Neoliberalism and privatisation in South Africa

Perhaps the defining characteristic of development as a global discourse is its neoliberal character. Even recently liberated nations such as South Africa have not escaped its reach. In South Africa, there has been a movement from a development policy with a socialist resonance – the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) – to one decidedly neoliberal in form and substance – the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) policy. The articulation of neoliberalism through development policy is being facilitated through a series of measures among which are fiscal austerity, export oriented production and the privatisation of public sector services. While the GEAR policy, as a macroeconomic framework, is being contested by labour unions it is privatisation which is facing widespread opposition among communities. My intention is twofold, firstly, to investigate how neoliberalism as a global hegemonic discourse has succeeded in capturing, colonising and repackaging the development imaginary of the African National Congress (ANC). Secondly, I wish to examine how privatisation as a sub-discourse of neoliberalism is being articulated in the historically black township of Chatsworth, in Durban. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

After a decade of critique: neoliberal environmentalism,discourse analysis and the promotion of climate-protecting behaviour in the workplace

In a 2004 special issue of Geoforum, McCarthy and Prudham argued that the connections between neoliberalism and the environment had been underexplored in critical scholarship. In an attempt to address this gap, the special issue reflected on a number of different case studies and set the stage for a decade of analysis and critique. This paper aims to contribute to the increasing body of literature by presenting a detailed theoretical analysis of neoliberal environmentalism and its role in modern society. Specifically, the paper focuses on one particular environmental issue – climate change – and uses it to categorise six discourses that either conform to the principles of neoliberalism (reformist) or reject neoliberal ideas (revolutionary). Drawing on interviews with designated ‘climate champions’ (individuals who are given responsibility for promoting climate protecting behaviour) in large corporations, the paper then demonstrates how this kind of typological framework might be applied to the analysis of neoliberal environmentalism in the ‘real world’. The paper finds that neoliberalism played a very influential role in the promotion of climate protecting behaviour in the workplace. However, there was also some limited evidence of resistance in the form of revolutionary discourses and ideas. Going forwards, the typological framework may provide a valuable analytical tool to assess the dominance and resistance of neoliberal environmentalism in the modern world.     

Virtual moralities: The mainstreaming of Fairtrade in Kenyan tea fields

Fairtrade was founded to alleviate poverty and economic injustice through a market-based form of solidarity exchange. Yet with the increasing participation of transnational food corporations in Fairtrade sourcing, new questions are emerging on the extent to which the model offers an alternative to the inimical tendencies of neoliberalism. Drawing on a qualitative research project of Kenyan Fairtrade tea, this paper examines how the process of corporate mainstreaming influences the structure and outcomes of Fairtrade, and specifically the challenges it poses for the realization of Fairtrade’s development aspirations. It argues firstly that whilst tea producers have experienced tangible benefits from Fairtrade’s social premium, these development ‘gifts’ have been conferred through processes marked less by collaboration and consent than by patronage and exclusion. These contradictions are often glossed by the symbolic force of Fairtrade’s key tenets - empowerment, participation, and justice - which simultaneously serve to neutralize critique and mystify the functions that Fairtrade performs for the political economy of development and neoliberalism. Second, building on recent critiques of corporate social responsibility, the paper explores how certain neoliberal rationalities are emboldened through Fairtrade, as a process of mainstreaming installs new metrics of governance (standards, certification, participation) that are at once moral and technocratic, voluntary and coercive, and inclusionary and marginalizing. The paper concludes that these technologies have divested exchange of mutuality, as the totemic features of neoliberal regulation - standards, procedures and protocols - increasingly render north south partnerships ever more virtual and depoliticized.     

