromised-persons, or fallen-persons, if not nonpersons. As Hopper (1988: 164) observes, ‘‘the homeless poor are considered to be both different and strange.’’ This is in keeping with what many analysts have discovered about portrayals of the homeless: ‘‘[a] common problematic vision is apparent,’’ notes Desjarlais (1997: 2), ‘‘in many accounts: the homeless live in an underworld; they are a ghostly, animal-like brood who threaten the peaceful, artful air of cafe´s, libraries, and public squares’’ (see also Dear and Gleeson 1991; Mathieu 1993; Wolch 1995; D. Mitchell 1997; Platt 1999; Aguirre and Brooks 2001; Shields 2001).12 Aboriginal addicted homeless men in Woodridge are different and strange because they have different thinking patterns from ‘‘the rest of us,’’ be they drug induced in utero, resulting in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), or ex utero, through addictions, or both. Ken Fletcher, the operator of Victory Mission, had this to say to City Council: Our experience is [that] 60 percent of the street population is either addicted, FAS, mentally ill, or a combination of all things. This group has a set of behaviors and because they’re brain-injured and addicted the behavior patterns create social problems. They hang out in large groups, they have fixed patterns of travel and movement. They are poor at social interaction. Because they are brain-injured, however, they can’t change these behaviors. If we believe we can change these behaviors we are mistaken. What we are dealing with, with a percentage of our street population, are adult children. They’re six-year-olds. But they won’t get any better than a six-year-old, they’re learning impaired (public hearing, April 15, 2002; emphasis added).

Such references to ‘‘adult children’’ invoke Levy-Bruhl’s early-twentiethcentury work on ‘‘primitive mentality’’: it is as if, at the most fundamental level, the mentality of Aboriginal addicted men is ‘‘oriented in another direction than our own’’ (1926: 69; see also Levy-Bruhl 1923/ 1966). As less- or nonpersons, they threaten more- or full persons, insofar as they challenge the naturalness of full personhood – i.e., the assumption that it is in our nature to be particular kinds of men and women and to organize our communities in such a way as to reflect this human nature. In debating the nature, characteristics, and personhood




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of the homeless, participants work to assert and reinforce certain assumptions about the nature, characteristics, and personhood of the housed. ‘‘When something is firmly classed as anomalous,’’ Douglas (1966: 47) points out, ‘‘the outline of the set in which it is not a member is clarified.’’ That the issue concerned the border between proper (neoliberal and white) and improper (dependent and Native) personhood is reinforced by two pieces of data. First, a police representative I interviewed pointed out that the problematic population consisted of only 10–15 individuals, i.e., that the problem was small rather than large scale. Second, I was unable to find reported instances of threats, let alone of actual attacks on the housed by the homeless in the local newspaper. This is not to dismiss the discomfort that Woodridge residents experience when visually confronted by the visibly homeless (a discomfort which I myself have experienced); nor is it to dismiss the possibility that 10–15 people can cause considerable upheaval. It is, rather, to indicate that the issue was fear of crime more than its actuality. As the police representative indicated, perceptions count. While being approached for money occurred on a more or less regular basis, the discomfort associated with such approaches is not about crime but precisely about the aesthetics of proper personhood (see Mitchell 1997 for a discussion of these ideas in relation to citizenship).

Border Patrols: Now You See ’em, Now You Don’t; or, from Visibility to Invisibility or Proper Visibility Having located Native addicted homeless men outside the social order, citizens of Woodridge were left with two options: keep them out, or alter them so they can fit in (R. Smith 1990; see also Douglas 1966). What emerged in Woodridge was a combination of these responses: temporary removal for the purposes of reform. What I turn to now, then, is a discussion of the spatialization of neoliberalism in this community. What I mean by spatialization of neoliberalism is both the figurative and literal spatialization processes by means of which neoliberal notions of personhood and sociality are constructed and enacted: figuratively, by socially expelling from the social order those who do not display its precepts; and literally, by physically removing such outcasts to the margins of society (whether this is to contain them or to provide a space – again, both literal and figurative – for their transformation).


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That the homeless needed to be transformed was taken as axiomatic: . . . it can’t be easy to be drunk all the time. No, it can’t be. It’s hard . . . hard on their body, hard on their soul. It’s hard on your friends. It’s hard on your family. You must want to get out (Mike O’Connor, non-Native City Councillor, January 9, 2003).

Although a number of respondents referred to the ‘‘lifestyle choices’’ of the ‘‘hard to serve,’’ there was an underlying assumption that people who made such ‘‘choices’’ were unhappy, and that they needed help to obtain a more complete, adequate, and fulfilling sense of self. This was the goal of the new shelter, and its realization, according to most, required a specific location away from the downtown core. Accordingly, the site selected for the new shelter was six blocks from the core – a considerable symbolic distance by local reckoning. Discussions of the need for a specific space of transformation were often couched in reference to the need for dignity and privacy among the homeless themselves: I thought, well, 30,000 cars pass [the] intersection [adjacent to the new shelter site] a day. How can our homeless people possibly maintain face? Because it isn’t just the Aboriginals, there’s a lot of people like, I can even say, like myself (Kent Brown, non-Native business owner and member of Housing Commission, November 1, 2002; note the striking reference to the differences between ‘‘Aboriginals’’ and ‘‘people . . . like myself’’!).

The argument was also made that removal was important to housed Natives: Aboriginal culture, because of the pride, is also very connected to shame. They [housed, non-addicted Aboriginals] see these people as shameful to their culture and they want them hidden, alright? So . . . one of the reasons . . . the Natives were saying they want [the shelter] off First Avenue was to hide it (Matthew Gill, non-Native homeless advocate, October 22, 2002).

With one exception, the latter argument was proffered by non-Natives only, who, instantiating a particularly insidious form of racism, seemed to read the behavior of any Native as representative of the entire group. While some, most notably the operators of Victory Mission, resisted the placement of the new shelter outside of the downtown core, others argued that the distance from downtown was negligible; one person, for instance, explained that ‘‘this idea that downtown is these four blocks




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is just, you know, it’s really silly in a city where you can go anywhere in 20 minutes’’ (David Horne, non-Native social services director and member of Housing Commission, October 21, 2002). But the extremes of the debate are telling. At one end is Steven Fletcher’s public testimony: I am frightened that we are trying to take an identifiable people, group, and push them into an area, like the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw or the black townships of Soweto or the reserves of this country where at one time you needed permission to be off of it and if you were found off of it you were jailed. How does that integrate a group of people into a society? (July 29, 2002).

At the other extreme is the assertion that ‘‘we’’ – ordinary, normal citizens – need to ‘‘reclaim’’ the downtown core. The phrase ‘‘downtown core’’ is clearly metaphorical and symbolic as well as literal. Its specific physical parameters mark the symbolic core of the City’s identity and it is at the center of its self-constitution as a community. That Aboriginal homeless men challenge normative notions of personhood and community was doubled by the shelter’s location in this particular space. So in addition to the clearly articulated notion that the homeless are ‘‘bad for business’’ is the less articulated notion that their presence in the ‘‘downtown core’’ is bad for the ‘‘community.’’ Cohen (1985: 109) notes that communities respond assertively to boundary encroachment because: their members find their identities as individuals through their occupancy of the community’s social space: if outsiders trespass in that space, then its occupants’ own sense of self is felt to be debased and defaced. This sense is always tenuous when the physical and structural boundaries which previously divided the community from the rest of the world are increasingly blurred. It can therefore easily be depicted as under threat: it is a ready means of mobilizing collectivity.

The most extreme construction of a rehabilitation zone I encountered was the proposal that the shelter be built 40 km out of town and that the homeless be transported and forced to remain there until they’ve been ‘‘re-civilized.’’ This was not the view of someone who sent an anonymous letter to the paper or who spoke out in frustration at a public hearing, but of someone who was contributing to the decision-making process; it is thus worth quoting at length. Kent: completely out, uh, if you are right out of town, out of the city and it is like your retreat thing then I think you can keep better control of the people


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Catherine: yep Kent: they are not going to walk 20 miles to get into town, unless they’re really desperate to come into town and have a drink Catherine: right Kent: but you know what, the further removed from the, what they call negative influences Catherine: right Kent: the further removed the better Catherine: the better Kent: the negative influences aren’t just the bars, they’re peer pressure, they’re Catherine: right Kent: everything Catherine: yes, right, ok

[and then later in the interview] Kent: take them way out, I guess that is the ideal Catherine: uh huh Kent: bus them out . . . and keep them there Catherine: uh huh Kent: until they are rehabilitated, then let’s re-enter them back into society with the help of their um, their, um, housing program Catherine: right Kent: the other Catherine: yes, the housing continuum thing, the transitional13 Kent: yeah, then let’s bring them in Catherine: yeah, yeah, the transition homes Kent: yeah, the transition homes Catherine: right Kent: this guy’s cleaned up, he’s doing good, we got him a part-time job at so-and-so’s place, um, we think he’s ready to live in the transition home Catherine: yep Kent: well, let’s move him into the transition home, where there’s eight people living in the home. If it doesn’t work out, let’s take him back out there and let’s train him some more. Let’s retrain him, let’s help these people out. (Kent Brown, non-Native business owner and member of Housing Commission, November 1, 2002)

This thinking mirrors that which informed the establishment of the reserve system in Canada (Carter 1990; Miller 2000), conjuring similar images of containment. As with the reserve system, containment




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refers to removal: removing them from our midst can contain the threat presented by the presence of less-persons in the downtown core. Remove the threat, and received notions of personhood and sociality may resume their status as ‘‘natural.’’ And as with the residential schooling system, containment is also about channeling and discipline. Foucault refers to ‘‘docility’’ as that which ‘‘joins the analysable body to the manipulable body. . . A body is docile . . . that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved’’ (1979: 136). As one decision-maker put it: You gotta process them . . . [We need] a way of helping these folks develop the appropriate . . . [ways] of dealing with the issues that they have in their lives . . . [We have to] try to help them with their addiction, try to give them appropriate kinds of things to . . . work with their time . . . Eventually what we want to do is move them through this process . . . There is this thing that we’ve got to take them through (Don Gibson, non-Native member of Housing Commission, November 4, 2002; emphasis added).

The concern was to move people through and out – out in this case meaning back into society. Thus the homeless were sometimes referred to as ‘‘people in transition’’ (Charlene Donahue, non-Native City Administrator, December 11, 2002). In keeping with the double valence of containment, approaches to ‘‘transition’’ ranged from soft love to tough love, both of which nevertheless entailed physical removal in order to protect the homeless from ‘‘negative influences,’’ such as bars.14 Proposing to locate the shelter 40 km out of town (never, to my knowledge, expressed outside the context of a confidential interview) was the most extreme example of ‘‘tough love’’ I encountered, but there were milder versions of it as well. One respondent noted that the new shelter would be just far enough from the downtown core to make ‘‘life just not quite so easy’’ for its denizens (Tom Jones, non-Native business owner and member of Housing Commission, October 29, 2002); this ‘‘not quite so easy,’’ furthermore, would be positively therapeutic insofar as it could potentially instill a sense of labor and self-discipline. This is a distinctively neoliberal version of ‘‘empowerment’’: get rid of that ‘‘free lunch’’ and encourage people to learn to make their own lunches: Now, [if] you’re going to come crashing every week in here [the new shelter] after a binge or after your welfare check is all spent that’s not going to work . . . We’re going to have something for you or you’re going


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to have to sign on for something and try to improve yourself, do some personal development, before you come back in through this door. . . Let’s expect great things from them. And say, hey, you can’t continue going on like this. Tough love, I guess (Mike O’Connor, non-Native City Councillor, January 9, 2003).

Others portrayed this process of transition as more nurturing, consisting of a menu of therapeutic interventions from which the homeless could ‘‘choose’’: They are going to have a place to go. Everything’s going to be all accessible at that new site . . . ADAC (an alcohol and drug addictions counseling organization) [will] have an office, [there will be] an office for the doctor, nurses, anything that’s there, they’ll even have a classroom so they [can] do . . . anything from re´sume´s to interviews to life skills (Mary Swift River, Native social services work and member of Housing Commission, October 24, 2002).

The approach here was one of opportunity: ‘‘invite’’ the homeless to choose from among various options to improve their lives. Whether in the context of soft love or tough love, however, transformation was seen as possible only when desired by the homeless themselves; tough and soft loves were just different approaches to encouraging this. And in neither case is the homeless person an interlocutor. He (pronoun usage deliberate) remains, as Other, absent as party to the conversation and present only as object (McGrane 1989; Fabian 2002). This is most obvious in the discussion of ‘‘negative influences.’’ Significantly, such ‘‘negative influences’’ included not only opportunities to procure alcohol or other drugs, but also other homeless individuals with bad habits, such as drinking or panhandling – a clear invocation of a deserving/undeserving binary. This designation of the homeless as ‘‘negative influences’’ on each other led to a second level of compartmentalization and containment. Not only were the homeless as a group to be evicted from the (symbolic and actual) downtown core, but they were to be segregated amongst themselves. In contrast to the spatial organization of Victory Mission, in which there was one communal space shared by all residents, program planning for the new shelter emphasized divisions designed to physically compartmentalize and separate off individuals who were ‘‘negative’’ influences from those who were vulnerable to being negatively influenced. The most obvious separation between the intoxicated and the sober was accomplished by segregating ‘‘wet’’ and ‘‘dry’’ beds, an approach informed by the ‘‘shelterization thesis’’ (Hopper 2003: 49) that the homeless eventually




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settle ‘‘into the stuporous regimen of the shelter in the constant company of lost men.’’ Segregation could prevent this from happening to those with the potential to ‘‘successfully’’ move back out into society. Management plans for the new shelter also called for separating women and men. There was a clear feeling among those concerned with shelter management that women did not frequent Victory Mission because they were afraid of the men there; similar points were made about the need to establish separate spaces for women with children (e.g., public hearing, April 15, 2002). This point of view underscores the idea of homeless men as threatening and as free-floaters, outside of any kind of normative social grouping (Passaro 1996). Finally, program plans for the new shelter called for a separation between sleeping areas and the program area, where residents would learn the life skills necessary to their reintroduction into society. Significantly, this program area was referred to as the ‘‘transition zone,’’ invoking images of movement and change. Rather than congregate in unruly groups in the downtown core, then, Native homeless addicts would move through the different spaces of the shelter, representative of stages of transformation/development, as individuals. From the ‘‘wet’’ zones, those select few who had the self-motivation to improve could move to ‘‘dry’’ zones (those who came into the shelter ‘‘dry’’ were already a step ahead); and from there, they could move into the ‘‘transition zone’’ at the opposite end of the building. As with the segregation between ‘‘wet’’ and ‘‘dry’’ and men and women, movement from one zone to the next needed constant monitoring. Accordingly, in all zones, residents would be subject to the surveillance of security personnel who were located strategically to observe all activities in the building – a panopticon-style form of surveillance, complete with its hoped-for encouragement of self-surveillance (Foucault 1979). Again, these various divisions within the shelter worked to encourage a neoliberal individuation of the homeless. On the downside, such individuation potentially functions to undermine the informal social support networks that make it possible for the homeless to survive in the first place (Wolch 1995). As viewed by program planners and homeless advocates, however, such individuation was overwhelmingly positive, extending ‘‘the capacity of individuals to exercise authority over themselves’’ (Rose 1998: 63) to those on the very margins of society. The zone of transformation materialized and enacted by means of the shelter’s location and architectural and program planning was about creating the grounds of possibility for the homeless to realize their own humanity, which, in a neoliberal regime, is about a ‘‘freely’’


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exercised responsibility, self-sufficiency, and autonomy. ‘‘Freedom’’ and ‘‘choice’’ were, of course, constructed in very specific ways by the advocates of personal transformation: [T]hey feel like to give up the street is to give up freedom and they don’t realize they are absolutely not free – they’re not free to go into the mall like you and me, they’re not free to go to a cappuccino bar and get a . . . mochaccino, they’re not free to . . . spend money the way they want because their money, they are forced to spend it on whatever they’re addicted to, but they don’t see it that way (Jane Seale, non-Native social services provider and homeless advocate, December 12, 2002).

The interviewee’s emphasis on the freedom to be a consumer indexes a key attribute of neoliberal personhood: it is the freedom that comes when one is self-sufficient, the fruit of practiced self-discipline. Consumption is also, like work, an obligation attached to citizenship status in consumer society. Thus the project of producing ‘‘subjects of a certain form’’ (Rose 1998: 114) benefits not only those subjects so produced, but also the wider community, as well as (market) society in general; there is congruence between what is good for the homeless and what is good for the ‘‘rest of us.’’ In this sense, there develops simultaneous ‘‘effectiveness for the regulator and happiness for the regulated’’ (Rose 1998: 122). Focusing on the transformation of the homeless into proper social beings – self-sufficient, self-regulating, and consumer-oriented – represents not only a recapitulation of dominant discourses of race/culture and rugged individualism, but also the invocation of alternative discourses of community and care – albeit neoliberal-inflected (infected?) ones. Although I have argued that moves to transform homeless addicted Native men reflect a denial both of their credibility as persons and of the validity of alternative ways of being in the world, the transformative goals of the new shelter also reflect an assertion of a shared humanity and an invitation to participate in it wholly. Certainly, this would be the interpretation of those who supported the new shelter; for example: A healthy community looks after those that are less fortunate. A healthy community realizes where the value is in looking after those who need help, because if you don’t . . . you create walls, and you create problems, and your resources will go to repairing the damage, but not solving the problem (Dorothy Wilson, non-Native City Councillor, December 3, 2002).

Clearly, then, there were counter-discourses to the constructions of homeless Native addicted men as Others who needed to be simply




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evicted from the social order – discourses that focused on their humanity, and on helping them to achieve more productive, happier lives.

Conclusions The care proffered to the homeless in Woodridge is geared to transforming the homeless person into someone who can fit into society as it is currently being reconstituted. The Native addicted homeless man represents the quintessential non-self-governing individual and, as such, challenges basic neoliberal tenets of economic and social organization, which in turn rest on particular assumptions regarding the nature of human beings. On the other hand, Native addicted homeless men are useful precisely because they serve a demarcative purpose – albeit one that resides in their repellent qualities. The question now has to do with the possibility of conversion to a prairie/rugged-individual inflected neoliberal, self-governing, responsible personhood – a question closely mirroring earlier, seventeenth- to nineteenth-century preoccupations with conversions of non-European Others to Christianity, or reason, or models of ‘‘progress’’ (McGrane 1989). In this context, what is recapitulated are earlier justifications of the reserve and residential schooling systems, with all their restrictions on Native mobility and practices. It is on the basis of the eviction of those who fail to fit the model, of their conversion, or of their temporary eviction and transformation that the model is asserted as normative, or, even better, as natural. The eviction/transformation of homeless Native addicted men is thus a form of praxis by means of which we constitute ourselves (Fabian 2002) as persons who are self-sufficient and industrious, and who practice a sociality that has, in a neoliberal context, been reworked in terms of consumption. While contemporary norms of personhood and sociality take on a particularly Canadian prairie valence in Woodridge, they also articulate smoothly with post-Keynesian neoliberal tenets, and take on heightened salience in the current economic climate. The ideal self-sufficient, selfgoverning neoliberal subject has a strong family resemblance to the rugged individual of the prairies who takes care of himself (pronoun usage deliberate) and his own and keeps out of other people’s business – and who never would have developed dependency on the state in the first place. It is not a far jump, then, from prairie notions of rugged individualism to a neoliberal nirvana in which possessive individuals go about the business of maximizing outcomes by means of the free exchange of goods and services in a capitalist free-market economy. What is required in both


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cases is the construction/regulation of space in such a way as to embody/ create specific possibilities of being and acting and erase others. The annihilation of particular public spaces as spaces of survival, and of bodily function and reproduction, is part and parcel of this productive/ repressive process (see N. Smith 1993, 1996; D. Mitchell 1997). While Aboriginals have always had the dubious honor of occupying the position of Other against which the citizens of Woodridge as a community have defined themselves, the always-disturbing presence of groups of Native male addicts in the downtown core has become increasingly unsettling in recent years, as the town struggles with the negative impact of neoliberal governance on employment, housing, and welfare, and as the Woodridge versions of rugged individualism and industriousness articulate with neoliberal imaginings of the person as self-contained, entrepreneurial, and oriented to consumption. In this context, this particular group of homeless, inhabiting the downtown core, became symbolic repositories of all that is wrong; they became matter out of place. ‘‘The primitive,’’ Trouillot (1991: 35) writes, ‘‘has become terrorist, refugee, freedom fighter, opium and coca grower, or parasite.’’ In Woodridge, the ‘‘primitive’’ has both become something else – a dangerous parasite embodying the antithesis of neoliberal personhood – and remained ‘‘primitive’’ in the traditional sense of backward and uncivilized. Homeless Native men, modern-day ‘‘primitives,’’ are the ugly underbelly of neoliberal ‘‘progress.’’ In keeping with the rhetoric of neoliberalism, however, including that accompanying both macro-level welfare state restructuring and local imaginings of how to run the new shelter, at least some of the homeless, suffering as they do from a Keynesian-induced dependence, have the potential to kick the habit, thereby transforming themselves into self-governing agents fit to occupy social space. The location and organization of the new shelter, in contrast with the old, embody just such a transformative effort, which works simultaneously to re-form those among the homeless who are re-formable, and to remind the rest of us – from a safe distance – of who we naturally are.

