Neoliberalism and its vernacular variants
Conveners: Mary Patterson, SSEE, University of Melbourne; Nick Bainton, CSRM, The University of Queensland; John Cox, SSEE, University of Melbourne.
Panel description: Studies of neo-liberalism have tended to focus on the impacts of economic and political restructuring on communities in both developed and developing countries. Anthropologists have only recently begun to engage with the embedding of neo-liberal language and ideology in daily life. In the context of 'late capitalism', anthropologists are now often finding different cultural manifestations of distinctively neo-liberal global capital within the local setting. This process is not geographically confined, though interesting cases continually surface within Melanesia, where an earlier anthropological tradition saw some Melanesians as 'pre-adapted to capitalism'. In this session we have invited papers that address the possibility that, in Melanesia and elsewhere, there are now 'multiple neo-liberalisms'. We aim to investigate the processes surrounding the vernacular expression of neo-liberalism within varied settings, and whether these are obscured by the politics of representation and the sympathetic engagement of most of us with the anthropology of resistance to the excesses and consequences of neo-liberal ideology.
Abstracts
Nick Bainton, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining, University of Queensland - Shadow or Substance? Vernacular Varieties of Neoliberalism in Melanesia
Mary Patterson, School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne - From Minerva Reef to Minerva's Owl Taking Wing at dusk: Libertarians and Neo-liberal Orthodoxy in the Pacific
John Cox, School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne - ‘Cargo Cult Mentality’: Dependency, Disparagement and Neo-Liberal Citizenship in Melanesia.
Ursula Rao, Sociology and Anthropology, University of New South Wales - Re-Writing Politics: Consumerist Messages and the Emergence of a New Style of Political Reporting in ‘Liberalized’ India
Andrew Dawson, School of Social and Environmental Enquiry, University of Melbourne - Neo-liberalism on Infertile Grounds