Experiencing agricultural failure: Internal migration, tourism and local perceptions of regional change in the Yucatan

In response to a growing body of literature encouraging geographers to present textured, regional case studies that demonstrate how neoliberalism functions at diverse scales, this article presents a nuanced account of neoliberalism in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. The study seeks to illustrate how neoliberal reforms to agriculture and ongoing neoliberal tourism development in the Yucatecan state of Quintana Roo intersect to create a unique regional context for migration between the state’s rural areas and Mexico’s largest planned tourism development zone in Cancun. The research presented is based on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews that took place in 2003 with rural residents and regional migrants working in Cancun. Through the employment of an experiential definition of neoliberalism, grounded in the lived experiences and perceptions of study participants, the article suggests that rural-urban tourist pole migration is the result of a complex negotiation of the region’s neoliberal landscape. The article argues that rural residents’ and migrants’ perceptions of the failure of agriculture as a livelihood is shaped relative to the perceived success of the tourism industry and better livelihood opportunities in Cancun. These widespread perceptions of agricultural failure in the Yucatan peninsula are constructed not solely in response to local conditions but rather in response to the overall regional outcome of neoliberal economic restructuring initiatives which have negatively affected traditional agriculture in the rural sphere while privileging tourism development in the urban sphere centered in Cancun.     

From post-politics to a politics of possibility? Unravelling the privatization of the Berlin Water Company

This article explores the constraints and contingencies of contemporary urban governance, with reference to the partial privatization (1999) and partial remunicipalization (2012) of the Berlin Water Company (BWB). It outlines the processes through which this major shift in Berlin politics occurred, showing how the mainstream consensus on privatization was disrupted and alternatives to apparent neoliberal conformity emerged. Dynamics apparent in the BWB case – commercialization, privatization, re-regulation, public contestation and remunicipalization – are indicative of the challenges and opportunities of making policy in and beyond the global norms of neoliberalism. It is argued that this case is important because it reveals something about what we might call the “politics of possibility” within the paradigm of neoliberal urban governance: the continuing potential for change within the constraints of an urban governance configured to the logics and needs of markets. Given this, the paper concludes that local contingencies in urban governance problematize sweeping notions of a post-political condition. However observable post-political strategies and outcomes in Berlin and elsewhere are, researchers should not assume that they are inevitably dominant or universal.     

(Re)constructing rural–urban spaces: gendered livelihoods,migration, and natural resources in South Africa

Critical approaches to development theory and practice provide alternative perspectives that focus on counterhegemonic and discursive dimensions of the development process. Feminist development is one such approach that opens up new spaces and opportunities to promote socially progressive and sustainable economic strategies. This paper uses feminist development geography as a framework to highlight the intersection of diverse spaces and economic strategies at the household and community levels. The analysis focuses on gendered livelihoods that are linked to circular migration and use of natural resources as a way to understand the integration of rural and urban spaces of development. The empirical section of this paper examines demographic patterns and socio-economic trends in Limpopo Province, South Africa as a context for the case study of two community-based women’s producer groups. These examples illustrate how economic strategies and social identities are embedded in and integrate both rural and urban spaces. This analysis contributes to feminist and post-structural development theory and practice by highlighting the potential for progressive forms of economic and social empowerment.     

Education for development, CD for Peace: Producing the “globally competitive” child

This paper is set against the backdrop of an increasingly pervasive discursive coupling of peace with development, and of extremism with underdevelopment. An evolving knowledge economy discourse casts education as both a key determinant of economic development, and as a crucial tool in the battle for “hearts and minds” in a global war against terrorism and extremism. Education for development, and education as anti-extremism are the twin goals of the Filipino CD for Peace - a contribution to the UN-backed International Power Users of ICT (Information Communication Technology) Symposium. In this paper, I examine the ways in which this youth Symposium feeds into and mobilizes powerful logics around the links between education and development/counterterrorism. My argument is that education for development, and one of its articulations, the CD for Peace, are undergirded by and reproduce neoliberal development logics in several overlapping respects. I illustrate the ways in which the language of connection and collaboration reproduces a distinct rationality related both to the transformative potential of (private investment in) ICT and to the production of particular kinds of subjectivities: youth as connected, informed, economically valuable global citizens beyond the reach of extremists. The Power Users project works to (re)construct teenagers as “gurus”; conflict (and poverty, and terrorism) becomes solvable through education and ICT. I show how knowledge economy discourse powerfully constructs youth as learning subjects who come to imagine their own roles and identities in specifically neoliberal ways: not only as learners, but also as advocates for this nexus of technology, education, development and peace.     