Acknowledgments I thank Doreen Indra, Ryan Heavy Head, Carol Williams, and especially Kim England and Kevin Ward for their constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this chapter. I am also grateful to Catherine Gannon and Michael McCarthy for their skills in transcription.




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Notes 1 First Nations is a uniquely Canadian referent for persons of Aboriginal descent, who are also referred to as First Nations, Aboriginal, or Native. I use these terms interchangeably, with a preference for Native, reflecting local usage among both Natives and non-Natives. 2 Canada’s reserve system was instituted in the early to mid-nineteenth century. During this period, parcels of land were allocated to different Bands, to which members were restricted until the mid-1960s (see Carter 1990; Miller 2000). 3 All place and personal names are pseudonyms. I do, however, indicate the ethnicity and social location of participants, although it should be noted that the Native status of a participant does not automatically indicate that her/his speech is representative of a putatively ‘‘authentic’’ and singular ‘‘Native perspective,’’ as is the local view. There are, of course, a number of ‘‘Native perspectives.’’ Moreover, the larger communicative context of the debate (reflecting the local and national history of Native/non-Native relations), and thus of my research, was one distorted by power asymmetries, producing what Habermas (1984/1987) refers to as systematically distorted communication. It is thus crucial to keep in mind that any ‘‘Native perspectives’’ included herein have been produced in a white-dominated institutional and discursive context. 4 The emphasis here was on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), alcoholism, or other drug addiction. This categorization reflects not only biomedical diagnoses – themselves culturally embedded – but also more blatant and transparent stereotypes, notably ‘‘drunken Indian’’ (see Braroe 1975). 5 By rugged individualism I mean a philosophy of the individual as selfmotivated and self-reliant, or, as Hsu (1983: 4) puts it, a philosophy in which ‘‘one is not only self-sufficient as a matter of fact but . . . must strive toward it as a militant ideal.’’ In qualifying a prairie version of rugged individualism, I wish to contextualize the local manifestation of rugged individualism in relation a local reliance on cattle and agriculture. 6 The residential schooling system, a cornerstone of Canadian assimilationist policy, was established in the 1840s and not phased out until the late 1960s (Miller 2000). 7 The choice of where to conduct participant observation and whom to interview reflects my interest in how dominant society constructs the homeless and homelessness, and how these constructions inform proposed solutions to the ‘‘problem.’’ Accordingly, I highlight the perspectives and actions of those whose views have authoritative status, and who therefore influence the context within which homeless people in Woodridge have to live and the kinds of services to which they will or will not have access.


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8 Gowan (2000) also mentions this, although not in relation to the onlookers, but rather in relation to the stigmatized themselves – in her case, homeless recyclers. 9 As in a number of the excerpts included herein, interviewees who were both non-Native and housed often incorporated me in the category of ‘‘us’’ as opposed to ‘‘them.’’ Sometimes this was explicit, as in this excerpt, and other times this was implicit, as when Kent Brown, a non-Native business owner and member of the Housing Commission, discussed the placement of a shelter 40 km outside of town (see pages 213–14). 10 This reflects general trends in urban planning whereby public space shrinks (Davis 1990), and in which what public space remains is limited to ‘‘people who do not look poor’’ (Gowan 2000: 79). 11 Goffman makes a similar point in Stigma (1963), as does Braroe (1975), although in the current neoliberal context the assault on non-market Others (Maskovsky 2001) has been intensified. 12 Desjarlais (1997) further explores the focus in these popular images on the free flow of bodily fluids usually kept in check: blood, mucus, saliva. Douglas (1966: 150) points out that these bodily secretions represent simultaneously the vulnerability of the margins and the transgression of boundaries/borders. 13 The Housing Commission developed the idea of a ‘‘housing continuum’’ to refer to the need not only for adequate shelter for the homeless, but also for ‘‘transitional’’ housing arrangements (transitional home, rental) between shelter and home ownership. 14 Although the new shelter site is across the street from a bar, the Housing Commission did not consider it a sufficiently ‘‘negative influence’’ to outweigh the benefits of the chosen site, perhaps because it is a whitedominated sports bar – a telling illustration of how segregation operates in Woodridge.



9 Co-constituting ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’: Political Projects and Globalizing Governmentalities in Aotearoa/New Zealand Wendy Larner, Richard Le Heron, and Nicholas Lewis

This chapter challenges existing accounts of neoliberalization. Notwithstanding recent calls for greater attention to the diverse historical geographies of neoliberalism (Peck 2004), the analytical emphasis in most critical social science accounts of neoliberalization remains on describing universalizing, totalizing, and disembodied processes that manifest themselves in similar ways in different places. We draw on the New Zealand experience of ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ to develop a conceptual argument that neoliberalization is more usefully understood as an ad hoc, post facto rationalization in which connections are made across political projects that were initially quite discrete and even contradictory. In our analysis we show that these projects have different origins, engage diverse actors, are premised on distinctive understandings of the problems of the current context, and operate at multiple spatialities and temporalities. We develop this argument in an interrogation of five political projects; namely, globalization, knowledge economy/knowledge society, sustainability, creative industries, and social development.


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WENDY LARNER, RICHARD LE HERON, AND NICHOLAS LEWIS

Seen together, these projects represent 10 years of policy and programmatic innovation in the economic, environmental, cultural, and social arenas. This chapter shows how these political projects have been differently understood at different times, and then explores what this means for theoretical understandings of neoliberalization. Globalization, for example, began as a discussion about accessing global markets and expanding flows of goods (increasing trade) and capital (attracting foreign direct investment), but is now the basis for a new economic and social understanding in which regions, communities, and individuals are to be aligned into a stance that will allow them to participate in globalizing processes. The knowledge economy/knowledge society discourse marked a new role for the state, initially understood in narrow technocratic terms but then broadened to include issues of social, cultural, and environmental sustainability. Sustainability itself has moved from being a discussion about biophysical processes to a collaborative technique involving rethinking the relationships between environment, economy, society, and culture. Creative industries represent a reimagining of the links between culture, creativity, and economic life, and now form a new basis for both urban regeneration and regional development. Finally, under the remit of social development, issues of poverty and social marginalization are now being addressed through the active fostering of new relationships between government departments, local institutions, and community organizations. We substantiate these claims by developing a brief genealogy of the five political projects; tracking their movements through political, organizational, and policy arenas. We show that these genealogies do not always traverse the expected areas; sometimes they involve serendipitous encounters, and they have occasionally resulted in dead ends. Only now have these co-constitutive projects begun to cohere into a political program. We use the qualifying term ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ to refer to this political program for two reasons, one theoretical and the other empirical. First, the conjunction of political projects we describe may or may not coalesce into a coherent ‘‘spatio-temporal fix’’ or an integrated ‘‘mode of regulation’’ (Jessop 2002b). Second, this observation is confirmed by the fifth1 Labour government’s claim that neoliberalism is over (Clark 2002), despite its continued use of discourses and technologies of government developed under neoliberalism. This reveals an incomplete rupture with neoliberalism and suggests the absence of a definitively new governmental formation. The chapter concludes by returning to discussions of the theoretical status of neoliberalization. Although neoliberalism has indeed become



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the ‘‘common-sense of the times’’ (Peck and Tickell 2002: 381), our understanding of the processes by which this has occurred shapes our readings of the scope and content of possible political interventions. In this context, it is more useful to see the current moment as involving innovation, experimentation, and contestation rather than the rolling out of a pre-constituted political program. The chapter concludes that with an improved theoretical understanding of the multiple spaces and subjects associated with neoliberalization, it should be possible to facilitate new forms of political engagement.

Globalization, Neoliberalism, Neoliberalization Neoliberalism is increasingly replacing globalization as a central analytical category in many social science disciplines, including economic geography, political economy, and political science. Whereas previously globalization was understood as a transformation in the material structure of the world, more recently social scientists have begun to examine how globalization is ‘‘made.’’ This new understanding is manifest in the rise of process-based approaches in which globalization is variously understood as a political project (McMichael 2000), ideology (Hay and Marsh 2000), and/or discourse (Gibson-Graham 1996; Kingfisher 2002). In this context it is perhaps not surprising that discussions of globalization are now being linked to those of neoliberalism by many of those interested in political power through the use of the term neoliberal globalization or, as is the case in this book, neoliberalization. This term has also allowed analysts of globalization to distinguish between different forms of globalization, delineating the activities of market-oriented international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank from, for example, those of the diffuse oppositional social movements and political projects that make up the antiglobalization movement. However, the content of the term neoliberalism is itself mutating. In the past decade, understandings of neoliberalism have gradually broadened, from that of a political philosophy based on writings of Hayek and Friedman, to a political project premised on marketization and a minimal state, to a new form of economic and social rule premised on ‘‘government at a distance’’ (Larner 2000). Analyses of neoliberalism have also begun to articulate with, and colonize, debates which began as discrete endeavors. Examples of these debates include those around Third Wayism (Rose 2000), social governance (Newman 2001), and


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good governance programs (Porter and Craig 2004). There is also an emergent discussion of new subjects and spaces, manifest in terms such as ‘‘neoliberal citizenship’’ (Schild 2000; K. Mitchell 2003; Sparke 2004) and ‘‘neoliberalizing spaces’’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002a; Chase 2002). Today, neoliberalism can be variously understood as a set of political ideas, a hegemonic ideology and governmentality, and increasing numbers of analysts are working across these literatures in their accounts. The spatialities and temporalities of neoliberalism are also changing. Initially the focus was on neoliberalism as a nation-state project, most commonly in those countries that had experienced dramatic state sector reform programs, notably those in Latin America (Chile, Mexico, Argentina) and the group of countries formerly understood as liberal welfare states (United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia). More recently, neoliberalism has been used interchangeably with the term globalization to refer to the process of opening up national economies to global organizations such as the IMF and World Bank. Consequently, part of the debate about the significance of neoliberalism has shifted in focus from the domestic politics of particular country case studies to globalizing processes driven by international institutions and actors. At the same time, urban and regional neoliberalisms have begun to be explored. These accounts are sensitizing us to the need to analyze the ways in which neoliberalism is mutating; to identify and examine the different forms of neoliberalism over time and space, to trace the flows and networks through which neoliberal discourses and techniques have been disseminated, as well as to interrogate the various forms in which neoliberalism has been instantiated and embodied. To date, however, little is known about these issues. Just as with the early accounts of globalization, in which the focus was on the effects of globalization rather than the multifaceted, situated, and embodied processes that make up this phenomenon, so too does the current literature on neoliberalism tend to focus on the effects of marketization for particular places and people. Thus, despite the unmistakable shift in terminology from globalization to neoliberalism, and the recognition that neoliberalism itself is mutating, neoliberalism is still most often used as a shorthand term to refer to the preference for market provisioning of goods and services and the emphasis is on demonstrating the new forms of economic and social inequality that ensue from this approach. Consequently, critical social scientists tend to share an understanding that these processes are inherently problematic. At present we tell and retell stories of unrelenting doom; of the global hegemony of market logic, the




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decline of the nation-state, the erosion of democracy, and the dissolution of the social. This chapter challenges these assumptions, both theoretically and politically. We use Arturo Escobar’s (1995) phrase ‘‘post-structuralist political economy’’ as a shorthand way to characterize our theoretical approach. Our account draws from both the political economy literatures on globalization and governance, and feminist and poststructuralist accounts of discourse and subjectivity. We have found the neo-Foucauldian literature on governmentality a particularly helpful way to analyze the changing content of political discourses and governmental strategies. This literature has given rise to an innovative reading of neoliberalism, in which neoliberalism is not understood as a philosophy or an ideology, nor as the most recent manifestation of a contested capitalist agenda (as in most accounts of neoliberalization), but rather as an assemblage of rationalities, strategies, technologies, and techniques that allow ‘‘government at a distance’’ (Barry, Osborne, and Rose 1996; Rose 1999). It is this theoretical starting point that encourages us to conceptualize the emergence of new state forms and governing practices as an open and active assemblage of multiple and contingently related political projects, each characterized by a distinctive genealogy. But nor is this an orthodox governmentality analysis in which the emphasis is on the governmental rather than the political. In contrast, we are concerned to center contradiction and contestation. In this respect we are in accord with Valverde (1996: 367), who identifies the terrain of governmentality as ‘‘a set of tools, an approach, which can be the prelude or the accompaniment to a number of different projects, intellectual or political.’’ We are also convinced by the claims of feminist theorists that it is important to consider the ‘‘performativity’’ of our theoretical approaches (Yeatman 1994; Gibson-Graham 1996). In developing theoretical accounts premised on disembodied economic forces and global homogenization, many well-intentioned intellectual and political projects inadvertently reinscribe the very configurations they would want to contest. Indeed, it is for precisely this reason that we are very wary of monolithic stories of globalization, neoliberalism, and neoliberalization. Rather than searching for an overarching analytical category, or assuming direct and/or determining relationships between different aspects of a single process, our intention is to make visible the multifaceted nature of the processes involved, thereby opening up possibilities for multiple political interventions. Finally, our preference is to work theoretical arguments in relation to particular cases. This commitment to empirical research is completely integral to our broader intellectual trajectory.


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Neoliberalization in New Zealand We focus on neoliberalization from the analytical vantage point of New Zealand. This country is a particularly good place from which to think about contemporary political economic geographies. International attention has focused on New Zealand not only because of the depth and rapidity of the reforms instituted by successive governments since 1984, but also because this case appeared to involve the direct application of a clearly delineated theoretical model (see, for examples, Schwartz 1994; Nagel 1998). Moreover, whereas during the 1980s and 1990s New Zealand was an early example of the move from social democracy to neoliberalism, manifest in widespread economic liberalization, more recently the fifth Labour government, like its international Third Way counterparts, has explicitly moved away from ‘‘more-market’’ approaches. As with its neoliberal predecessor, the ‘‘new New Zealand Experiment’’ is also receiving international attention as an extraordinary attempt to combine a negotiated inclusion in the global economy with a strong commitment to social diversity. What are the choices for a small open economy in a globalizing world? How might a viable economic base be re-created in the context of new forms of international competitiveness based on knowledge, innovation, and creativity? How might economic and social relations be reconnected when the former is oriented toward increasing participation in the globalizing economy and the latter is increasingly premised on localized and particularistic forms of community? In this chapter we further our analysis of the political formation we have called elsewhere ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ (Lewis and Prince 2004; Larner 2005, 2007). We take the name of this political formation from a speech made by Prime Minister Helen Clark in late 2002, in which she stated to the London School of Economics that neoliberalism in New Zealand was over (Clark 2002). Of course, she is not alone in claiming this; international commentators have also begun to discuss political possibilities ‘‘Beyond Neoliberalism’’ (Touraine 2001) and ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ (Tabb 2003). In the case of New Zealand it is quite clear that this new approach does not mark a return to the nation-state-centered understandings of the postwar period in which economy and society were imagined as singular and coterminous. Contemporary policies continue to draw on highly economistic language and are tied to increasing participation in the globalizing economy for both men and women. At the same time, they involve the active building of new




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relationships with nontraditional actors. Environment, sustainability, and culture have entered into the domain of economic policy, and community, partnership, and ethnic diversity now feature centrally in social policy. Whereas our previous discussions focus on specific aspects of this political formation, here we take the broad sweep of the neoliberal period in New Zealand – the 20 years since economic liberalization began in 1984 – and show that rather than representing the imposition of a coherent neoliberal political program it is possible to identify multiple political projects that have only recently and retrospectively been identified as component parts of a new governmental strategy by the fifth Labour government. We base our theoretical argument on a sustained empirical research program that spans economic, environmental, cultural, and social domains, and includes both joint and individual research projects. This research allows us to explicitly discuss five of these political projects: globalization, knowledge economy/knowledge society, sustainability, creative industries, and social development.2 Seen together, the genealogies of these five political projects show that the projects now understood to make up ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ emerged from the continual imaging and reimagining of the diverse actors involved, their taken-for-granted assumptions about the socio-spatial and political context in which they act, their privileging of particular objects and subjects of governance, the forms of expertise they mobilize, and the practices they engage in. But first we must offer a note of caution. There are many of our colleagues who would emphasize coherence in the New Zealand case; a fit with a universal model. In strong contrast to our approach, their aim is to show how in each of the political projects we discuss, economic categories are gradually colonizing educational, environmental, cultural, and social arenas (see, for examples, Peters 2001; Kelsey 2002; Baragwanath 2004). There are also those, from both the Left and Right, who would see the political projects we discuss as simply rhetorical ploys concealing important continuities in the unfettering of market processes (Curtis 2002; Kerr 2002). Instead our ambition is to highlight the contradictory and multifaceted nature of the current political moment and come to terms with that; to investigate and theorize it accordingly. Our claim is that it is only through both interpretation and interpenetration that these political projects have begun to take on sameness rather than difference, alignment rather than divergence. In the sections that follow we elaborate on this claim by identifying how these political projects were initially named, thereby entering into the policy process,


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then explore the multiple reworkings of the projects by developing a brief chronology for each, showing how over time they came to be understood as integral aspects of the new political formation.

Globalization All too often we too easily forget that neoliberalism and globalization did not initially go hand in hand. Neoliberalism, as understood in the country cases that were the focus of the 1980s, was about the introduction of market instruments in order to increase efficiency. This explains the emphasis on the deregulation and privatization of state assets during this period. The idea was that greater use of market mechanisms would increase responsiveness and consumer satisfaction. The emphasis on market mechanisms was not, in and of itself, linked to globalization. Indeed, during this period markets were usually understood to be bounded by the national economy. This can be seen clearly in the case of New Zealand where it was not understood that the most likely purchasers of privatized state assets were likely to come from offshore (Larner 1997). Nor had the different threads of what we now recognize as neoliberalization been named and integrated into a coherent political project – either by proponents or critics. Even the World Bank acknowledges that it did not understand in advance the full implications of the so-called Washington Consensus as it was worked into myriad projects of globalization in the efforts to implement it (Stiglitz 2002). The term globalization was not even used to describe the new external economic linkages – particularly in financial and business service sectors – that began to emerge during this period. Although powerful economic interests were at work in the Washington Consensus, it was only after the fact that the political projects of deregulation and privatization, based on negation of the role of the state and public provisioning, dissolved into a different project – that of globalization. While marketization dates back to the early 1980s, it was only in the early 1990s that globalization explicitly entered political lexicons. Initially this was presented in terms that negated the role of an interventionist state; because of globalization ‘‘there is no alternative’’ (TINA) to further opening up of the domestic economy. Gradually this became a more proactive strategy made manifest in efforts to attract capital – in the form of increased international investment, and then labor – in the form of highly skilled migrants. This new way of thinking about the national economy (Hindess 1998) involved an emphasis on improving




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international competitiveness, and globalization emerged as the political strategy for achieving this. Rather than protecting the domestic economy, the aim was linking domestic activities into the flows and networks of global capital. Initially this was premised on a vision that New Zealand would serve as an English-speaking platform for multinational companies seeking to enter the Asia-Pacific. Opening up the domestic economy and ensuring that ‘‘the fundamentals were right’’ was to attract additional foreign direct investment into greenfield operations. Larner (2000, 2001) explored these themes in her research on the New Zealand Call Centre Attraction Initiative, showing how the constitution of a lowwage flexible labor force was critical to this vision. By the late 1990s, however, this formulation of the globalization project had begun to change. A new discussion about the need to seek out niche market, high value activities emerged. It was at this point that the globalization project began to be explicitly linked to a new political project; that of the knowledge economy, in which a new emphasis was placed on the role of technology in overcoming New Zealand’s longstanding problem of geographical distance from large global markets. It was also during the 1990s that globalization came to be understood as an embodied project. Demographers have shown that initially the opening up of New Zealand’s migration policy was understood in purely economic terms; as another means of attracting the capital and skills needed by New Zealand’s restructuring economy (Bedford, Ho, and Lidgard 2002). The fact that this would also mean increasing cultural and ethnic diversity was not well recognized. Consequently, throughout the 1990s new migrants to New Zealand, particularly those from ‘‘nontraditional’’ source countries in Asia and Africa, too often found themselves the targets of hostile media commentary and political wrangling. Nor was there any government support for much-needed English language courses and other settlement services. It was only late in the decade that the political possibilities associated with increased cultural diversity began to be actively explored, initially because of economic motivations (the ability to access new export markets, notably in China), but subsequently in terms of the broader benefits associated with a more diverse population. Rather than being seen as problematic, cultural diversity is now explicitly discussed as the ‘‘human face of globalization’’ and is ‘‘recognized and respected’’ by central and local government alike. Since the 1990s governmental understandings of globalization have continued to deepen. In the context of ‘‘After Neoliberalism,’’ both economic and social policies are framed in terms of increasing global connectedness. Government funding for the building of international


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relationships has proliferated across a range of sectors, including business, environmental, educational, and cultural domains. Indeed, globalization has transformed from being a highly contested political strategy, aimed at stimulating economic growth, into a governmental rationality; a taken-for-granted ‘‘context’’ in which economic and social activities are understood to take place. Correspondingly, not only are export-oriented industries now the focus of the globalization project, so too are regions, cities, communities, and indeed citizens themselves. The globalization project, we are arguing, is no longer simply a means of increasing international competitiveness; it has become an all-encompassing project in which broad-based participation in global flows and networks is understood as imperative. This translation should not be understood as either an inevitable working out of history or as the playing out of preformed (or even skillfully reworked) political programs associated with political parties. We point instead to articulations with multiple other emergent political projects.

Knowledge Economy/Knowledge Society The knowledge economy project dates from the early 1990s. In part, it is underpinned by a preoccupation with relative international performance. As New Zealand was shown to be slipping further and further down various Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) league tables, new strategies to promote economic growth were actively explored. Reflecting an emphasis on science and technology in the OECD formulations, the Ministry of Research Science and Technology produced a report in 1992 called Investing in Science for Our Future. The report identified relatively low numbers of science and technology graduates in New Zealand, and low levels of investment in research, science, and development. It argued that increasing the number of science and technology graduates would allow New Zealand to move away from its traditional reliance on primary industries and establish clusters of ‘‘added value’’ and ‘‘high technology’’ industries. Technological determinism dominated these early discussions of the knowledge economy; greater emphasis on information and communications technologies (ICTs) was understood to be the key means by which New Zealand would ‘‘overcome the tyranny of distance’’ and ‘‘release the creative potential and knowledge’’ embodied in people. It was only in the late 1990s that these discussions gained political traction. The widespread naming of the knowledge economy project was




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linked to reworked conceptions of human capital and made manifest in a series of new initiatives. The first of these was the 1998 Foresight Project in which the Minister of Research, Science and Technology asked groups with common interests to develop future visions for their sectors and to identify the knowledge, skills, and technology that would be needed to fulfill these visions. This was followed by the 1999 Bright Futures package designed to encourage a focus on ‘‘enterprise and innovation’’ in New Zealand. Elements of this package included an elite doctoral scholarship fund, the establishment of the New Economy Research Fund directed at targeted industry research, additional funding for postdoctoral scholarships, and the establishment of the Innovate New Zealand Council. Throughout this period, knowledge continued to be understood as a factor of production, closely tied to the need for increased scientific and technical skills, rather than a more general concept. In the period immediately following the 1999 election of the fifth Labour government, the emphasis remained on this economic formulation. New aspects included an explicit focus on proactive industry support, reflecting the interest in learning from the experiences of countries regarded as successful small-country knowledge economies, such as Ireland, Finland, and Israel. Not only did this mark a distinct departure from the noninterventionist ‘‘level playing field’’ economic formulations that dominated the 1990s, in that it signaled an active role for a facilitative state which would assist industries, regions, and firms to adjust to a new political economic environment, but the new emphasis on industry policy also triggered a political debate about the relative merits of supporting scientists or entrepreneurs. The 2001 and 2003 KnowledgeWave Conferences marked another turning point in the knowledge economy project (Prince 2003). Jointly sponsored by government, the University of Auckland, and the private sector, the conferences aimed to promote a ‘‘national debate’’ about the economic future of the country. The experts paraded at the two conferences epitomized the mutating knowledge economy/knowledge society strategies and resulting tensions. Prior to the first conference, efforts to move the debate away from a narrow focus on science and technology were remarkably unsuccessful. It was not until the conference itself that the discursive terrain shifted markedly. After the contributions of highprofile keynote speakers, most notably New Zealander expatriate Jilly Evans of Merck Research Laboratories in the US who paid explicit tribute to both her parents and school teachers in explaining her success as a scientist, a broader understanding of knowledge began to emerge.


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The sea change in thinking that ensued was again underlined by the 2003 conference. Not only was there a clear shift in nomenclature from the knowledge economy to the knowledge society, so too was there a move from a strident message about economic growth, the OECD, and international competitiveness toward a message about socioeconomic inclusiveness, human capital, and leadership. Today, this political project is usually unequivocally referred to as the knowledge society. Progress toward a knowledge society is to be achieved by building relationships that will allow the sharing of knowledge between all sectors, including government, business, and communities. At the same time, individuals are expected to continually compare themselves and their organizations in a wider sphere of reference. Of all the political projects we examine, it is the knowledge economy/knowledge society project that has underlined a new reliance on comparative techniques which sustain the accelerating momentum that underpins the relentless pursuit of international competitiveness. These calculative practices encourage places and people to constantly reinvent themselves, thus helping bring about the ever-changing ‘‘fast’’ subjects (Thrift 2000) and accelerated performance that underpin both the knowledge economy and the knowledge society projects. What is novel about the current period is that these international comparisons now extend well beyond firms, into economic and social life more generally. It is not at all unusual, for example, to find community organizations ‘‘benchmarking’’ themselves against their international counterparts in the pursuit of ‘‘best practice.’’

Sustainability New Zealand’s ‘‘performance’’ in the sustainability stakes is a constructed and contested subject, bound into the political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental fabric of the nation. When Prime Minister Helen Clark arrived at the Johannesburg Sustainability Summit in 2002, she was reputedly shocked by the gap between much of New Zealand’s practice and ‘‘best practice’’ elsewhere in many spheres of sustainability. Within a year the government had released two key reports, the Sustainable Development Programme of Action (2003) and Education Priorities for New Zealand (2003). Curiously, neither document gave education a role in sustainable development. More recently, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (2004) argued that without some fundamental changes in education’s legislative,




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organizational, and learning frameworks in respect of perceptions, understandings, and practices, any outcomes represented as sustainable development are most likely to result from chance or be cosmetic at best. At the same time, the aspiration was expressed that ‘‘We could, and should, be the first in the world to become a truly environmentally sustainable nation . . . As a signatory to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) that begins in 2005, New Zealand has a huge opportunity to show global leadership in this area’’ (Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment 2004: 4–5). Sustainability as an idea has appeared in New Zealand in a number of guises over more than a quarter century. Early interest began with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) State of the Environment conference in 1972 and the subsequent formulation by UNESCO/UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) of goals and intentions for environmental education in the later 1970s at Belgrade (1975) and Tbilisi (1977). While there was pressure to include environmental education in the curriculum review process, this failed to materialize. Meanwhile the governmental reforms under Labour included an attempt to install sustainable development in the new omnibus resource management legislation replacing the Town and Country Planning Act 1977. The eventual Resource Management Act, passed by the national government in 1991, replaced sustainable development with sustainable management. This narrowed view of sustainability was further constrained by local government practice that restricted the interpretation of the environment to biophysical processes. Crucially, for over a decade, regional and local government mounted a series of educational initiatives aimed mainly at the primary and secondary school levels, which have focused on environmental processes with a growing cultural inflection driven by Treaty of Waitangi3 obligation, to the exclusion of social, economic, and political dimensions. With the passing of the Local Government Act 2002, which involved a renewed commitment to community development, sustainable development regained center stage. Sustainability is, of course, an ambiguous object of governance. Like all key words, sustainability is doing different work in different contexts to what might initially be assumed. This comes from how sustainability narratives are constituted, out of different situations, by differently positioned actors. It comes from who is mobilized, and how they are mobilized into engagement, to confront issues and to answer questions. It comes from how the tradeoffs and effects around more and less


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sustainable practices are framed. The general point is that sustainability as an idea is sufficiently intelligible and attractive to most to be the justification for opening new political spaces. What is the form and content of these openings? And what governmental and political techniques are being applied in the name of sustainability? In 2003 a ‘‘sustainability action plan’’ was endorsed by interdepartmental initiatives that had become embedded in New Zealand’s Public Good Science Funding framework.4 These initiatives included placing sustainability on the science agenda and, more importantly, developing procedures that were consistent with sustainability as a goal. These procedures focused on grounding sustainability research in public and private investment processes, as these were seen as crucial sites where changes could be transformative. Although this direction still formed a productivist mapping of sustainability, it allowed consideration of a research framework and research practices that would facilitate, rather than close off, research in sustainability. The emerging principles of research governance linked to this funding drew heavily on neoliberal models of contract, blending them into sustainability approaches and maxims. Collaboration has emerged as the mechanism for exploring economy, environment, society, and culture in a holistic fashion. A premium has been placed on measurable outcomes, for endusers, from knowledge constituted through collaborative research with different stakeholders and interests. Three examples illustrate the new generation of research under the sustainability umbrella. First, a comparative assessment of New Zealand’s traditional agri-food supply chains (those of dairying, meat, apples, and kiwi fruit) in terms of conventional management and integrated production management is designed to document the potentialities and limits of these differing approaches. Second, transition options for more sustainable pathways of investment in land development in Auckland are being identified and explored with the Auckland Regional Council through the use of economic and ecological information modeled in a framework of input–output representing transactions of goods and services and energy and materials flows. Third, the marine and estuarine portfolio of Foundation of Research Science and Technology is being revamped in an attempt to move fisheries management toward fisheries plans through explicit collaboration in terms of ecosystems as well as single fish species. In each case the research embraces institutional experimentation, to establish governance structures that enable negotiation of a sustainable industry pathway.




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Creative Industries The creative industries have recently been identified as one of three ‘‘enabling sectors’’ offering New Zealand the greatest potential for economic growth and wealth creation (Office of the Prime Minister 2001). Unlike the globalization and knowledge economy/knowledge society projects, the creative industries project is more explicitly ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ and nation building, albeit in a manner qualitatively different from the national building project of Keynesian Welfarism (Lewis and Prince 2004). It is also of a much more recent vintage. Only five years ago, sector representatives were complaining that ‘‘While there is significant government and opposition thinking about the knowledge economy strategy and talk about ‘creativity, culture and innovation’ . . . there was virtually no mention of art, the cultural industries, how this workforce might be constructed or what role they might play in this economy’’ (Newman 1999). Rather, in the late 1990s creativity and culture were understood to be fundamentally about nation building. It was in the mid-1990s that the cultural sector was first made visible by the Department of Statistics in the New Zealand Framework for Cultural Statistics (1995). The aim of this statistical program was to ‘‘improve the range and quality of information available on the cultural sector, particularly for the development of cultural policy, for future planning, for monitoring the sector’s progress and performance, for marketing the sector’s products and services, and for use in seeking funding and sponsorship support’’ (Department of Statistics 1995). According to the Department of Statistics, the framework was based on a ‘‘cultural industry model relating to the cycle of production and consumption of cultural goods and services.’’ In the model, statistics are presented in categories relating to: . creators – people undertaking a cultural activity in order to produce a cultural good or service; . organizations – institutions, companies, and other organizations involved in the cultural production or distribution process; . products – cultural goods and services produced as a result of cultural activities being undertaken; . consumers – individuals and organizations consuming cultural products.


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Despite the increased visibility of the cultural sector that resulted, it was not until the election of the fifth Labour government that culture explicitly entered into public policy debates. In her inaugural speech, Prime Minister Helen Clark emphasized the premium she placed on arts and culture, assuming the newly expanded portfolio of Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage in addition to the Office of Prime Minister, and announcing significant increases in public spending in these areas. For her, the emphasis was on building and nurturing the arts for their own sake and for the contribution they could make to a ‘‘strong assertion of New Zealand’s identity as a unique and creative nation’’ (Clark 2000). While there was some recognition of culture as industry, it was largely in the context of the need for sustainable employment conditions. For example, the contested Heart of the Nation report (Ministry of Culture and Heritage 2000) focused on ‘‘cultural recovery’’ of the sector, rather than economic growth. It is only recently that the creative industries have been understood as a growth industry. Most immediately, the new understanding of creativity is associated with the growing concern that the New Zealand economy was being ‘‘hollowed out’’ as major firms, New Zealand and foreign owned alike, moved offshore. By the late 1990s it had been largely accepted that New Zealand’s economic future would depend on fostering and growing small- to medium-size enterprises (SMEs). In keeping with a new policy designed to promote ‘‘knowledge-based’’ industries, in 2001 Industry New Zealand named five industries to be targeted as part of its new economic development strategy: music and film production; fashion, apparel and textiles; tourism; light manufacturing and communications; and bio-technology. These industries collectively were described as ‘‘job-rich, high-skill, high-value export industries’’ (Burleigh Evatt and NZIER 2001: 1). The new understanding of activities such as music, film, and fashion was underwritten by the success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, and by the identification of the ‘‘creative industries’’ as one of three ‘‘enabling sectors’’ in the high profile Growth and Innovation Framework launched in 2002. Creative industries further increased their profile when they were articulated to urban regeneration strategies. In large part, this new emphasis was triggered by the visit of Richard Florida in 2003 as part of the second KnowledgeWave Conference. In Florida’s view, the economic potential of creativity is clear. As he explained to the participants in the KnowledgeWave Conference, ‘‘What we are seeing in society today is a broad social, cultural, organizational shift in the way people think about their lives . . . The entrepreneurship impulse permeates all of




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this society. It is something that goes far beyond just the economy or business. It’s become a social ethos’’ (quoted in Ellis 2003). Both Auckland and Wellington City Councils held meetings with Florida. The former established a creative cities subcommittee, and began work on an action plan outlining the role the council would play in the development and growth of the sector. The latter sent a study group to the United States to do further work on a creative cities strategy for Wellington, and is now actively working on establishing Wellington as New Zealand’s ‘‘premier creative city.’’ The commissioning of various industry scoping reports, identification of creative industry ‘‘clusters,’’ the establishment of industry incubators, various education and training initiatives, and, most recently, government funding for research and development have all further underlined the new status of creative industries as viable and credible businesses. These businesses are now seen as having significant potential for exportoriented economic growth in their own right and are touted as a model for traditional manufacturing sectors that have not yet made the transition to ‘‘value-added products.’’ Creative industries are also seen as having the symbolic potential to revamp New Zealand’s international image to one more in keeping with the values of the global marketplace and thus foster additional international investment. Thus in the creative industries project, we see how design has become a new motivation for national, regional, and urban investment. Moreover, whereas previously foreign exchange restrictions, import quotas, and licenses shaped investment trajectories and gave rise to a state structure that grew up to defend the economy, this project also underlines how industry governing arrangements are now increasingly about promoting economic realization through visibility, identity, and lobbying both in the creative industries and more generally.

Social Development The social development project is the most recent of those we explore in this chapter. It also marks most clearly the departure from earlier forms of neoliberalism and the new aspirations of ‘‘After Neoliberalism.’’ In both economic and social arenas there is now a marked effort to institutionally re-embed activities that during previous periods of neoliberalism were seen through ‘‘more-market’’ lenses. There is a broad consensus amongst politicians and practitioners alike that rebuilding institutional infrastructure through the fostering of collaborative


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relationships will allow for the sharing of ‘‘best practice’’ knowledge and practices, and more nuanced understandings of the local needs those practices must meet. In turn, this is giving rise to new hybrid forms of governance that fuse policymakers and communities, and erode the purchaser–provider split that was previously so important in the New Zealand context. Nor is this simply a rhetorical ploy. Considerable resources are now being devoted to linking together various initiatives, encouraging mutual learning and identifying ‘‘best practice’’ partnerships. Whereas a more reflexive and collaborative approach to the economy emerged in the late 1990s, and was made manifest in the KnowledgeWave conferences, it was only in the 2000s that this new approach was also considered relevant to the domain of social policy. The umbrella term for this new approach to social policy is social development. The social development approach was formally announced with the launch of Pathways to Opportunity (2001) by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Minister of Social Services and Employment, Steve Maharey (his position was subsequently renamed Minister of Social Development). In this document the government announced their intention to move away from what they called ‘‘traditional welfare’’ to a new ‘‘social development’’ approach. This was portrayed as a move from a ‘‘one size fits all’’ passive approach to a ‘‘modern, simple flexible and more effective system’’ (p. 3). Considerable emphasis was placed on working with particular individuals to address issues such as loss of skills or lack of confidence. At the same time the emphasis on individual responsibility, which was a characteristic of earlier social policy reforms during the 1990s, was complemented by a new emphasis on families and communities. Partnerships were identified as a key means by which communities would be ‘‘backed to find local solutions to local issues’’ (p. 5). Despite the explicit political profiling of partnerships in the social development project, the new generation of social policy partnerships actually has its origins in the neoliberal period (Larner and Craig 2005). During the 1990s a range of central government initiatives created new forums in which locally based skills in advocacy and contest could be developed, including the establishment of locality-based social programs such as Regional Employment and Access Councils (REACs), Social Welfare District Executive Committees (DECs), and the Community Organisation Grants Scheme (COGS). Later, short-lived area health boards offered local opportunities for community interventions around health. Local government reform also created territorial authorities with comparatively large resource bases and significant planning




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responsibilities. Reluctance on the part of central government agencies to devolve mandates or share revenue with these local authorities created a domain of contestation and some local councils began to adopt advocacy and coordinating roles around issues such as social wellbeing. Together, these initiatives further raised the prospect of an increasingly professionalized cadre of local actors who had advocacy roles linked to central government, relationships with other professionals and practitioners, and ties with community and voluntary networks. These relationships cross-cut the vertically organized ‘‘silos’’ that had previously characterized the organization of social policies and programs and laid the basis for a new approach to governance that privileged networks and partnerships. It was the election of the fifth Labour government that saw sustained efforts to formalize partnerships, manifest in the recent Statement of Government Intentions for an Improved Community–Government Relationship (2001) which expresses the desire to develop new relationships between national government, local institutions, and communities. From the highest levels, partnership working is urged in normative terms. Policymakers argue that strengthening local communities through the mechanism of local partnerships will help New Zealanders to respond more positively to economic and social change. It is in this context that local partnerships have come to the center stage politically and practically in Pathways to Opportunity. One consequence has been a shift from partnerships as localized initiatives that emerge out of the activities of a group of like-minded individuals and/or organizations to partnership working as a ‘‘mandatory tool’’ in the social sector (Larner and Butler 2005). Despite skepticism in the literature on partnerships, and indeed among some of the players themselves, the ambition is that these partnerships will draw together the otherwise separate institutional worlds of central, local government, and community organizations, and allow these to be more closely aligned with the needs of specific locales. Thus as local partnerships have been ‘‘governmentalized,’’ so too is a new role for a ‘‘partnering state’’ emerging as an integral aspect of ‘‘After Neoliberalism.’’

States, Networks, Peoples Is this, as one of the referees of the proposal for this book observed, a case study of ‘‘a quirky, very small economy in the South Pacific which is hardly typical of anything’’? Or are we taking at face value terms that


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are highly rhetorical and might be better understood as ‘‘spin’’? As Business Roundtable spokesman Roger Kerr complains, ‘‘Like other fashionable terms such as sustainable development [the knowledge economy] lacks a hard core of meaning and isn’t an aid to clear thinking’’ (Kerr 2002). Our point is that it is precisely the murkiness of these terms, the way in which their meaning has shifted and changed as the political projects have developed, that has allowed them to be assembled into the process we now recognize and name as neoliberalization. We are not arguing that they are inevitably neoliberal projects; indeed we would emphasize otherwise. Rather, in our discussion of these five political projects we have been concerned to focus on the changing designation of their objects of governance, thereby identifying and exploring their implications for understandings of economic and social relations. There are also many other political projects we could have focused on, including deregulation, privatization, enterprise culture, urban regeneration, and regional development. The five we selected to discuss are not only those we have engaged with as researchers, they also have particular political prominence in New Zealand. Using Jessop’s (2002b) language, we call these strategies ‘‘political projects,’’ but recognize contra-Jessop that they are accommodations, non-incremental, in part autonomous, and clearly of nonequivalent order. While all of these projects have long and complex genealogies (a point made by those analysts of globalization who argue that the world has been global since the capitalist expansions of the sixteenth century), what we have tried to do in each case is identify the point at which the project was named in political discourse and consequently went into political circulation. Once a political project is named, debates happen around them, they attract support and opposition, with resulting effects and embodiment dimensions. These debates also sharpen up the lines of difference between particular projects and their predecessors, and (sometimes) move them beyond the tactical dimension to the realm of strategy. All of these political projects are marked by profound experimentation, ongoing contestation, and ‘‘fast’’ policy learning. They are advanced by different agents, at different times and different scales. They can be related partly in terms of an overall directionality, but they overlap temporally and are contingent rather than incremental stages in a pre-constituted meta-project. They have also changed significantly in form and content over time, although they never represent a complete rupture with what has gone before. Perhaps the most crucial point is that these political projects do not, and will not, add up to an integrated whole. Here we also part company




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with Jessop’s (2002b) observation that the state is playing a major role in the material and discursive constitution of the globalizing, networked, knowledge-based economy that its activities are seeking to govern. ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ is not a singular state project; collectively these political projects represent a range of partial solutions to diverse problems. Each of the projects is internally contested, power laden, and riven with contradictions. They involve a multiplicity of political forces always in competition with one another, producing unintended outcomes and unexpected alignments. They often work, if not in opposition, then at least tangentially to each other; global versus domestic orientations, elitist versus democratic impulses, national versus regional economic ambitions. Consequently we need to know much more about the multiple spatialities and subjectivities of neoliberalization, and how these are being assembled in particular spheres (Larner and Le Heron 2002). Inevitably these will intersect with, yet differ markedly from, the arrangements that have hitherto distinguished national economies. Political projects focused on globally connected subjects, knowledgeable subjects, sustainable subjects, creative subjects, and socially excluded subjects will all understand and constitute their objects and subjects of governance in different ways, with quite different political implications. What then holds diverse political projects together? First, there is now a post-facto consolidation of these political projects into a globalizing governmentality in which the new ‘‘common sense’’ is global connectedness, institutional reflexivity, and active citizenship. This is not a nationally bounded rationality; new ambitions for global connectedness are now explicitly linked to and shaping all other political projects. As discussed earlier, broad-based participation in global flows and networks is seen as imperative in economic, environmental, cultural, and social arenas. At the same time, our analysis underlines that it was only retrospectively that these political projects have been assembled into a new globalizing governmentality. Second, the political projects are now being codified through a new emphasis on performance indicators across all domains. Not only are more traditional economic activities benchmarked (Ministry of Economic Development 2003), but so too have major environmental (for example, annual Quality of Life surveys) and social indicators (Ministry of Social Development 2004) been developed in the past few years. Significantly, a tender process for the development of indicators for the creative industries was released early in 2004. ‘‘Indicatorization’’ also underpins the rise of the new globalizing governmentality in that it encourages looking outward, the impetus to constantly reinvent processes and practices. The discourses


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and practices of this globalizing governmentality will expand until they meet resistance, at which point they will mutate, although when and how this will happen is not clear to us. What does all this mean for academic enquiry? We answer this question by making two observations about our own argument. We are very aware that our story remains framed by the nation-state. Yet, as we have just argued, increasingly ‘‘New Zealand’’ is not a bounded territory, rather it is a state and nation both constituted by, and constituting, global flows and networks. We are also very aware that the genesis of these political projects is as likely to be as much from outside the country as it is from the inside. Yet because stories of neoliberalization (including all the other chapters in this book) continue to be told methodologically through the nation-state, it is difficult to explore this dimension. This underlines the need for new research projects which track how local initiatives go global (in the policy transfer literature, for example, it is now widely accepted that key aspects of new public management were invented in New Zealand, then disseminated through networks of policymakers and management consultants), and how global initiatives become local (see Craig and Porter [2005] for an interesting discussion of how new institutional economics traveled to New Zealand then went feral), and the reworkings and translations that occur in each of these ‘‘glocal’’ encounters and engagements. There are many such stories to be told and, given the rhizomic character of our present and futures, it is imperative for our analyses of neoliberalizing processes that we begin to explore these processes. In doing so, we need not only to focus on tracing out these flows and networks, but also to recognize that these are embodied in very specific forms. Only then will we understand more about the nature of the new politics needed in the context of neoliberalization.

Conclusion Cerny (2004) recently claimed that neoliberalism has become a key term for politics in the twenty-first century. In critical social science literatures, neoliberalism has begun to replace earlier labels that referred to specific political projects (Thatcherism, Reaganomics, Rogernomics), and is now more commonly used than many of its apparent counterparts including, for example, economic rationalism, monetarism, neoconservatism, managerialism, and contractualism. Indeed, in the past five years references to neoliberalism have proliferated. The domains in




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which analyses of neoliberalism can be found have also expanded. Initially the focus of analysts of restructuring at the level of the nationstate, particularly those concerned with welfare reform, neoliberalism is now analyzed at transnational, national, urban, and local levels. It provides an analytical means to link macro-level discussions of multinational organizations and micro-level discussions of political-economic subjectivities. Like its important predecessor, post-Fordism, which moved in the literature from being an account of changes in economic production to being an account of ‘‘New Times’’ which encompassed economic, political, and social processes, the term neoliberalism has moved from being a descriptor of economic policy frameworks to an all-embracing referent for criticism of the present. Too often, however, neoliberalism continues to be seen as a unilinear, unidimensional process in which the political agendas are coherent and the economic outcomes predictably problematic. The emphasis is still on what we have lost rather than the new configurations that are beginning to emerge. The polarized nature of intellectual and political debate over what we first called economic restructuring, then globalization, then neoliberalism, and now neoliberalization has often served to obscure the significance of the changes we are observing. Rather than seeing neoliberalization as a pre-constituted political formation in full control of hegemonic actors and with predictable consequences, or even as a contested political process, our emphasis herein is on tracing the changing content of governmental discourses and practices and exploring their implications for spaces and subjects. We have worked from the assumption that not only is ‘‘another world possible’’ (to use the language of the World Social Forum) but that it is being actively constituted. In many ways these new spaces and subjects are still ‘‘silhouettes,’’ not yet settled, and we certainly should be very wary of jumping to premature conclusions about their implications (Larner and Le Heron 2002). We have worked from the vantage point of New Zealand, a country which exemplifies the changing content of the processes associated with neoliberalization, particularly as attempts have been made recently to address the economic and social legacies of the ‘‘more market’’ approaches of the 1980s and 1990s. In our theoretically informed account of the policies and programs of the fifth Labour government, we have emphasized the pragmatic and experimental aspects of the current political moment. Rather than focusing on a single policy area, the discussion in our chapter covers economic, environmental, cultural, and social domains in order to provide a rigorous in-depth analysis of


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the contemporary developments we call ‘‘After Neoliberalism.’’ In doing so our aim has been to contribute to debates about the theoretical and political status of neoliberalism by highlighting how this phenomenon involves a diverse series of political projects which have not, and may not, coalesce into an integrated political settlement comparable to the Keynesian Welfarism of the postwar period. The majority of analyses of neoliberalization emphasize the preconstituted at the expense of the co-constitutive nature of these political projects. While agreeing with colleagues that neoliberalization can be related to enduring problems of the state and a dominant political rationality, we argue that this process emerges as much out of the cross-fertilizing among diverse strategies, projects, and experiments as it does from any prior ideological or structural–functional coherence. These strategies, projects, and experiments are co-constitutive; they work through ongoing encounters, engagements, and contingencies, and the active working of agents, discourses, and tactics. That said, the co-constitutive process is not radically open and free-flowing. Rather, it is subject to strategic alignments, shared interpretations, and mutual path dependencies that establish boundaries and directionality. It is both distracting and immobilizing to think about these projects as the manifestation of a coherent political agenda. Rather, we need more dynamic understandings of neoliberalization, a greater understanding of the relational arenas and the institutional ensembles that are being developed and reworked through neoliberalizing processes. In this context, the need for both more rigorous theorization and careful empirical research should be clear.

Acknowledgments Thanks to the editors, Russell Prince, Mark Beeson, the University of Auckland Economic Geography reading group, and participants in The Political Economy of Scale conference held in Toronto in February 2005 for helping clarify our thinking.

Notes 1 The first Labour government was elected in 1935. Since then, both Labour and National (conservative) parties have held the roles of Government and Opposition. In 1993, as part of the broader reform process, New Zealand moved from a ‘‘first past the post’’ electoral system to a form of proportional




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representation; however, the habit of naming the ruling coalition after the majority party remains. 2 A notable omission in our chapter is any discussion of biculturalism and multiculturalism. These projects also have complex and contested relationships with those of neoliberalism, as Larner (2002, 2006) has explored elsewhere. 3 The Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and Maori. It remains very important in contemporary New Zealand in terms of the claims of Maori sovereignty. 4 Public Good Science Funding (PGSF) supports research that contributes to knowledge of New Zealand’s physical, biological, or social environment, and is unlikely to be funded from nongovernmental sources. It is administered by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology.



10 Conclusion: Reflections on Neoliberalizations Kim England and Kevin Ward Thursday, May 9, 2002 was a busy day for Milton Friedman. He was in Washington, DC to attend two celebratory events. At a lunch at the White House, President George W. Bush honored Friedman for his ‘‘Lifetime Achievements.’’ Flanked by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush praised Friedman as ‘‘a hero of freedom’’ who ‘‘used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions’’ (Bush 2002). That evening Friedman attended a banquet held by the conservative think tank Cato Institute (which has an auditorium named after Hayek, who had been a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Cato). The banquet for 1,800 kicked off a three-day celebration of Cato’s 25th Anniversary and featured the inaugural presentation of the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. The Prize had to be given posthumously because of the death of its intended recipient in London just a week earlier: Lord Peter Bauer, the development economist, neoliberal opponent of state-led development planning, World Bank advisor, friend and LSE colleague of Hayek, and one of the founders of the World Trade Organization. Friedman was one of several who made a speech honoring Bauer that evening. A few days later the New York Time’s obituary for Bauer noted ‘‘Lord Bauer’s true intellectual affinity was with the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and the American Milton Friedman, who helped inspire the economic policies introduced by Mrs. Thatcher and Ronald Reagan that emphasized the importance of giving free play to market forces and rejecting the centralized planning and demand management associated with the Keynesian school of economics’’ (Lewis 2002: C19). Bauer, Friedman, and Hayek had



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already received many other honors before that spring day. Friedman and Hayek each received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in the mid-1970s, a prize itself conceived of by those on the Right, as a means to claim wider intellectual and political currency through affiliation to other Nobel Prize winners. In the early 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher engineered it for Bauer to receive a Life Peerage and for Hayek to become a member of the Order of the Companions of Honor. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan awarded Friedman (who had served on Reagan’s Economic Advisory Board) the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the US’s highest civilian award, it recognizes exceptional meritorious service. Three years later, President George H. W. Bush gave the medal to Hayek and, in fact, Thatcher. These ceremonies, honors, and awards speak to the three themes underpinning this collection – states, networks, peoples. Friedman, Bauer, and Hayek, along with Thatcher, Reagan, and the Bushes, are part of the trans-Atlantic neoliberal glitterati. They are a tightly networked, very much embodied group of state leaders and policymakers (which we take to include not only those in government, but also influential academics and members of think tanks, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in the UK, and Cato in the US) (also see Beneria 1999; George 2001 on the Davos man). At various points in this collection, other members of this network make an appearance, notably Peruvian development economist Hernando de Soto (in Rankin and Shakya’s, and North’s chapters), who was supposedly ‘‘discovered’’ by Hayek on a visit to Lima in 1979. In fact, as Timothy Mitchell (2005) chronicles, de Soto had just moved back to Lima after mostly growing up, and then working, in Geneva, where he was already networked into the neoliberal movement. And, of course, less high profile, more ‘‘ordinary’’ neoliberal practitioners, whose influence, while perhaps not that of the doyens of the movement, is nevertheless important, have also appeared in various chapters of this collection. Also present in the accounts in this collection are the peoples who have been excluded, in one way or another, through neoliberalization processes, in a way that speaks to the concerns raised by Nagar, Lawson, McDowell, and Hanson (2002) in their feminist (re)reading of the subjects and spaces of globalization. For example, there are the homeless Native men in Woodbridge who are at the center of Kingfisher’s analysis. Identifying all the actors involved and how their intellectual and (small ‘‘p’’ and a large ‘‘P’’) political projects become entwined reinforces several important points that run through this collection. First, neoliberalism is socially produced; it is, as Kingfisher (2002: 14) puts it, ‘‘a human invention, the


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artifact of particular historical and material practices and struggles.’’ Second, the production and reproduction of neoliberalism does not just happen; but, rather, takes an incredible amount of work, and even more to naturalize it, to make it seem that ‘‘there is no alternative’’ (Milanovic 2003; Roberts 2004). Third, neoliberalism is not a disembodied, aspatial, pre-formed external entity but involves actually existing people engaged in situated, grounded practices and governmental technologies that produce particular places and particular outcomes in those places. Neoliberalism as an internationalizable intellectual movement and network emerged soon after World War II with the Free Market Project in the Law School at the University of Chicago (which evolved into the Chicago School of Economics) and with the launch, in a Swiss village, of the influential Mont Pe`lerin Society (Hayek’s gathering of three dozen like-minded scholars, including Friedman). Of course, at the same time within the US, the low taxes, low services, anti-union regimes of the Southern states had caught the attention of the corporations fleeing the North East, and through politically influential Southern conservatives this ‘‘regional experiment’’ was transformed into a national trend, giving, in the words of Jan Nederveen Pieterse (2004: 2), ‘‘the ‘Reagan Revolution’ its depth and punch.’’ Inside and outside of the US, however, Hayek, Friedman, and company preserved through a long period when their views were considered not only unpopular (in the face of Keynesianism and postwar Welfarism), but eccentric and far-fetched (Anderson 2000a). But as Mitchell (2005: 305) remarks: ‘‘The Chicago School and the Mont Pe`lerin Society organized the transformation of neoliberalism from a minor intellectual philosophy into a set of effective political tools.’’ The contributors to this collection have explored how that ‘‘minor intellectual philosophy’’ and those ‘‘effective political tools,’’ broadly understood, have been put to use in a variety of settings across the globe. Each chapter addressed how neoliberalization works on the ground in different places (and often in different ways within those places) and together they bring out the relationality of places. Our goal in this collection has been to underscore the complexity and contingency of neoliberalism by examining the processes of its enactment (neoliberalization) rather than the discovery of a regularized form and content. By emphasizing the production of neoliberalization the contributors have underscored neoliberalization as contextual and contingent rather than a universally inevitable monolithic force. We take seriously Wendy Larner’s (2003) dismay at geographers’ tendency to reinscribe the gloomy story of neoliberalism as a hegemonic monolith and her appeal for more nuanced analyses of neoliberalism. We have




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worked hard to create a collection that (we hope) avoids the former and embraces the latter. At the same time we are in no doubt that those who might be accused of providing ‘‘bulldozer readings,’’ as Larner described them (for example, Brenner and Theodore 2000b; Peck 2001a, 2004; Peck and Tickell 2002; Tickell and Peck 2003; Harvey 2005), would deny that their accounts necessarily imply such a fatalist politics. In their defense they might argue that their emphasis is on explaining patterns of state restructuring, teasing out echoes, parallels, and resonances, and looking for ‘‘family resemblances.’’ In the words of two of them – Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2004) – they are wont to ‘‘clump together’’ features as a means of producing a politics around similarities rather than around differences. Nevertheless, addressing what one of the initial referees of this collection thought were ‘‘incommensurable differences between the political economy approach . . . and the feminist and/poststructuralist perspectives’’ is no easy feat. We deliberately left this issue open in the introduction, to allow the authors the room to speak to this issue as they wanted, empirically or theoretically. For us, the trick would seem to be to acknowledge the power of neoliberalism without reinscribing ‘‘it’’ as a unitary hegemonic project. J. K. Gibson-Graham’s (1996: 1) words of caution about the efforts to understand capitalism as an object of analysis also apply to neoliberalism: be alert because all too easily ‘‘the project of understanding the beast has itself produced a beast.’’ It has been to exploring the variations and the similarities, its consistencies and inconsistencies, its successes and its failures, that this edited collection attended. A major contribution of the collection is how neoliberalization plays out differently in different places globally. We feel the reporting of the research across a series of sites and scales is a strength, an approach perhaps best summed up in terms of complementary difference. Neoliberal policies and programs travel and there is a need to trace and understand how this happens, to map the networks, to explore the power asymmetries that structure the kind of policies that are put into motion, and the types of places that find themselves as either program ‘‘importers’’ or ‘‘exporters’’ (or even both). We choose to focus on the ‘‘peripheries’’ of neoliberalism as empirical sites and as organizational and analytical tools. Our approach is intended to move the debate away from the US–UK ‘‘core’’ because we are concerned about a tendency to see these as sites where neoliberalism is found in its ‘‘pure’’ form, while other places become mere ‘‘copies’’ or ‘‘derivatives.’’ Moreover, we wanted to examine the relational geographies at work in the production of neoliberalization (even when that production is not complete), and


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highlight how it is resisted and full of contradictions. When we set about compiling this collection we wanted to emphasize that contrary to the neoliberal fantasy of an inexorable, immutable force marching confidently across the globe installing ‘‘its’’ truths wherever ‘‘it’’ pleases, there are multiple geographies of neoliberalization shaped by the differences as well as similarities in ‘‘its’’ constitution, in the ways ‘‘it’’ has been introduced, but also marked by how ‘‘it’’ has been contested and resisted in particular local or national contexts (Leitner, Peck, and Sheppard 2006). To provide empirical flesh for these conceptual bones, we purposefully chose to move the empirical focus of the collection away from the ‘‘ideological heartland’’ of neoliberalism – the UK and the US (although, of course, both countries and some of their personalities – Thatcher, for example – made frequent appearances throughout the book), as one would expect from accounts that pay due attention to what Massey (2005) calls ‘‘the politics of connectivity’’ that arise from the relationality of space. Moreover, as John Clarke (2004b: 30) points out, ‘‘neo-liberal globalization looks more dominant and compelling from the point of view of the Anglophone West (especially the US/UK axis). From elsewhere, it more obviously resembles one way of constructing capitalist modernity.’’ As an example, Clarke points to Aihwa Ong’s (1999) notion of ‘‘Confucian capitalism’’ (see also Phelps, Power, and Wanjiru, this volume; and from a different perspective, Beeson, this volume); Ward’s chapter offers another example: the position of Japan in the global temporary staffing industry is an ambiguous one. Senior figures – based almost exclusively in the US and Continental Europe – see the Japanese market offering massive financial returns in the medium to long run, but are also wary of what they understand as ‘‘capitalism’’ and how they believe it is understood in Japan. Much like the cases discussed by Beeson in this volume, where civil society and the private sector remain qualitatively different in nature to their equivalents in the Anglo-American nations, there may not be an easily achievable alternative to major state intervention in promoting economic development and regulating economic activity. The chapters in this book collectively, and in some cases individually, ‘‘decenter’’ the center, and tackle the problematic, yet very potent binaries of core/periphery and global North/South that run through the literature on neoliberalism (also see Hart 2004; the chapters in Bondi and Laurie 2005). By way of a corrective, our collection points to peripheries within the global North (for example, Canada and New Zealand), as well as centers within the global South (Nepal). For example, Nick Phelps, Marcus Power, and




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Roseline Wanjiru trace the ‘‘fast policy transfers’’ associated with the rise of investment promotion businesses in the competition for foreign direct investment in several sites across the global South. And Katharine Rankin and Yogendra Shakya contextualize their discussion of microfinance in Nepal in relation to the remarkable travels of the ‘‘Grameen Model’’ of microfinance from Bangladesh not only across the global South, but also more recently to the United States. Neoliberalization, then, is not a one-way process, a singular diffusion from ‘‘the core’’ to a passive ‘‘periphery.’’ Rather there are multiple centers and multiple peripheries, connected and disconnected in multiple and related ways. By expanding the geographical reference points, and in rethinking the relations between them, it has very much been our intention to avoid hierarchical thinking, which tends to categorize some places as ‘‘exporters’’ and others as ‘‘importers.’’ And by broadening the geographic scope (both in terms of different national contexts, but also different scales) we may also avoid hierarchal thinking associated with some sites and scales being associated with ‘‘pure’’ neoliberalism, while other places are mere ‘‘copies’’ or ‘‘derivatives.’’ As we noted in the introduction, we wanted to avoid reinscribing the binaries of global ‘‘North’’ and ‘‘South,’’ and core and periphery, and instead to think about sites, spaces, and scales relationally, in part to keep in view that the uneven development of neoliberalism, both spatially and temporally, is interconnected, and that the spatial categories themselves need to be troubled and not taken for granted. Our thinking here was very much influenced by the debates about conceptualizing the local and the global (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2003; Roberts 2004; Massey 2005). The local is often counterposed to the global, as a product of, as subordinate to, the global, and as suffering the effects of globalization. Instead of this sort of local–global dualism, recent thinking is that the local and the global are co-constitutive. The local is not tightly bounded, nor singular, self-sufficient, and introverted, but instead involves a ‘‘global sense of place’’ within the contemporaneous coexistence of social relations across a range of scales (Amin 2004; Massey 2005). However, Doreen Massey reminds us that actually existing locals are differently and asymmetrically positioned within ‘‘mobile power-geometries of the relations of connection’’ (Massey 2005: 174). Gibson-Graham (2003) and Massey (2005) extend arguments about the relationality of identity and subjectivity to suggest that by approaching the local and global as mutually constitutive, not all locals are ‘‘victims of the globalization,’’ but instead some are ‘‘agents’’ in global neoliberalism. Gibson-Graham (2003: 49) points out that the positioning of locals as victims ‘‘robs them of


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economic agency and self-determination.’’ And Massey remarks that Mali and Chad might hold relatively powerless positions, but can we seriously think of London, or the US or the UK as victims (2005: 101)? Both agree that this is problematic for politics and, for example, Massey urges ‘‘a politics which takes account of, and addresses, the local production of the neoliberal capitalist global’’ (Massey 2005: 101, original emphasis). The ‘‘locals’’ that were the focus of this book reflect how neoliberalization reaches upward, outward, and downward across all scales, from the body to global relations. The contributors to this book draw on a range of sites and scales, from bodies of homeless Native men on the streets of Woodridge in the Canadian prairies (Kingfisher) to the practices of those in governments, businesses, and bureaucracies in producing competing capitalisms in the ‘‘Asia-Pacific region’’ (Beeson). Recent thinking on scale has moved away from a view of scale as a hierarchical division of bounded territories (global, national, local, etc.) where particular practices and processes are fixed in particular territories. Scale is increasingly theorized as relational, such that practices and discourses at one scale are implicated in, and overlap with, those at other scales (Swyngedouw 1997; Marston 2000; Brenner 2001). Several authors in this volume show how the sociospatial practices and relations they analyze are linked to practices and processes at a variety of scales from the body to the globe. Although the language of scale may not have always been explicit, rather than addressing a discrete, bounded scale (or space), the authors (albeit some more than others) located their analyses in a web of entangled processes and discourses unfolding at a variety of scales. Our decision to emphasize the specificities and the messiness of neoliberalization, while motivated by wanting to offer a corrective to ‘‘bulldozer’’ readings of neoliberalism, does not mean that we see no value in identifying similarities across space: far from it. For instance, there are examples in this collection that demonstrate that regulatory similarities can be observed in places in both the global North and South, and the collection also points to critical comparative tendencies in how nation states are undergoing and, in the process, informing neoliberalization. As we read (and re-read) the chapters in the collection we have also been reminded of Cindi Katz’s (2001) idea of critical topography. As a research method, topography ‘‘situates places in their broader context and in relation to other areas or geographic scales, offering a means of understanding structure and process . . . (because) . . . producing a critical topography makes it possible to excavate the layers of process that




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produce particular places and to see their intersections with material social practices at other scales of analysis’’ (Katz 2001: 1228). Thought of this way, it also becomes possible to trace processes along what she calls ‘‘analytical contour lines’’ that ‘‘represent not elevation but particular relations to a process’’ (Katz, 2001: 1229) that connect together particular social practices in vastly different and even distant places. For instance, there may well be a contour line that connects together the commitment (or perhaps recommitment) to social protection or social development in Nepal, Ontario, and New Zealand. Another reason for exploring the uneven geographies of neoliberalization was to pursue ‘‘messy actualities’’ (Larner 2000: 14) and ‘‘actually existing neoliberalism’’ (Brenner and Theodore 2002b; K. Mitchell 2004), the contextual, embedded, contingent materialities of neoliberalism. Brenner and Theodore (2002b: 2) suggest that actually existing neoliberalism (in contrast to neoliberal ideology) is produced in ‘‘national, regional and local contexts defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles.’’ Their analysis is very helpful, getting geographers (and others; this piece has also been widely cited outside geography) to consider neoliberalism as series of spatially and historical specific productions or accomplishments rather than a singular ‘‘thing.’’ But they (and they are far from being alone here) do tend to privilege the economic, and Katharyne Mitchell (2004: 224), for one, is concerned that this loses sight of a more ‘‘Gramscian understanding of the articulation of economic, social, political and cultural processes in hegemony.’’ Catherine Kingfisher (2002: 14) argues that neoliberalism is an elaborate cultural system. So it is not just about the economic, but also the cultural, the political, and the social (Kingfisher is writing in the context of welfare reform and women’s poverty, for instance). She contends that neoliberalism is a contingent and contradictory process, at least in part because it is always in conversation with other cultural formations, a theorization that has been picked up and developed by David Wilson (2004) through his work on contingent neoliberalisms. Wendy Larner (2000, 2003) similarly argues that neoliberalism is articulated along with other political projects, and is a hybrid assemblage of different rationalities and technologies (and again women and welfare reform has been one of her empirical foci). We argue that neoliberalism works because of its fluidity, hybridity, and tendency to mutate – nowhere (as in actually existing places) and at no scale is it ever ‘‘pure,’’ if anything it is always everywhere ‘‘impure.’’ Exploring neoliberalization ‘‘on the ground,’’ then, troubles the tendency to conceive of the introduction,


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transfer, and movement of neoliberalism as a smooth, linear process, as many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate. By exploring an array of ‘‘actually existing neoliberalisms’’ unfolding across the globe, the chapters in this book denaturalize neoliberalism, contesting its seeming hegemony and dispelling the myth that neoliberalism is inexorable, an inescapable endpoint. Drawing on critical realism as an intellectual resource, Noel Castree (2006: 4, original emphasis) suggests that neoliberalism ‘‘never acts alone . . . [so] when we identify specific variants of neo-liberalism we are not examining varieties of a really existing, homogenous genus.’’ What we see are ‘‘contingently occurring processes and outcomes that might well have operated differently if the ‘neoliberal component’ had not been present’’ (Castree 2006: 4). Viewing neoliberalization this way connects it to the broader trend in economic geography to contextualize the economic within cultural, historical, political, and social geographies (see, for example, Gibson-Graham 1996; Lee and Wills 1997; Barnes 2001; Nagar et al. 2002). For a number of the authors’ analyses, an important part of this hybrid assemblage is hierarchies of social difference. Neoliberalism is overdetermined by ‘‘gender,’’ ‘‘race,’’ ‘‘class,’’ ‘‘caste,’’ ‘‘disability,’’ and so on. As Sue Roberts (2004: 137) points out, neoliberalism is ‘‘not somehow gender neutral – in either the discursive or the more obviously material practices with which they are associated.’’ In outlining the implications of feminist epistemologies for re-reading globalization, Nagar et al. (2002) list as their first proposition: ‘‘Capitalism must be analyzed as a set of social relations that are mediated through the simultaneous operation of gendered, sexualized and racialized hierarchies.’’ Several of the contributors highlighted gendered subjectivities, the gender division of labor, and racialized masculinities (Rankin and Shakya; England et al.; Kingfisher). Neoliberalism is a set of discourses and spatialized social practices that differently situate and impact some groups (like women) compared with others (like men). We cannot conclude this collection without addressing head-on the different intellectual traditions that inform the contributions to the book, and which we outlined in the introduction. The authors of the chapters in this edited collection are, in different ways and to different degrees, involved in theory-building exercises through the empirical work they report. Some analyzed neoliberalization from an avowedly poststructural and/or postcolonial approach, others from a neo-Marxist or political economy approach (and there are, of course, feminist influences on both sides of this ‘‘divide’’), and some drew from




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both sides to develop cultural geographies of political-economic change. In the Introduction we indicated that this was a point of discussion among the initial reviewers of our book proposal (suggesting that perhaps it would be impertinent of us not to address these different theoretical vantage points!). For one reviewer their concern was so pronounced that they felt unable to recommend issuing a contract for the book. We are reluctant to overdraw the division (a binary even) between these two ‘‘camps’’ by counterposing one to the other, not least because these camps themselves are far from unified and monolithic but instead consist of several coexisting (and not always comfortably) approaches. For geographers working within the political economy tradition, grappling with neoliberalization can be characterized as the latest mini-project in a longer-term intellectual program examining the ongoing and qualitative restructuring of the spatial, scalar, and temporal coordinates of the state (e.g., Brenner, Jessop, Jones, and MacLeod 2003; Brenner 2005). For political economists working specifically on the historical geographies of neoliberalism, the intellectual project is to probe its macro-political, contextual, and inter-institutional logic (Peck 2001a, 2001b, 2004; Brenner and Theodore 2002b, 2005; Peck and Tickell 2002; Tickell and Peck 2003). While not arguing for a monolithic conceptualization of neoliberalism, or that neoliberalism is the same everywhere, undifferentiated, or even that there is a universal convergence of historically different (welfare) states and models of capitalism, the emphasis is on shared features, on generic characteristics, and on family resemblances, on what Jamie Peck (2004: 403) calls ‘‘neo-liberalism-in-general.’’ For those working primarily from poststructuralist/postcolonial perspectives the focus is on rejecting ‘‘grand narratives’’ of any stripe, and prioritizing contestations over situated meanings and representations. Poststructural theories of the state, for instance, challenge the notion of the state as autonomous from society and instead theorizes the state as mutually constituted with a range of social relations and materialized through sociospatial practices in a range of scales, sites, and spaces (Larner, 2000; Brodie, 2002; Kingfisher, 2002; Mitchell, Marston, and Katz, 2003). Similarly, then, neoliberalizations (in the plural) are conceptualized as sets of hybrid processes and situated meanings, with the emphasis on exploring their different features, distinctive characteristics, and veritable uniqueness. This approach to conceptualizing and researching neoliberalism, of course, owes an intellectual debt to the far wider critique of political economy, and its proponents argue for a more situated analysis of contemporary geo-economical and


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geopolitical processes, rationalities, and technologies. Drawing on work in anthropology, cultural studies, political science, and sociology on classical and advanced liberalism, efforts are well under way to theorize the project, subjects, and techniques involved in neoliberalization, as a means to highlighting complexities, tensions, and contradictions (Sidaway 2002; Larner and Walters 2002, 2004; Larner 2003; K. Mitchell 2004; Rankin 2004; Wilson 2004). Both approaches offer revealing insights into the inner workings of neoliberalization. Some sort of accommodation of both sets of approaches is at the bottom of the influential overviews offered a couple of years ago by Wendy Larner and Jamie Peck (also see Larner 2000; Peck 2001a). In taking stock of what we already know about neoliberalism and setting agendas for future research, they each suggest that while there are differences between the two approaches, there are possibilities of an intellectual rapprochement. If we privilege one approach over the other, even unwittingly, our efforts to analyze the nature and implications of neoliberalism will be blunted, as will our attempts to develop relevant and effective political strategies (Larner 2003: 510–511, emphasis added). There needs to be a continuing and critical dialogue between analyses of neo-liberalism-in-general – which tend to focus on family resemblances and interconnectivities between the hybrid forms of neo-liberalism – and those engaged in explorations of its messy specificities in particular conjunctural contexts, since both endeavors are weakened if they fail to acknowledge the important contributions of the other (Peck 2004: 403, emphasis added).

Larner and Peck’s remarks are suggestive of exciting possibilities offered by an ongoing series of conversations back and forth between the two ‘‘wings,’’ which we applaud. Certainly there are already efforts by geographers to provide situated accounts of how political-economic changes are mediated in and through a range of cultural, social, and political geographies in various places across the globe (Gibson-Graham 1996; Peck 2001b; Lawson 2003; Power 2003; Watts 2003; K. Mitchell 2004; Rankin 2004; Sparke 2005). And in this volume Rankin and Shakya, England et al., and Larner et al. approached their analyses (to a greater or lesser extent) in the spirit of such rapprochement. However, this rapprochement is not without its skeptics. Clive Barnett (2005: 8), for example, questions what he calls ‘‘a marriage of convenience’’ between two different ontological positions that he calls




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‘‘neo-liberalism-as-hegemony’’ and ‘‘neo-liberalism-as-governmentality.’’ He argues that ‘‘the Marxist and Foucauldian approaches are not necessarily as easily reconciled as it might seem. They imply different models of the nature of explanatory concepts; different models of causality and determination; different models of social relations and agency; and different normative understandings of political power.’’ While we agree that there is much that distinguishes the two bodies of work – their intellectual referents, ontological categories, and epistemological assumptions to name but three – we still see many points of connection that mean the two can be held in productive tension. Matt Sparke (2006) also reflects on Barnett’s argument and is similarly troubled by ‘‘his sweeping claims about consolation’’ (p. 3), suggesting that Barnett’s position is undermined by a narrow focus on governmentality and a limited review of existing accounts of neoliberalism that draw on a range of ideas (for instance, feminist theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, Foucault’s other theses . . . ). As he puts it: Bringing together an attention to market-mediated subjectivity formation with a more Marxian examination of economic transformation is not therefore necessarily doomed to creating politically paralyzing pictures of inevitable social shifts ensuring from inevitable economic shifts in regimes of accumulation (Sparke 2006: 2).

We therefore agree with Sparke that the way forward is ‘‘to nuance rather than abandon our analyses of neo-liberalism’’ (2006: 11). Castree (2006) is troubled by the ‘‘‘both/and’ agenda,’’ but understands its appeal. He offers the intriguing suggestion that neoliberalization might usefully be approached via critical realism with its emphasis on necessary relations and contingent conditions. Critical realists argue that whether and how the causal powers (and liabilities) of social objects are activated depends on the context (contingent conditions) in which they are exercised. Thus the outcome varies depending on how the causal power is activated and mediated, and so empirical regularities do not necessarily indicate the cause of those regularities (Sayer 1984). Thus Castree suggests that the critical realist might identify similarities among neoliberalizations not so the differences can be ignored, but rather because ‘‘even with these differences substantial commonalities of process and outcome occur’’ (Castree, 2006: 5). Embracing such ‘‘mesolevel’’ theories may be a very fruitful way to navigate through the impasse. There may well be limits to the theoretical and methodological rapprochement, but a process of dialogue, engagement, and reflection


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is in and of itself useful, even if there are some irreconcilable differences. If the Introduction was deliberately ‘‘open’’ then so too is this Conclusion. Neither of us is in any rush to close down the dialogue. Debates and disagreements, but also compromises and negotiations are an important part of knowledge production (and even better if the discussions are lively and engaging). There is much to be gleaned from future work detailing geographies of neoliberalization that makes contextually contingent connections between the work on governance and that on governmentality. Struggling with the sort of impasses of political economy versus poststructuralism is not a task exclusively faced by geographers, whether or not they are working on neoliberalization. For instance, for some time now, political philosopher and feminist scholar Nancy Fraser (e.g., 1997) has contemplated the relative contributions of political economy and poststructural approaches – what she calls the ‘‘redistribution-recognition dilemma’’ – in rethinking social justice and the politics of difference. She argues that social justice should be reconceptualized as a tension between what she terms the old-style socialist (economic) politics of distribution and the new postsocialist (cultural) politics of identity (recognition). In and of itself Fraser’s work is instructive, but we also want to point to the invigorating debates that ensued among scholars across the humanities and social sciences (for instance, Judith Butler and Iris Young) offering critiques and correctives, with Fraser jumping back into the fray from time to time, modifying her original thesis, sometimes in light of these commentaries (see Fraser and Honneth [2003], and see Naples [2004] for an interview with Fraser where this is discussed). While we can only dream that our own efforts will be taken anywhere near as seriously, one important lesson we take from this is the many potential gains for politically engaged scholarship of ongoing dialogues like these. In addition to seeing that there is intellectual purchase to be wrung out of recent attempts to move forward the discussion about the theoretical underpinnings of neoliberalization, we are also sympathetic to the arguments that we have witnessed the end of the Washington Consensus and are in a period of ‘‘After Neoliberalism’’ (Touraine 2001; Nederveen Pieterse 2004; Larner 2005; Larner, Le Heron, and Lewis, this volume). However, we are of the opinion that there is still much of the world in which neoliberalization, in all variants, all its guises, all its hybrid formations, continues to cast a long shadow over matters of social and economic justice. We continue to see neoliberalism as providing a single rallying point, a means of imagining and tracing connections across space, across particular issues, even across different social groups.




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Envisioning a more just world, however divisive and contentious the details may prove, is in principle facilitated through the identification of something that many can sign up as being against. Certainly, as anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing puts it: The great insight of the protests against corporate globalization that gathered force at the turn of the twenty-first century was that the current forms of capitalist expansion are not inevitable. Despite the reassurances of public oratory, the spread of capitalism has been violent, chaotic, and divisive, rather than smoothly all-encompassing (2004: 11).

Thus, continuing to explore the intellectual and political opportunities offered by rapprochement conversations is exciting to us. We agree with Stuart Hall (1988: 70) who, in his reflections on Thatcherism and why it had succeeded, said his goal was ‘‘not to generate another good theory, but to give a better theorized account of concrete historical reality.’’ (And, indeed Hall’s own intellectual debts were delightfully wide-ranging, including Althusser, Lacan, and, of course, Gramsci.) It is our position that there need to be ongoing conversations about different approaches in order to sharpen understandings of the material world, to produce politically engaged scholarship, and to create what Wendy Larner (2003: 511) calls ‘‘relevant and effective political strategies.’’ Our view is shaped by a belief that social scientists should (and indeed, many already do) conceptualize neoliberalism in ways that stress that it is uneven and complex, rather than glossing over shifting, contradictory practices. In particular, thinking geographically troubles the vision of neoliberalism as totalizing and hegemonic, and potentially can become part of the process of affecting change. Despite all the efforts of what Sparke (2006) calls the ‘‘TINA touts,’’ there are alternatives and neoliberalism is not inevitable. The world is a messy place, full of contradictions and surprises, and not easily tamed or made knowable via any particular theoretical or epistemological stance (or, we’d argue, neoliberalism). Donna Haraway, when asked in an interview how she translated, into methodologies, her epistemologies and political commitment to the deconstruction of fixed categories, responded ‘‘categories are not frozen . . . The world is more lively than that, including us, and there are always more things going on than you thought, maybe less than there should be, but more than you thought!’’ (Haraway 2004: 335). Our argument in this book has been that neoliberalism is made by actually existing people in actually existing spaces and involves material inequalities. Engaging in the de-naturalization of neoliberalism and


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pressing the case that it is ‘‘a human invention’’ (Kingfisher 2002: 14) confirms that not only is it contestable, but that it is subject to ongoing contestation in conceptualization as well as practical politics. As critical human geographers, the two of us are committed to pursuing theoretically informed empirical work (and we suspect the contributors to this volume share such a commitment). An important part of that task is to seek understandings of the conditions under which neoliberalisms come about and how they are maintained, because this means we are better able to gauge the possibilities for transformation. However, as Perry Anderson (2000b: np) warns, ‘‘It is dangerous to have the illusion that neoliberalism is an anachronistic or fragile phenomenon. It is a formidable adversary that has obtained many victories in the course of the last years, even if it is not invincible.’’ Like Hall in his reflections on Thatcherism, Anderson suggests that neoliberalism itself offers important lessons for those wanting change: do not be afraid of opposing the dominant politics of the day (after all, Hayek, Friedman et al. waited a long time for their ideas to gain currency); do not make compromises regarding ideas; and do not accept any established institution as immutable. Moreover, reflecting on the multiple, relational geographies of neoliberalization reminds us that context and spatiality are important in the praxis of critical human geography and radical geography of the sort associated with Antipode. Rethinking cultural, economic, and political processes through space (or more precisely time– space) brings into sharper focus the very untidy discursivities and materialities that produce particular places. It also reveals how those processes and the particularities of their associated practices are made concrete and meaningful in different ways in different places at particular points in time. A geographical imagination that engages with the material and with the lives of people ‘‘on the ground’’ can uncover the contradictions, continuities, and nuances in neoliberalism that might otherwise be seen as monolithic and inevitable. This in turn offers potential avenues for all sorts of empirical, theoretical, and political possibilities, the progressive use of research, and hopefully even strategies for social and political change.

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England: Neo-liberalization 1405134316_4_Index Final Proof page 293 3.3.2007 4:04pm Compositor Name: SJoearun

Index

Abbott, P. 182, 185 Abelson, J. 176, 185 Aboriginals 20, 167, 195–222, 249 accountability 46, 170, 173 accountancy 85, 93, 94 accumulation 140, 141, 149 sustained 160 Acharya, A. 54, 85, 107 acquisition activity 120 Adams, D. W. 53 ADB (Asian Development Bank) 70, 99 ADB/N (Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal) 53–4, 68, 70, 73 pro-poor policies 69 small farmer loan program 67 Adecco 120, 133, 136 administrative costs 88 administrative reform 36 ‘‘adult children’’ 210 advocacy roles 88, 94, 106, 240, 241 affordable housing 199 Africa 94, 97, 102–6, 135 see also Chad; East Africa; Mali; Senegal; South Africa agency role 166 aggression 207 agriculture 41, 53 Agriculture Bank of Nepal see ADB/N

agri-food supply chains 236 Aguirre, A. 210 air pollution 42 alcohol 202, 203, 210, 216 Alfonsıń (Foulkes), R. R. 146, 156 alliances 2, 52, 55, 61 class-based 11, 12 Althusser, L. 261 American South 3–6 anarchism 142 Anderson, P. 1, 250, 262 Andrews-Johnson, K. 87, 94, 95, 107 Anglo-American economies 26, 33, 43, 44, 252 ideational consensus 36 normative aversion to state activism 31 see also Australia; Canada; New Zealand; United Kingdom; United States Angus, J. 175 anti-Americanism 144 anti-capitalist/globalization movement 2, 139, 144, 225 anti-statism 52, 60, 61, 66, 69, 73 anti-totalitarianism 143 Aotearoa 223–47 APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) 44


294

INDEX

apparel and textiles 238 APSO (Association of Personnel Service Organizations of South Africa) 133 Argentina 9, 16, 90, 137–62, 226 CIETT membership 124 historical role of the state 16 stabilizing the economy after recession 81 see also FAETT armed groups 144, 145 Armstrong, P. and H. 176, 182, 185, 191 Aronson, J. 182, 185 Arrighi, G. 96 ASA (American Staffing Association) 118, 121–3, 124, 127–8, 133, 134, 135 ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) 44, 99 Asia 124, 155 economic crisis 86, 90, 148 see also Asia-Pacific; East Asia; Southeast Asia Asia-Pacific 26, 27, 231, 254 reform in 28–47 Asians 199 assassinations 144 assimilation 197 AssoInterim (Italian Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses) 129–30 asymmetries 96 Atlantic Ocean 145 Auckland 236, 239 Aufheben 139 Australia 3, 28, 36, 44, 99, 142, 162, 171, 226 authoritarianism 32, 145, 147 penal state forms 179 automated trading programs 5 autonomy 146, 166, 218 embedded 34 erosion of 188

Babb, S. 13 Bakker, K. 8 balance of payments 148 Bangladesh see Grameen Bank banks 58, 62, 66 apex 59 discredited welfarist models of banking 60 freezing accounts 137, 138 joint-venture 64 multinational 49 must be held socially accountable 62 opening the sector to foreign direct investment 57 private microfinance 59 stashing money in foreign accounts 160 see also commercial banks; development banks; investment banks; merchant banks Baragwanath, L. 229 Baranek, P. 176, 191 Barer, M. L. 172 Barnes, T. 256 Barnett, C. 11, 13–14, 21, 258–9 Barnett, M. N. 89, 108 Barry, A. 227 barter 141, 156, 157, 158–9 subjected to high-level acts of infiltration 160 Barth, F. 208 Bauer, P., Lord 248–9 Baumann, A. 185, 186 Bayly, C. A. 107 Bedford, R. D. 231 Beeson, M. 9, 26, 27, 31, 34, 38, 40, 42, 44, 47, 86, 87, 252, 254 Begin, P. 199 Belgium 110, 131, 173 Belgrade 235 Bello, W. 43 benchmarking 234 country 81


INDEX

Beneria, L. 2, 249 Bennett, L. 54, 56 Berger, S. 33 Bernal 159 Bernstein, B. 111–12, 126 best practices 16, 61, 81, 91, 95, 99, 105, 185, 234 sharing of 240 showcased 129 transfer of 92 BIDA (Batam Industrial Development Authority) 99 big-box outlets 200, 201 bilateral investment treaties 92 bilateral leverage 43 bilateral trade negotiations 35 Biller, J. 133, 134 biophysical processes 224, 235 bio-technology 238 Bird, G. 90 Bista, K. 63 BKPM (Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board) 98–9 black townships 213 Blair, T. 3 Block, F. 52 bodily elimination 205 Boland, A. 50 bombings 144 Bond, P. 133 Bondi, L. 8, 252 bonds 146 international markets 35 border patrols 211–19 Bornschier, V. 84, 88 boundary encroachment 213 Bourdieu, P. 2, 20, 161, 166 bourgeoisie 143 Boyd, M. (Ontario politician) 178–9, 180 Bradford, N. 180 Braithwaite, J. 86, 95 Braroe, N. W. 204, 221, 222 Braudel, F. 46

295

Brazil 86, 97, 105, 147 CIETT membership 124 crisis (1999) 148 break-ins 209 Brenner, N. 3, 7, 8, 15, 25, 117, 118, 251, 254, 255, 257 Bretton Woods 89, 90, 139 Bright Futures (New Zealand 1999) 233 Britain see United Kingdom British Columbia 175 British Empire 141–2, 147 ‘‘quasi colony’’ of 162 British Rail 5 Brodie, J. 196, 257 Bromley, R. 50 Brooks, J. 210 Brussels 126 bubble economy 36 Buenos Aires 137, 139, 140, 144, 156, 160 industrial rustbelt 159 Buenos Aires Herald 139, 156, 157–8 Bunting, T. 199 Burawoy, M. 50, 84 Burback, R. 96 bureaucratic elites 34, 36 diminished reputation and seeming incompetence 37 socialized into informal norms and practices 40 Burleigh Evatt and NZIER 238 Bush, G. H. W. 249 Bush, G. W. 148, 248 Butler, J. 260 Butler, M. 241 Cabiedes, L. 172 caisses populaire 60 Callaghy, T. 102 Cammack, P. 12, 16 Campbell, J. L. 3, 7, 15, 165


296

INDEX

Canada 28, 60, 71, 99, 142, 162, 226, 252 ‘‘tidal shift’’ away from liberal progressive governance 196 see also Ontario; Woodridge Canada Assistance Plan (1966) 175 Canada Health Act (1984) 175, 176, 177, 192 Canada Pension Plan (1965) 175 Canal 9 (Argentine news channel) 160 Cape Town 133 capital 11, 64 attracting 230, 231 circulation of 157 competition for 85, 94, 95, 98, 100 cultural circuit of 80, 111, 118, 123 international free movement of goods and 149 multinational 94 rule of 117 transnational 2 capital flight 139 capital flows 43, 105, 224, 231 growing importance of 45 potentially destructive 44 capital formation role of the state in distribution and 53 stimulating by promoting competition 55 capital markets controlling 155 international, firms can borrow freely in 35 open 152 capitalism 1, 68, 157, 251, 256 competing forms of 28–47 counter-hegemonic accommodation with 69 crony 152 functioning, new rules of 9 gangster 152

Japanese-style 33 market 141 rejected 144 spread of 261 successful, bedrock of 161 Carcova, R. (Argentine protestor) 137 Carlile, L. E. 36 Carter, S. 197, 214, 221 CASHPOR (Credit and Savings for the Hardcore Poor) 61 Castree, N. 11, 21, 256, 259 Catholic conceptions 142 Cato Institute 248, 249 caudillo tradition 147 causality 14, 196 Cavallo, D. 147 CCACs (Community Care Access Centres) 169–94 CCP (Communist Party of China) 39, 41 Central and Eastern Europe 90, 119–20 centralized bargaining 151 centralized planning 248 Cerny, P. 84, 86, 244 CGT (Perońist union) 144, 146, 156, 161 Chad 254 Chang, H. J. 26 Chappell, N. 172 Chase, J. 226 Chicago School of Economics 250 child laborers 20 children 20, 71, 207, 209, 210, 217 Chile 3, 124, 226 China 29, 30, 32, 44, 51, 86, 97, 135, 231 CIETT membership 124, 126 embracing the market 37–42 genetically modified soya for 161 Chinese Federation of Temporary Work Businesses 126 Chmielewski, P. 172


INDEX

choice(s) 218 consumer 173 free 197 lifestyle 212 ‘‘unorthodox’’ policy 152 Christianity 219 CIETT (International Confederation of Temporary Work Businesses) 110–11, 112, 121–7, 129–35 ‘‘circularity of influence’’ 95 Cisneros, L. 146 cities 8, 9 citizenship 8, 21 collective 69 contours of 166 legitimate 206 neoliberal 226 obligation attached to 218 civil disobedience 143 civil servants 62, 63, 101, 105 obstructionist attitudes and practices 94 civil society 141 liberalization of 67 relationship between state, market and 25 Clark, H. 224, 228, 234, 238, 240 Clarke, J. 27, 50, 56, 75, 170, 252 clientelism 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, 156 barter viewed as an alternative to 160 Clinton, B. 173 Cloutier-Fisher, D. 176, 191 coalmines 2 Coates, D. 38 Coe, N. 120 COGS (Community Organisation Grants Scheme) 240 Cohen, A. P. 202, 203, 213 Cola´s, A. 9–10, 15, 17–18, 112

297

Cold War 31, 45, 98 ending of (1989) 37 collaboration 42, 105, 236, 239–40 collateral 49 mitigating the need to collect 54 collective and individual 166 Colonization and Colonies (1841 lectures) 197 commercial banks 56, 63, 65, 66, 74 Deprived Sector lending requirements 64 deregulating 57 loans in certain Priority Sectors 53 privatizing 59 state-owned 53, 55 commodification 117 Common, R. 166 communism 30, 32, 40, 41, 42, 142, 143 legitimized 39 rejected 144 comparative advantage 7, 33–4, 100 compartmentalization 216 competition 33, 200 government-regulated 173 international, unfair advantage in 43 managed 166, 167, 169–94 maximizing 6 private-sector 173 promoting 55, 83–109 competitive bidding 182, 183–5, 193 competitiveness 81, 100 global/international 141, 150, 228, 231, 232, 234 military drive to restore 142–3 national 115 complementary difference 251 concentration camps 145 conditionalities 48, 57 Confucian capitalism 252 conglomerates 33


298

INDEX

Conservative government 169, 170, 190 see also Tories consultancies 85, 91, 93 international 172, 173 location 94, 95 major 95 consumption 205, 206, 208, 220 contagion 44 containment 197, 214, 215, 216 contracts 161 contractualism 244 convergence 29, 38, 84, 85 input 88 mediating tendencies toward 107 paradigm 88 cooperation 33 cooperatives autonomous 69 credit 60 lending to 68, 70 mixed membership 71 see also SFCLs coordination at a distance 13 coralito 137 Cordobazo (uprising 1969) 144 core–periphery relations 8, 9, 10, 18, 50, 51, 60, 61, 96, 100, 252, 253 transfer of knowledges and resources 105 corporatism 151 corruption 34, 37, 86, 103, 147, 152, 160 political 146, 149 Costa Rica 95, 97 cost-containment strategy 176 cottage industries 53 counter-ideology 51 Covas, H. 159 Craig, D. 226, 240, 244 Crayton, L. 134 creative industries 168, 223, 224, 229, 237–9 creativity 116

economic potential of 238 new understanding of 238 credit 68, 72 cheap 70 decisions on allocation 56 delivery through small groups 54 diversifying 63 production 54, 58 rights to 53 rural 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 73 subsidized 50, 54, 57, 66 wholesale 70 credit markets liberalized 68 wholesale 73 creditworthiness 57, 71 Cree people 204 crime 21 cronies 34, 152 Crotty, J. 83 CTA (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos) 150, 156 cultural logics 166 cultural policy 237 culture 229 Cumings, B. 32 currency 148, 151 appreciation 36, 43 convertibility 89 countries suffering major crises 90 foreign, debt denominated in 153 international markets 5 pegged 147–8, 151, 152–3, 154, 161 virility against international currency market valuations 154 see also foreign exchange; money Curtis, B. 229 Curtis, G. L. 34 cutbacks 149, 150, 171, 189 Czech Republic 120 Davos 2, 249 Dawkins-Scully, N.

58


INDEX

Dear, M. 210 Deber, R. B. 176, 191 debt 146 denominated in foreign currency 153 fiscal 148 public, provincial 153 reneging on 160 restructuring 154 sustainable 153 decentralization 196 reshaping of health care policy through 172 decision-making 96, 106 centralizing 147 collective 69 personalized, tight style 147 decolonization process 45 DECs (Social Welfare District Executive Committees) 240 defaults 71 shared liability for 57 deficits 71 balance of payments 148 Deloitte and Touche Bakkenist 124 demand management 248 DeMeulenaere, S. 159 Demmers, J. 149 democracy 60, 143 economic stability elusive under 146 erosion of 227 reintroduction of 146 democratic deficits 48 Deng Xiaoping 39, 41 Deng, Y. 41 dependency 197, 207, 219 Keynesian-induced 220 Deprived Sectors 53, 54, 68 lending requirements 64 deregulation 12, 44, 57, 161, 179, 180 emphasis on 230 derivative professions 6 De Sanzo, C. 159

299

Desjarlais, R. 210, 222 De Soto, H. 50, 160, 249 Deutsche Bank 111, 113–15 Microfinance Development Fund 49 devaluation 154, 155 development banks 66 agricultural 53 justification for 73 private 59 rural 63 state-owned 59, 73 development finance 27, 49 focus on outreach at expense of sustainability 57 foundation in 53–5 promoting 52 developmental states 30, 31, 34–5, 36, 87 efficacy undermined 35 former 56 one of the defining qualities of 33 seen as legitimate and competent 37 Dezalay, Y. 18 Diamond, J. 42 Dieter, H. 45 diffusion processes 6, 18, 98, 126 Dinerstein, A. 139, 157 Ding, X. L. 41, 47 dirigiste economies 42 Dirlik, A. 30 ‘‘disappeared’’ ones 145 distribution networks 18 diversification 120 sideways 129 diversity cultural 231 ethnic 229, 231 organizational 96 division of labor 92, 93 gender 186, 256 global 141 international 96, 141 spatial 96


300

INDEX

Dolfsma, W. 173 dollar peg 147–8 Dolowitz, D. P. 172 dominance 11, 12 donors 52, 54, 55–60, 64, 68, 72 aid disproportionate to capacity to absorb and disperse 51 ‘‘aid fatigue’’ 66 approaches and ideological orientations 70 bilateral 61, 69 conditions on aid 61 expanded involvement from 69 multilateral 50, 61 political imperatives of 70 programmatic prescriptions 62 role for rural finance contrary to neoliberal orthodoxy put forth by 63 role in rural finance 69 donuts 159 Dore, R. 33 Doremus, P. N. 35 dot.com boom 129 Douglas, M. 195, 196, 211, 222 downsizing 13, 34 downtown core 200, 208, 209, 212, 217 always-disturbing presence of groups of addicts in 220 eviction from 216 need to ‘‘reclaim’’ 213 ‘‘positive’’ versus ‘‘negative’’ users of 206 problems caused in 201 public performances of Otherness in 202 race/ethnicity of homeless occupying 203 salience of Aboriginal addicted men in 204 threat presented by the presence of less-persons in 215 Drahos, P. 86, 95

drinking 200, 203, 204, 214, 216 eating and 205 Driscoll, D. D. 90 drugs 206, 210, 216 Duhalde, E. 138, 156, 157 Dumeńil, G. 9 Dunning, J. H. 87, 108 Dyck, I. 175 Eakin, J. 9, 16, 18, 166 East Africa 98 spread of investment promotion practices 102 see also Kenya; Madagascar; Mozambique; Tanzania; Uganda East Asia 9, 26, 27, 85, 86 capitalism 32–42 economic crisis (1990s) 98 tiger economies 97 see also China; Japan; South Korea Eastern Europe 2, 86 see also Central and Eastern Europe economic crises 43, 86, 90, 98, 139, 140, 146, 148, 152 exploded 154 responses to 156 economic development 23–76, 84, 87 nationally specific modes of 85 preoccupation with FDI as vehicle for 91 economic development agencies 93 economic expansion 32 economic growth 80, 146, 234 encouraging 117–18 greatest potential for 237 links between capital market liberalization and 90 market-oriented 117 maximized 7 new strategies to promote 232 post-World War II spurt 34 women a more ‘‘efficient’’ venue for distributing benefits of 59


INDEX

economic integration 105 international 39 economic liberalism 142, 143, 150 economic performance 147 economic rationalism 244 economic reform 140, 151–2 Economist, The 38, 39, 41, 147, 148 ecosystems 236 EDB (Singapore Economic Development Board) 95, 99–100, 101–2, 105 education environmental 235 low levels of 155 Education Priorities for New Zealand (2003) 234 effectiveness 170 efficiency 50, 54, 170, 230 belief in technical solutions to 96 enhancing 83 Ejdesgaard Jeppesen, A. M. 150, 156 election boycotts 143 Elias, J. J. 151 elites 11, 19, 20, 113, 124, 140, 149, 155 authoritarian 32 battles between groups 141 boosting public expenditure at election times by 153 business 34 commercial 160 corrupt behavior that invariably served 34 economic 34, 44 failing to implement neoliberalization 156 hacienda-based 160 land-based 160 large-scale tax evasion by 153 loans become ‘‘captured’’ by 57 national and regional, compromises between 16 problematic and ineffective policies and decisions of 152

301

ruling 37 self-serving/self-interested 34, 35, 143 see also bureaucratic elites; political elites Ellis, G. 239 ‘‘elsewheres’’ 172 emerging markets 126 Empire 1 employment levels 148 empowerment 59, 60, 72, 73, 117, 215 Encarnation, D. J. 33, 98, 100 energy prices 148 England, K. 9, 16, 18, 166, 256, 258 Engler, C. 199 English language courses 231 enlightenment values 142 Enthoven, A. 173 entrepreneurs 13, 41, 238–9 capacity of microfinance to catalyze 71 emerging 49 small, champions of 50 woman 59 environment 21, 229, 235 potentially insurmountable obstacle to development 41–2 Epstein, G. 83 EPZA (Export Processing Zone Authority) 104 equivalence 147 Escobar, A. 227 ethnicity 203 ethnographic studies 9, 174, 198 EU (European Union) 42, 119 Directive on temporary agency work 123 Lisbon Agenda 124, 135 Euro-CIETT 123 European Commission 123 European Economic Area 123 Evans, P. 34–5


302

INDEX

Evans, R. 172, 177 exceptionalism 45 exchange rates 153 appropriate 154 fixed 89, 90 exclusion 157, 159 differentiation and 195 exogenous shocks 153 experimentation 14, 173, 242 institutional 236 ‘‘experts’’ 111 exports 35 expensive 148 focus on 143 less competitive 148 limited 153 rural boom 161 external shocks 152 extraterritoriality 102 Fabian, J. 216, 219 FAETT (Argentine Federation of Temporary Work Businesses) 132 Falcon, R. 140, 143 Falklands/Malvinas war (1982) 146 FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) 210 fashion 238 fascism 142, 143 FDI (foreign direct investment) 39, 104 ability of African countries to compete for 103 attracting 87, 100, 134, 224, 230 central to development strategies in global South 81 competition for 20, 85, 86–8, 107, 253 developing 100 jointly marketing 105 opening the banking sector to 57 privileged position for 84 FDI Xchange 93

fear 209 femininity 207 feminist 2, 13, 185, 227, 249, 256, 259, 260 feminization 16, 207 feminized 184, 189, 207 Ferguson, J. 9, 50 Fernandez Jilberto, A. E. 149 Fewsmith, J. 40 FIAS (World Bank Foreign Investment Advisory Service) 88, 89, 92, 93, 99 Filinson, R. 172 Filion, P. 199 financial crises 44, 90 international 148 financial institutions 60, 68 rural, refinancing 70 see also IFIs financial instruments 55, 58 financial management 49 financial markets 64 international 161 financial sector 5, 55, 56, 57 diversified and market-driven 66 global 40 liberalization 35, 44 poor failed by 62 privatization and deregulation 44 rural 73 Finch, J. 173 FINGOs (financial nongovernmental organizations) 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71, 74 early 60–1, 69–70 Finland 119, 124, 233 Finnemore, M. 89, 108 First Nations see Aboriginals fiscal austerity 179 fiscal policies 154 over-restrictive 159 fisheries management 236 flexible labor markets 20, 115, 117–18, 133, 134, 135


INDEX

exemplar of 81 future 116 Florida, R. 238–9 Fordism 113 foreign exchange 89–90 absence of controls 152 freeing of controls 139 restrictions 239 foreign investors/investment 87, 88, 100 economy founded on attracting 101 incentives to the benefit of 102 see also FDI; FIAS foreign ownership 39 Foresight Project (New Zealand 1998) 233 Forte, J. A. 200 Fortin, N. M. 185 Foucault, M. 195, 196, 215, 217, 259 Foundation of Research Science and Technology (New Zealand) 236 Fourcade-Gourinchas, M. 13 France 119, 126, 133 Fraser, Nancy 13, 260 free markets 143 free trade 141 faith dented in 142 southern cone area 147 freedom 218 and choice 197 and justice 50 Friedman, M. 2, 7, 225, 248–9, 250, 262 Fry, M. J. 55 Fukushima, A. 35 Fukuyama, F. 160 funding streams 102 Galiani, S. 151 Galitelli, B. 140 Gallo, A. 151 Garcia, A. 6 Garrett, B. 40, 41

303

Garth, Bryant 18 Gastaldo, Denise 9, 16, 18, 166 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 91 see also WTO GDP (gross domestic product) 39, 138 gender 11, 13, 182 status of homeless men 208 systemic bias 54 wage gap 186 gender roles 202, 208 Geneva 85, 91, 92, 93, 94, 97, 103 Genoa 139 George, S. 2, 6, 17, 95, 249 Germany 3, 69, 70, 72, 99 temporary staffing industry 126 Gibson-Graham, J. K. 96, 166, 171, 225, 227, 251, 253–4, 256, 258 Giddens, A. 3 Gilboy, G. J. 39 Gleeson, B. 210 global North 9, 10, 252 undermining of the Left (1970s) 18 global South 2, 8, 10, 162, 252 competition for FDI in 253 health reform programs 171 quest for FDI central to development strategies 81 undermining non-capitalist forms of development 18 Global Staffing Industry Report (2001) 132–3 globalization 1, 12, 40, 86–7, 134, 155, 167, 223, 224, 229, 230–2 different forms of 225 distinctively Nepali response to 62 feminist epistemologies for re-reading 256 incentive to encourage competition within 99 neoliberalism used interchangeably with 226 opponents of 41


304

INDEX

gnocchi (ghost employees) 146, 147 Goetz, A. M. 72 Goldberg, M. 56 Goldman Sachs 111 Goldsmith, D. 202–3 Gomez, E. T. 42 Gould, Mrs (home-care patient) 190 governance 14, 18, 19, 166, 169, 236 corporatist models 69 crisis of 145 good 226 hybrid forms of 240 indirect (at-a-distance) forms of 197 negotiations over means and ends of 55–64 shift away from liberal progressive form of 196 social 225 government intervention see state intervention governmentality 14, 19, 166 globalizing 223–47 neoliberalism as 13 Grameen Bank 49, 50, 54, 58, 60, 61, 62, 71, 253 borrower group mechanism 57, 67 Grameen Bikas Banks 59, 63 Gramsci, A. 255, 261 Gray, A. 117 Greece 119, 124 Greenspan, A. 248 Griffith-Jones, S. 90 Growth and Innovation Framework (New Zealand 2002) 238 Guevara, Che 144 Guillen, A. 172 Gupta, A. 9, 50 Hackworth, J. 8 Hadiz, V. 98 Hale, D. and L. H. 32 Hall, P. A. 38 Hall, S. 261

handouts 158 Hansard (Ontario Legislative Assembly) 174, 178, 179, 189–90 Hanson, S. 249, 256 Haraway, D. 261 hardship 196 unequal distribution of prosperity and 197 Harman, C. 137, 139, 156 Harris, M. (Ontario politician) 177, 180, 181, 186, 192 Hart, G. 10, 252 Hart, J. A. 33 Hartwick, E. 3, 7 Harvey, D. 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 15, 129, 140, 151 Hay, C. 88, 107, 108, 225 Hayek, Friedrich von 2, 7, 56, 225, 248–9, 250, 262 HCP (Ontario Home Care Program) 180 health boards 240 health care services 170–94 Health Insurance BC 175 Heart of the Nation report (New Zealand 2000) 238 hegemony 11–12, 45, 61, 69, 84, 141, 155 American, China’s continuing wariness of 41 global 140, 226 imperial 1 see also neoliberalism/ neoliberalization hegemonic project Heilbroner, R. 43 Held, D. 84, 86, 106 Hersberger, M. 121, 128 Hertzman, C. 172 heterodox economic plans 146 hierarchies class 142 gender 11, 13, 256


INDEX

performance 81 race 11, 13, 256 sexualized 256 Higgott, R. A. 44, 45, 46 Hill, H. 98 Hindess, B. 230 ‘‘Hitting Home’’ project 174, 177, 180, 182, 185, 186, 187, 193 Ho, E. S. 231 Hobson, J. M. 28 Hogenbloom, B. 149 Holt, S. L. 57 home-care restructuring 16, 169–94 homelessness 20, 167, 196–222, 249, 254 Honneth, A. 260 Hopper, K. 205, 209, 210, 216 hospitals 171, 175 closures and mergers 176 wages offered in 186 house prices 38 housing-related issues 201 Hubbard, P. 8 Huber, U. 140, 156 Huberman, M. 185 Hudson, R. 25 Hughes, C. W. 35 human capital 129, 233, 234 human geography 21 hybridization 80 hyper-credibility 147 hyperinflation 146 hypermasculinized men 207, 209 ICTs (information and communications technologies) 232 identity region-wide 45 social 59 ideological conflict 51–2 ideology 48, 61, 81, 89, 112, 225 communist 41

305

hegemonic 11–12 liberal 142, 143 most successful in world history 1 IEO (IMF Independent Evaluation Office) 153, 154, 155 IFIs (international financial institutions) 18, 31, 37, 46 communist rulers have taken the advice of 40 impact of 40 neoliberal vision espoused by 43 ILO (International Labour Organization) 113 Imai, J. 126 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 3, 12, 16, 18, 31, 63, 89, 91, 98, 108, 111, 225, 226 Argentina and 139, 140–1, 146, 148–9, 152–5, 161 China and 40 constitution amended (1978) 90 health reform programs and 171, 173 see also IEO imperialism 152 American 1 European 30 import quotas 239 import substitution 102 see also ISI IMS-GT (Indonesia–Malaysia– Singapore Growth Triangle) 99 income taxes 117 incomes 199 independence economic 141, 143, 147 institutional 34 India 51, 53, 97, 135 ‘‘indicatorization’’ 243 individual responsibility 142 individualism 166, 197 liberal 143, 144 possessive 69 rugged 218, 220


306

INDEX

Indonesia 85, 99 fiscal crisis 98 important focus for US geopolitical strategies 98 see also BIDA; BKPM; IMS-GT industrialization 39 see also ISI industriousness 220 inequality 151 rising 2 inflation 146, 148, 152, 160 stabilized 152–3 informal employment 156 information exchange 93, 99 information technology 120, 129 in marketing 99 INGOs (international nongovernmental organizations) 52, 69 innovation 116, 147 policy and programmatic 224 insecurity 151 Institute of Economic Affairs 249 Institute of Temporary Services 121–2 see also ASA institutionalization 42, 52 institutions 11, 17, 50 building 61 charged with promoting neoliberal reform 44 educational 49 international 16, 226 microfinance 59 new, active state-building in terms of 179 political 119 raced, heterosexed and ableist 13 state 60 unsustainable 57 well-articulated network of 52 see also IFIs; MFIs integrated production management 236

integration 39, 41, 42, 105 desire of governments to control the manner and pace of 45 international 96 political-economic 107 rapid 46 Intel 95 interest rates 38, 70 market 58, 69 subsidized 53, 56 intergovernmental organizations 45 intermediaries crucial 33 role of 77–162 see also rule intermediaries/ intermediation; social intermediaries ‘‘internal abuse’’ 207–8 international agencies 16, 173 internationalization 84, 119 capitalist 86 Investing in Science for Our Future (New Zealand 1992) 232 investment banks 93 largest 111 investment promotion 20, 83–109, 253 investor confidence 137, 148 IOs (international organizations) 84, 89–93, 96, 102 major 95 responsibilities of 85 see also IMF; MIGA; UNCTAD; UNIDO; World Bank IPAs (investment promotion agencies) 80, 81, 82, 97 advocacy role of 88, 94, 106 African, legacy of public sector officialdom within 105 best practice in 95, 99 collaboration pact among 105 expertise of staff 106 national 85, 87, 93, 94, 95, 98–9


INDEX

‘‘nontraditional’’ model countries 105 organizational diversity of 96 subnational 85, 87, 93, 94 UN-organized, fee-paying, members’ network of 91 IPC (Kenya Investment Promotion Centre) 103–4, 105 Ireland 97, 100, 233 Iriart, C. 172 Irish Development Agency 95 ISI (import substitution industrialization) 141, 143, 144 Islam, I. 40, 44, 46, 87 Israel 233 IT services business summit (San Jose, California 2003) 129 Italy 119, 121 see also AssoInterim Jackson, P. 238 Jackson Hole, Wyoming 173 Jakarta 99 James, D. 143 Japan 31, 39, 42, 44, 45, 99, 103, 252 American policymakers tried to pressure 43 CIETT membership 124 economic restructuring/ transformation 29, 32–3 managing the market 33–7 problems (1990s) 30 temporary staffing industry 112, 126, 133 JASSA (Temporary Work Services Association of Japan) 126 Jayasuriya, K. 42 Jessop, B. 15, 84, 172, 224, 242, 243, 257 Jewish ghettos 213 job satisfaction 185 job security 36 Johannesburg Sustainability Summit (2002) 234

307

Johns, J. 120 Johnson, C. 30, 33, 43 Johnson, S. 72 Johnston, D. 7, 12, 16 Johor Corporation 99 Jolis, A. 50, 76 Jones, M. 15, 257 Joseph, A. E. 191 JSSA (Japanese Staffing Services Association) 112 Kanbur, R. 89 Kathmandu 68 Katz, C. 13, 180, 254–5, 257 Katz, R. 30, 36 Keil, R. 180 Kelly, P. 83 Kelly Services 119, 120, 129 Kelsey, J. 229 Kendra, M. A. 185 Kenya 85, 103–4 gradualist approach 105 rapid development in capacity 102 see also IPC Kerr, R. 229, 242 key commodities 38 Keynesianism 20, 53, 54, 89, 140, 141, 149, 167, 197, 220, 248, 250 kickbacks 34, 147, 155 kidnappings 144 Killick, T. 56 Kingfisher, C. 16, 19, 20, 165, 166, 167, 170, 194, 196, 197, 198, 202, 206, 207, 225, 249–50, 254, 255, 256, 257, 262 Kirchner, N. (Argentine politician) 149, 157, 162 Klak, T. 96, 97 Klein, N. 139 knowledge circulation of 80, 82 distribution of 116 fascination of 111 production of 80, 82, 116


308

INDEX

knowledge economy/knowledge society 168, 223, 224, 229, 231, 232–4, 237, 238, 242 globalizing, networked 243 knowledge transfer 105, 172, 185 KnowledgeWave Conferences (New Zealand 2001/2003) 233, 234, 238, 240 Kobrin, S. 86 Krugman, P. 83, 87, 100 labor flexibility global 113 low-wage 231 not followed through 161 reluctance to follow through on 153 resisted and limited 150–1 rise of regulation 117–20 labor markets 6, 21, 111 disincentive to joining 149 future 123 liberalization of 126, 129 national 136 one of the most secure in Latin America 156–7 pressing for reform 133 see also flexible labor markets; organized labor Labour government (New Zealand) 224, 228, 229, 233, 235, 238, 241, 245 Lacan, J. 261 Lagos, R. 3 Lapegna, P. 157 Lardy, N. R. 38, 40 Larner, W. 3, 8–9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 19, 21, 50–1, 63, 80, 107, 165, 166, 167, 170, 193, 225, 228, 230, 231, 240, 241, 243, 245, 247, 250–1, 255, 257, 258, 260, 261 Las Vegas 128 Latham, M. 3 Latham, R. 31

Latin America 2, 18, 102, 135 health care reform 172 see also Argentina; Brazil; Chile; Costa Rica; Mexico; Puerto Rico; UNCLA; Uruguay; Venezuela Latour, B. 113–15 Laurie, N. 8, 252 Lavagna, R. 156 Lawson, V. 249, 256, 258 law-making 84 learning 105 fast policy 242 from elsewhere 172 shared 185 sites of 127–33 social 107 least-developed countries 93, 97 Lee, K. K. 199 Lee, R. 256 Left (political) 1, 26, 144, 191, 229 undermining in the global North (1970s) 18 legitimacy 37, 50 Le Grand, J. 173 Le Heron, R. 3, 13, 19, 166, 167, 243, 246, 260 Leitner, H. 8, 252 Lenin, V. I. 162 less-persons 210, 215 leverage economic and political 43 organizational 44 Levitsky, S. 150 Le´vy, D. 9 Levy-Bruhl, L. 210 Lewis, N. 3, 19, 166, 167, 228, 237, 248, 260 Leyshon, A. 36 liberalization 12, 35, 68 civil society 67 key instrument for promotion of 40 pushing 44 trade 196 wholesale 44


INDEX

Liberal Party of Ontario 189–90, 191, 192–3 Liberating Revolution (Argentina 1955) 143, 150 Lidgard, J. M. 231 lifetime employment 34 Light, D. 172, 173 light manufacturing and communications 238 Lincoln, E. J. 36 Lindblom, C. 95 liquidation 145 liquidity shortage 148 living standards 41, 144 First World, declined 151 rapidly rising 34 workers’, attacking 141 loan repayment 57 loan write-offs 69 lobbying 113, 119, 123, 124, 126, 130 Local Government Act (New Zealand 2002) 235 London 112, 248 London First 95 Long-term Care Act (Ontario 1994) 180–1 looting 146 Lo´pez Levy, M. 162 los ladrones 149 low-paid workers 20, 185, 231 LSE (London School of Economics) 228, 248 Lyon-Callo, V. 200 McCarthy, J. 8, 11 McChesney, R. 20 McClimans, R. 115 McCormack, G. 34 McDaniel, S. A. 172 McDowell, L. 249, 256 MacEwan, A. 2, 3, 7, 8 McGrane, B. 216, 219 McGregor, S. 171 McGrew, A. 84, 86, 106

309

McGuinty, D. 189, 190, 192 McKeever, P. 9, 16, 18, 166 McKinsey and Company 123–4 MacLeod, G. 15, 257 McMaster, R. 173 McMichael, P. 225 macroeconomic policies/ programs 71, 156 Madagascar 88 Madigan, C. 115 Magarinos, C. 90 Maharey, S. 240 Majone, G. 19, 80, 83, 106, 111, 112 Malaysia 61, 85, 100 Industrial Development Authority 99 see also IMS-GT Mali 93, 254 managerialism 244 Manchester 90 Manpower, Inc. 119 Mansfield, B. 8 manufacturing output 138 Mao Zedong 39 Marchak, P. 145 marginalization 151, 159, 197, 224 market forces 33, 248 control over 28, 38 gospel for fostering 50 impact of 28, 43 mediated 29, 46 market-making activities 121, 129 market segmentation 97 market share 87, 119 marketability 166 marketization 196, 230 reshaping of health care policy through 172 social life 179 Marsh, D. 225 Marston, S. A. 13, 180, 254, 257 Martinez, E. 6 Marxist thinking 33, 259 mass-production 113


310

INDEX

Massey, D. 9, 27, 96, 166, 252, 253, 254 Mastanduno, M. 29, 43 Mathieu, A. 210 Mauritius 105 Mayoux, L. 72 Mbeki, T. 133 Mdladlana, M. 133 Medicare 175, 176 Meiskins Wood, E. 12 Menem, C. 142, 148, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157, 159, 160 elected (1989) 146–7 Menemismo 140, 147, 148, 151–2, 156 corporatist union power linked to 151 merchant banks 85, 93 Merck Research Laboratories 233 Mercosur (southern cone free trade area) 147 Merhy, E. 172 Merivale, H. 197 Mexico 86, 226 currency crisis (1994–5) 90 Meyer, J. 98 MFIs (microfinance institutions) 59, 61, 70 large, well-established 68 Microcredit Summits (1997/2002) 49 microentrepreneurs 159 microfinance 27, 48–76, 253 middle class 142, 144, 160 decimated by privatization 148 MIGA (OECD Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency) 89, 92, 93, 97, 98, 102, 103, 105 migration 21, 231 highly skilled migrants 230 Japanese firms 35 Milanovic, B. 250 military coercion 86 military coups/intervention 142, 143, 144–6

Miller, J. R. 197, 214, 221 Miller, P. 59, 171 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty 248 miracle economies 32 Mitchell, D. 206, 210, 211, 220 Mitchell, K. 7, 8, 13, 180, 226, 255, 257, 258 Mitchell, T. 166, 249, 250 mixed economies 87 MNEs (multinational enterprises) 86 economic development implications of 87 exploitative tendencies of 87 rules for the treatment of 92 technology transfer and transfer pricing associated with 91 mobilization 45 ‘‘modeling’’ 95 monetarism 147, 244 monetary policy constrained 153 over-restrictive 161 over-tight 161 money 138 cheap 70 free 147 international markets 154 outflow of 137 printing 146, 151, 160 spiriting out of the country 155 stashing in foreign bank accounts 160 stealing 160 ‘‘money politics’’ 34 Mont Pe`lerin Society 250 Montoneros (armed group) 144 Morocco 124 Morrisset, J. 87, 88, 94, 95, 107 Morris-Suzuki, T. 33 Moulder, F. V. 30, 47 Moyano, M. J. 144 Mozambique 88, 93 MSAs (multi-service agencies) 180


INDEX

MSC (Microcredit Summit Campaign) 49, 75 multilateral development agencies 53 multinational corporations 81, 84, 113, 245 English-speaking platform for 231 largest temporary staffing agencies 133 outward looking and mobile 35 see also MNEs Munck, R. 140, 143, 149 music and film production 238 Myers, G. 96, 97 Nagar, R. 249, 256 Nagel, J. 228 Naples, N. A. 260 nation building 237 National Association of Temporary Services see ASA National Coordinating Group on Health Care Reform and Women 177, 182 national dignity 142, 143, 147 National Health Service (United Kingdom) 173 national interest 30, 35 National Investment Committee (Kenya) 103 national sovereignty 42, 86 nationalism 41 economic 141, 144, 147, 149 nations/nation-states 9, 45, 118 continued growth in number of 86 decline of 227 economic development and regulation 84 emphasis on networks within 18 fragmented policymaking arenas 84 major liberal, alignment to 89 moderate-sized 97 quantitative and qualitative restructuring of 12

311

social welfare responsibilities 171 Natives see Aboriginals NATSS (National Association of Temporary and Staffing Services) 128 nature 8 Nazi ‘‘night and fog’’ technique 145 NDP (Ontario New Democratic Party) 180–1, 191 Nederveen Pieterse, J. 3–6, 18, 250, 260 ‘‘negative influences’’ 216 neoconservatism 165, 244 neo-Foucauldian scholarship/ literature 50, 227 neo-Gramscian scholarship 50 neoliberalism/neoliberalization ‘‘actually existing’’ 7, 171, 189, 255–6, 260 contingent/contradictory 3, 64, 70, 165, 170, 190, 198, 227, 250, 255–6 definition 3–4 flexible labor 117 governmentality 13 hegemonic project 50, 55–60, 66, 73, 75 historical geographies 5–6 ideology 11–12 managed competition 174, 182 microfinance 49 networks 17 peoples 19 policy 12 production of 3, 152, 250 regionalism 42 resistance to 67, 156 states 12–13, 15 temporary staffing 121 Nepal 9, 27, 48–76, 252, 253, 255 Nepal Central Bank 53–4, 59, 63, 67, 68 Rural Credit Review 62 Neso, O. L. 88 Netherlands 173


312

INDEX

networks 17–19, 42, 51, 126, 127–33 barter 141, 159 clientelist 148, 156 community and voluntary 241 corrupt 160 diffuse decision-making power 96 elite-level 34, 35 institutional 55 international consulting firms 173 international production 105 market 158–9 material 50 policy 172 significance for neoliberalization of rural finance 61 transnational 84, 172, 173 web- and email-based 93 New-Deal America 62 new economic order 111 New Economy Research Fund 233 New Public Management 166 New York 6, 128, 205 gender status of homeless men 208 revanchist tendencies 209 New Zealand 3, 28, 142, 152, 162, 171, 173, 223–47, 252, 255 New Zealand Call Centre Attraction Initiative 231 New Zealand Framework for Cultural Statistics (1995) 237 Newman, J. 225 Newman, K. 237 Neysmith, S. M. 182, 185 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) 49, 55, 60–1, 71, 73 environmental 159 newly legalized 52 own currency emitted 151 police raids on 160 role in rural finance 69 think-tank 70, 72, 74 see also FINGOs; INGOs niches 129

coveted 205 Nichols, B. 185 Niklas, D. 172 NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) debate 201 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics 249 nominal trading volumes 5 non-monetary exchanges 20 non-persons 210 Norden, D. L. 142 Norman, K. 159 norms 107, 160 dominant 208 labor market 20, 118 setting 111 transmission and adoption of 97–8 transnational 85 violation of 204, 207 North, P. 9, 16, 20, 81, 137, 140, 156, 249 Norway 119 obras sociales 148, 150 Ocampo J. A. 90 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) 135, 232, 234 Investment Compact for Southeast Europe 91–2, 93 see also MIGA offshore accounts 137 offshore production 35, 36, 238 OHIP (Ontario Health Insurance Plan) 175, 177 oligarchies 144 oligopoly 192 Olmos Gaona, A. 146 O’Neill, Paul 49 O’Neill, Phil 15, 165, 180 Ong, A. 97, 100, 101, 252 Ontario 9, 16, 169–94, 255 see also Hansard; HCP; OHIP; Tories


INDEX

Ontario Community Support Association 192 Ontario Health Coalition 192 organized labor 141, 143, 145, 156 marginalization of 151 protected and shrinking 159 Orlando 128 Osborne, T. 227 O’Shea, J. 115 Otero, M. 57 Otherness 167, 196, 201, 216 eviction/transformation of 198 situated public spectacles of 202–8 Ottawa 193 Ottawa Citizen 181, 187 outplacement 128 outreach 60, 64, 74 failures 57 overseas investors 85, 88 pampas 147 pancakes 159 Panchayat system 55 panhandling 200, 201, 202, 204, 216 PAR (environmental NGO) 159 paradigm maintenance 81 Parent, K. 176, 177, 186, 187 Paris 110, 122, 133, 135 Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (New Zealand 2004) 234–5 parliamentary democracy 60 partnerships 241 Passaro, J. 208, 217 Pastor, M. 148 patacones 146, 148, 151, 152, 153, 159, 161 toleration for 154 paternalist legacy 150 Pathways to Opportunity (New Zealand 2001) 240, 241

313

PCRW (Production Credit for Rural Women) 54, 58 Pearson, M. M. 41 Pearson, R. 159 Peck, J. 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, 43, 50, 52, 60, 84, 96, 107, 113, 116, 118, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, 131, 133, 135, 136, 139, 149, 172, 179, 180, 193, 223, 225, 251, 252, 257, 258 Pedersen, O. K. 3, 7, 15, 165 Peet, R. 3, 7, 18, 149, 165 Pempel, T. J. 35 peoples 19–20, 51 People’s Democracy Movement (Nepal) 55 PEOs (professional employer organizations) 128 peripheries 84, 85 divergent 98–102 see also core–periphery relations Peroń, E. 143, 158 Peroń, I. Martıńez de 144 Peroń, J. D. 143, 144, 158 Perońism/Perońists 138, 141, 144, 146, 147 classic 151 close links between trade unions and 150 paternalist legacy of 150 traditional concerns 147 Perry, M. 101 personal fiefdoms 145 Peters, M. A. 229 Petras, J. 157 Pettifor, A. 146 Phelps, N. 8, 20, 85, 94, 99, 106, 252–3 pickets 141, 150, 156, 157–8 vital support mechanism for the unemployed 160 Pilling, J. 146 Pischke, J. D. von 53, 56, 59 Platt, S. 210


314

INDEX

Plaza de Mayo demonstrations 137, 149, 156 Poland 120, 124, 135 Polanyi, Karl 25 Polish health care reform 172 policies 12, 18 cultural 237 fundamentally flawed 154, 155 market-oriented 173 migration 231 sustainability of 154 tightly centralized 147 transnationalization of 97 ‘‘unorthodox’’ choices 152 weak or inconsistent 155 policy transfer 170, 171–3, 180 fast 16, 18, 84, 253 policymaking 141 fiscal responsibility locked into 151 fragmented 84 political contributions 147 political economy 13, 80 international 35, 84, 86 poststructuralist 227 political elites 34, 39, 44 potential problem for 30 political patronage 57 political power 20, 225 different normative understandings of 14, 259 political projects 223–47 pollution 42, 195 Porter, D. 226, 244 Porter, M. 36, 100 post-communist countries 91 transitions in 102 post-Fordism 245 poststructuralism 13, 80 Potter, P. B. 40 poverty 138–9, 199, 224 global feminization of 16 growth of 156, 159 on the rise 199 persistence of 52

solutions to 159 poverty alleviation 49, 50, 71, 72 barter ceased to play significant role in 160 FINGOs thoroughly committed to 60 microfinance as a market-led approach to 73 poverty lending 54, 58, 64 basic mandate of 53 disillusion with 60 fiscal troubles of 56, 57 geometries 253 ideologically contrary programs 53 rejection of 56 relationships instrumental in institutionalizing 53 shift to new ‘‘financial systems’’ from 59 social protectionist vision of 62 state-led schemes 55 transition to microfinance 69 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers 18 Powell, J. 159 Power, M. K. 8, 18, 20, 80, 81, 83, 89, 252–3, 258 power 147 asymmetrical relations 61 class 140 corporatist union 151 decision-making 96 economic 20 exercise of 89 gendered and racialized hierarchies 11 imperialist relations of 63, 66 relational 115 social 20 state 25, 43 see also political power Pradhan, K. 63 Prague 139 Primavera, H. 159 ‘‘primitives’’ 220


INDEX

Prince, R. 228, 233, 237 Pringle, R. 13 Priority Sector system 53, 56, 60, 63, 67, 68 dissolution advocated 64 ‘‘failures’’ of 66 lending requirements 58 proud architects of 62 regulations defended 64 private activities 205, 207 private sector 42–3, 67, 91, 93, 94, 105, 127, 233 economic activity moving from public to 38 establishing a market for wholesale credit in 70 internationalized segments of 85 lack of agreement between outward-looking merchants and 141 management techniques 166 oligopoly 192 potentially mobile interests 95 transfer of ownership from public to 12 privatization 12, 13, 41, 59, 179, 180, 196 benefits of 148 cabalistic 155 corrupt 149, 152 embraced 161 emphasis on 230 encouraging 166 favorable rates 147 financial sector 44 home care 170 insider 149, 150 legacies of 161 reshaping of health care policy through 172 social services 171 proceso (Argentina 1976–84) 145, 147, 149, 150 productivity 117

315

professional and scientific associations 84 profit 69, 73 maximization of 117 progressive coalitions 20 proper personhood 198, 166, 167, 197, 211 protectionism 44, 141 Protestant Ethic 204 provincial politics in Ontario 177–82 Prudham, S. 8, 11 psychological tests 6 public accounting 153 public expenditure boosting at election times 153 social care systems reconfigured to minimize 171 Public Good Science Funding framework (New Zealand) 236 public health care administration 170 public policy 83, 238 transformation 36 public sector 12, 38, 39, 42–3, 94, 150 active investment in delivery of rural credit 52 benefits of private-sector competition can be enjoyed in 173 boosting employment 146, 149 inflated rolls 154 legacy of officialdom within African IPAs 105 reducing employment among the poor 50 sackings from jobs 151 public works 158 Puerto Rico 100 Pulley, R. V. 53 Putnam, R. 160 quasi-markets 173 Que´bec Supreme Court 176 Queen’s social welfare commission 60


316

INDEX

race 11, 13, 203, 218, 221, 256, 259 racialized masculinities 256 racialized minorities 20 racism 197, 212 radical thinking 33 Radicals (Argentina) 142, 143, 144, 146, 148, 150, 156 Rahman, A. 72 Ramada, C. 159 Rankin, K. N. 8, 9, 18, 26–7, 53, 62, 63, 165, 249, 253, 256, 258 ‘‘rational economic woman’’ 53 rationality 172 market 73 neoliberal 66 political 59, 66 social protectionist 66, 68 Ravenhill, J. 43, 44, 45 REACs (Regional Employment and Access Councils) 240 Reagan, R. 3, 248, 249, 250 Reaganism 180 Reaganomics 244 recessions 81, 147, 148, 149, 156, 161 avoidable 152 redistribution 53, 74 ‘‘rednecks’’ 203 redundancy 161 regional identities 30 regionalism and neoliberalism 42–5 regulation 86, 149 economic 140 financial 64 flexible labor, rise of 117–20 global business 95 investment 85 nationally specific modes of 85 social 84 state 66 relationality 8–11, 252–253 Ren, H. 13, 19 repression 157, 158 re-regulation 15, 87, 116, 180 creative 96

Resnick, S. 96 resource allocation 117 Resource Management Act (New Zealand 1991) 235 responsibilization 166 restructuring 42, 59, 69, 148, 150, 196 benefits of 160 corporate 45 debt 154 economic 29, 113, 140, 231, 245 financial, donor-led 55 government 177 home care 16, 169–94 international political economy 35 labor market 117, 134 macroeconomic 118 neoliberal 17, 26, 160 state 12, 15, 16 state-authored 2–3, 15 welfare state 16 retirement 34 Rhyne, E. 57 Ribe, H. 57 Ricardo, D. 7, 141 Ricupero, R. 91 Right (political) 2, 175, 191, 229, 249 philosophical rejection of liberal individualism 144 RMDC (Rural Microfinance Development Centre) 70 Roberts, S. 171, 184, 250, 253, 256 Robinson, W. 96 Robison, R. 98 Rock, D. 138, 142, 149, 151 Rogaly, B. 72 Rogernomics 244 role of the state 166 ‘‘roll back’’/’’roll out’’ neoliberalisms 12, 15, 16, 52, 179 Romania 88 Rome 129 Romero, L. A. 142, 144


INDEX

Ronconi, L. 151 Rose, N. 13, 59, 166, 171, 197, 217, 218, 225, 227 Rosenberg, M. W. 181, 191 Rowlands, D. 90 Ruá, F. de la 138, 148, 152, 156 Ruggie, J. 86, 102, 180 Ruigrok, W. 35 rule by decree 147 rule intermediaries/ intermediation 19, 80, 81, 111 investment promotion as 93–6 rule-making 84 rule of law 161 Rumsfeld, D. 248 rural finance 50, 53, 61, 62 anti-statist and pro-market view of 60 contradictions of 64–73 donors seeking to introduce market discipline into 58 regendering of 59, 60 role for 63 state-led 55 Rural Financial Markets Development Scheme 64 Rural Microfinance Development Centre 68, 70 Russia 90, 155 crisis (1999) 148 crony or gangster capitalism 152 Saad-Filho, A. 7, 12, 16 Safarian, A. E. 89 Said, E. 1 St Catharines 190, 193 Saint-Martin, D. 166 Sanguinetti, P. 151 savings 58, 61, 63 mobilizing 70 Schamis, H. E. 162 Schein, E. 101 Schild, V. 226 Schoppa, L. J. 35

317

Schro¨der, G. 3 Schut, F. T. 173 Schwartz, H. 228 science and technology 232 Seattle 139 Segal, L. M. 119 segregation 199, 203, 216, 217 self-employment opportunities 49 self-governance 196 self-improvement 142 self-interest 156 political 145 rational 142 self-regulation 166 self-reliance 50, 52, 70, 204 capacities for 59 model that could best promote 60 self-serving behavior 34, 35 self-sufficiency 218 self-surveillance 217 semi-totalitarian political system 143 Sen Gupta, R. 72 Senegal 105 Serbia 93 service delivery agencies 54 service industries 53 sex(uality) 8, 205 masculine aggressive 208 SFCLs (Small-Farmer Cooperatives Limited) 67, 70 SFDP (Small Farmers Development Program) 54, 58, 67, 68, 69 SG Warburg 111 Shakya, Y. B. 8, 9, 18, 26–7, 61, 165, 249, 253, 256, 258 Sharma, S. 54 shelter controversy 196, 197, 198, 200–2 shelterization thesis 216–17 Sheng, L. 41 Sheppard, E. S. 252 Shields, T. 210 Shire, K. 126


318

INDEX

Shirk, S. L. 38, 39 shock therapy 105 shocks 153 Short Grass 204 Sidaway, J. 258 Sim, S. F. 19 Singapore 85, 87, 95, 97, 99–102, 105 see also EDB; IMS-GT Singh, K. 58 site selection 93, 94, 95 Skair, Leslie 2 Skinner, M. W. 176, 181, 191 small farmers 53, 56, 59 see also SFDP Small Farmers Development Bank 67, 68, 70 smallholder households 62 SMEs (small- to medium-size enterprises) 238 Smith, A. 4, 7 Smith, L. 8 Smith, N. 8, 208–9, 220 Smith, R. 207, 211 social change 241 social class 96 social costs 48 social democracy 228 social development 168, 223, 229, 239–41, 255 social insurance 173 transforming recipients of 13 social intermediaries 67, 82 social justice 147 social objectives 60 social order 87 addicted homeless men outside 211 divergent national models of 86 ideologies dangerous for maintaining 142 Others who needed to be evicted from 218–19 presence of homeless dangerous to 209

world market for 84 social policy 177, 229 social problems 210 social protection 53, 66, 68, 255 end of 62–4, 74 maintaining a commitment to 73 social relations 12 different models of 14 embedded in the economic system 25 social rights 59 social safety nets 46, 184 social solidarity 69, 146 social status 185 socialism 38, 52 sociality 197, 198, 204, 210, 211, 215, 219 socialization 40, 205, 206 socioeconomic inclusiveness 234 Soeharto 98 SOEs (state-owned enterprises) 39 Soskice, D. 38 South Africa 88, 124, 128, 134 see also APSO South America see Latin America South Korea 44, 86 Southeast Asia 44, 98–102 see also Indonesia; Malaysia; Singapore; Thailand; Vietnam Southeast Europe 91–2, 93 Soviet Bloc (former) 172 Soviet Union 38, 53, 62 communism rejected 144 former Republics 90 Soweto 213 space(s) internal, reorganization of 13 relationality of 9, 26 sensitivity to the importance of 9 Spain 119, 144 Spar, D. 95 Sparke, M. 9, 10, 11, 14, 166, 226, 258, 259, 261


INDEX

spatializations 167 spatializing neoliberalism 195–222 specialization 96 Spee, R. 94 Staffing Industry Executive Forum 128–9 stagnation 146 Standing, G. 113, 117, 118 state intervention 50, 66, 150, 252 East Asian-style, tolerated 32 large-scale, belated and reluctant shift from 105 neoliberalization involves more, not less 179, 180 no market without 25 outmoded, one of the last bastions of 102 State of the Environment conference (UNESCO 1972) 238 state payrolls 148 bloated/high 146, 152 state planning/planners 38, 49, 52, 55, 62–4, 74 accommodation of 66–9 centralized 60 state security forces 144 states 11, 12–13, 15–17, 45 and markets 25–6, 27, 77–162 and subjectivities 163–94 see also nations/nation-states statist economies 86 Status of Women study (Nepal 1981) 54 Steagall, J. W. 151 Stegman J. P. 151 stereotypes 196 Stiglitz, J. 89, 90, 139, 230 Stone, D. 86, 88, 97, 107, 121, 126, 172 Strange, S. 38 strategic industries key 34 maintenance of 147 strategic significance 32 stress 185

319

strikes 157 general 144 structural adjustment programs 3, 18, 55, 82, 89 breakneck, outsider-driven 152 Stubbs, R. 45 sub-markets 6 subcontracting 6 subjectivities gendered 256 neoliberal worker 129 political-economic 245 states and 163–94 women 60 subordination 12 subsidies 68 credit 50, 54, 57, 66 disparaging the use of 61 donor 73 interest rate 53, 56 no longer viable 67 social welfare 158 success stories 81 Sullivan, D. G. 119 supplier maximalization 6 supranational agencies see EU; OECD; World Bank Susser, I. 196, 205 sustainability 57, 168, 223, 224, 229, 234–6 financial 59, 60, 61, 70 scope for 58 sustainable development 155, 235, 242 replaced with sustainable management 235 Sustainable Development Programme of Action (New Zealand 2003) 234 Sweden 119 Switzerland 2, 250 Swyngedouw, E. 254 synergies 80 Szusterman, C. 147


320

INDEX

Tabb, W. K. 33, 228 taboo 192 Taiwan 41 Tanzania 93, 102, 104, 105 Tavares, A. T. 88 tax evasion 153 Taylor, M. 16 Tbilisi 235 technical assistance 54, 102, 105 technocrats 147 transnational and Chicagotrained 155 technology 231 technology transfer 39, 91 Tedesco, L. 146 Teichman, J. A. 147 temporary staffing 110–16 internationalization/geographical expansion of 19, 81, 117–20, 123, 124, 129 temporary staffing agencies 80, 82, 111 global expansion of 81 largest 20, 119, 124, 130, 133, 134 new markets for 115 opposing government legislation or regulation that might limit business done by 121 revenues produced by 119, 120 Tequila crisis (1995) 148 Teubal, M. 147 Thailand 90, 99 Thatcher, M. 2, 3, 46, 248, 249, 252 Thatcherism 180, 244, 261 Theodore, N. 3, 7, 8, 25, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, 131, 135, 172, 251, 255, 257 therapeutic intervention 198, 216 think-tanks 49, 70, 71, 72, 74, 172, 173, 248, 249 Third Wayism 3, 165, 193, 225, 228 Third World states 49, 50, 97

bringing into line with neoliberal orthodoxy 55 typical 51 Thomas, K. 83, 94 threat 207, 215, 217 Thrift, N. 80, 111, 112, 113, 116, 118, 129, 234 Tickell, A. 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, 25, 43, 50, 52, 60, 84, 85, 139, 149, 179, 180, 193, 225, 251, 257 Tilton, M. C. 36 Timerman, J. 145 TINA (‘‘there is no alternative’’) 2, 230, 261 Tobias, J. L. 197 Tofler, A. 159 Tories (Ontario Progressive Conservatives) 177, 179, 180, 181, 190–1, 192, 193 ‘‘Common Sense Revolution’’ 177, 179, 191 Toronto 193 Toronto Star 181 Touraine, A. 228, 260 tourism 238 Town and Country Planning Act (New Zealand 1977) 235 trade 20, 44 deficits 36, 43 strong growth 147 trade associations 81, 116, 124 better-established 126 changing geographical imagination of 127 largest 121 national, lobbying activities of 126 trade liberalization 196 trade unions 144 clientelistic 156 close links between Perońism and 150 control of 156


INDEX

leaders on boards of privatized industries 150, 151 proscribed 143 resistance from 146 smashed by military 142 training programs 61 transaction costs 5, 30 transformation 13, 41 agential 40 economic 259 ideational 40 personal 218 public policy 36 spatial 212 structural 39, 40 world historical significance 38 transnationals 113, 124 Treanor, P. 7 Treaty of Waitangi (1840) 235 Trezzini, B. 84, 88 Triple A (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance) 144 Trouillot, M. R. 220 trueque 158–9, 160, 161 Tsing, A. Lowenhaupt 181, 196, 261 turnover 185–7 Twigg, J. 185 Uganda 93, 104, 105 rapid development in capacity 102 ul Haque, I. 118 UNCLA (UN Commission for Latin America) 108 UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development) 90, 92, 93, 102, 103, 108, 109 Trade and Development Report 91 World Investment Reports 91 underemployment 137, 139, 156 UNDESD (UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development) 235

321

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) 235 unemployment 36, 137, 139, 199 eliminating 118 responses/solutions to 156, 159 UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) 235 UNIDO (UN Industrial Development Organization) 90, 93, 94, 97, 102, 105, 106 Investment Technology Promotion Office 103 United Kingdom 28, 81, 84, 86, 105, 171, 173, 226 Black Monday (1992) 154 investment promotion agencies 85 neoliberalization 152 temporary staffing industry 112, 119, 126 United Nations 53, 54, 87 Year of Microfinance (2005) 50 see also UNCLA; UNCTAD; UNDESD; UNDP; UNESCO; UNIDO United States 12, 18, 30, 31, 32, 49, 81, 84, 86, 89, 105, 142, 253 Argentina over-dependent on economic performance of 148 China’s rapprochement with (1972) 37 chronic trade deficits with East Asia 43 creative cities strategy 239 geopolitical strategies 98 influence on overall international order 28 investment promotion agencies 85 Japan and 35, 36 major alternatives to marketdominated model promoted by 37 market-oriented economic system 28 neoliberalization 43, 152


322

INDEX

United States (cont’d) new hard-line administration 149 promotion of liberalization 44 recessions 147, 148 temporary staffing industry 119, 120, 121–2, 128–9 University of Auckland 233 University of Chicago 3, 139, 140, 147, 152, 160 Free Market Project in the Law School 250 University of Cordoba 144 unrest 139, 143–4, 146, 158 Upton, L. F. S. 197 urban redevelopment/ regeneration 21, 238 Uruguay 124, 137 USAID (US Agency for International Development) 69, 103, 173 Usami, K. I. 150 Valverde, M. 227 van Doorslaer, E. K. A. 173 van Tulder, R. 35 vandalism 209 Venezuela 86 vested interests 36 economic and political 41 Victory Mission 196, 198, 200, 201, 209, 210, 212, 216, 217 Vietnam 99 violence 144, 158, 160 domestic 71 economic and cultural 199 visibility 200, 202, 204, 205, 208, 211 cultural sector 238 Vogel, S. 33, 96 Wacquant, L. 2, 6, 17, 80, 161 Wade, R. 33, 44, 53, 86 wage differentials 185–7 wages 141, 143 declined catastrophically 151

driven down 186 WAIPA (World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies) 81, 85, 91, 92, 94, 97, 98 Waitzkin, H. 172 Wall Street Crash (1930) 142 Walters, W. 258 Wanjiru, R. 8, 20, 80, 81, 83, 252, 253 Ward, K. 8, 19, 20, 80, 81, 113, 116, 119, 120, 121, 124, 126, 127, 131, 194, 252 Warsaw 213 Washington 6, 49, 122, 128, 140, 248 Washington Consensus 17, 44, 46, 87, 102, 152, 230, 260 alternative to 162 Watson, S. 13 Watts, M. 258 Way, L. A. 150 wealth creation 237 Weathers, C. 126 Webber, D. 44 WEF (World Economic Forum) 2, 106 Weiss, L. 28 welfare 151, 157 basic levels of 156 cut back levels of 149, 150 drastic cuts 180 limited provision 141 poor levels of 155 programs should be modified 158 reform 16, 21 small but significant programs 156 state-funded programs 150 transforming recipients of 13 welfare states 86, 159 crisis of 171 dismantling 179 funding of union-run programs 150 hollowing out of 179


INDEX

key pillars at federal level 175 Keynesian 20, 167, 171, 197, 237, 250 liberal 226 Wellington 239 Wells, L. T. 87, 94, 98, 100, 107 Western Europe 30 Whitley, R. D. 28 Williams, A. M. 182 Williams, A. P. 176, 191 Williamson, J. 17 Wills, J. 256 Wilson, D. 19, 255, 258 Wilson, J. (Ontario politician) 177–9, 181, 185, 189 Winston, J. 203 Wint, A. G. 87, 94, 107 Winterbottom, A. (home care client) 190, 192 Winters, J. A. 44 Wolch, J. R. 210, 217 Wolff, R. D. 96 women 13, 20, 49, 54, 59–62, 64, 71–3, 171, 182–5, 190, 207, 209, 256 creditworthy 71 crowding into low-status, low-paid jobs 185 empowerment of 59, 60, 72, 73 home-care recipients and family caregivers 182 homeless 203 leaving abusive relationships 202 lower credit risk than men 59 poor 64, 207 rural 49, 54, 58, 64 separating homeless men and 217 social practices that differently situate and impact 13 subjectivities of 60 united, organized into groups 71 Woo-Cumings, M. 30

323

Wood, A. 85, 95, 106 Wood, C. 36 Woodridge 20, 195–220, 249, 254 Woods, N. 40 workers’ rights 141, 143 workfare 149–50, 179, 180 working class 144, 148, 158 workloads 185–7 World Bank 3, 12, 18, 31, 56, 58, 62, 63, 73, 103, 108, 111, 134, 135, 139, 225, 226, 230, 248 anti-statist models of microfinance promoted by 69 Chicago School-trained economists with close links to 147 China’s interaction with 40 health reform programs and 171, 173 Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency 89, 92 see also FIAS World Development Report (2001) 89 World Social Forum 2, 19, 245 worldwide depression 143 WTO (World Trade Organization) 18, 31, 91, 106, 108, 248 China’s membership of 40 Wyatt-Walter, A. 42 Wysham, D. 58 Yahuda, M. 37 Yeatman, A. 227 Yeoh, C. 101 Yeung, H. W.-C. 87 Young, A. 106 Young, I. 260 Young, S. 88 Yunus, M. 50, 54, 76 Zysman, J. 28




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