Thinking inside the neoliberal box: The micro-politics of agro-food philanthropy

This paper examines a philanthropy-led initiative which has as its objective to jump start the transition to a more sustainable and just food system in California. The first major project funded was a “vivid picture” of California’s food system twenty-five years in the future. The outcome of the project is a report that is glossed with the tropes of neoliberalism in all of its key organizing frameworks, analytics, cognitive maps, and idioms and argues for “opportunities-based approaches” as the engine of change. Yet, as described in the paper, this outcome was initially under-determined, and, in fact, the funders had originally intended to leverage their resources for large scale transformation. By examining four moments in the development of the Vivid Picture project, the grantee selection, the modeling exercise, the stakeholder meetings, and the qualitative interviews, this paper will show how existing techniques of neoliberal governance such as modeling, audit, best-practices, and stakeholder participation, as well as current norms of philanthropy, shaped what is thinkable and hence actable. It will also show how “stakeholders” played a constitutive role in producing the outcomes of the project, in part because their input reflected already-developed notions of the possible within the current climate of neoliberalism. In the end it will argue that the failure of the Vivid Picture to look beyond the neoliberal present is itself evidence of the proliferation of neoliberal governmentalities. Still, the entire process galvanized many of the movement actors who were left out of the funding process and, in that way, produced political openings.     

Neoliberalism and the making of food politics in California

This paper examines a philanthropy-led initiative which has as its objective to jump start the transition to a more sustainable and just food system in California. The first major project funded was a “vivid picture” of California’s food system twenty-five years in the future. The outcome of the project is a report that is glossed with the tropes of neoliberalism in all of its key organizing frameworks, analytics, cognitive maps, and idioms and argues for “opportunities-based approaches” as the engine of change. Yet, as described in the paper, this outcome was initially under-determined, and, in fact, the funders had originally intended to leverage their resources for large scale transformation. By examining four moments in the development of the Vivid Picture project, the grantee selection, the modeling exercise, the stakeholder meetings, and the qualitative interviews, this paper will show how existing techniques of neoliberal governance such as modeling, audit, best-practices, and stakeholder participation, as well as current norms of philanthropy, shaped what is thinkable and hence actable. It will also show how “stakeholders” played a constitutive role in producing the outcomes of the project, in part because their input reflected already-developed notions of the possible within the current climate of neoliberalism. In the end it will argue that the failure of the Vivid Picture to look beyond the neoliberal present is itself evidence of the proliferation of neoliberal governmentalities. Still, the entire process galvanized many of the movement actors who were left out of the funding process and, in that way, produced political openings.     

Poisoning the well: neoliberalism and the contamination of municipal water in Walkerton, Ontario

In May of 2000, thousands of residents of the town of Walkerton, Ontario became ill from drinking municipal water contaminated by Escherichia coli and Campylobacter jejuni bacteria. Seven people died, while many suffered debilitating injuries. A highly unusual and risk prone local hydrological regime, coupled with manure spreading on farms near municipal wells, and lax oversight by municipal water utility officials, were quickly blamed by Ontario government figures, including then premier Mike Harris. However, the scandal surrounding Walkerton's tragedy and a subsequent public inquiry into the incident also implicated neoliberal reforms of environmental governance introduced by Harris's government subsequent to its election in 1995. This paper examines the Walkerton incident as an important example of a “normal accident” of neoliberalism, one that can be expected from neoliberal environmental regulatory reforms arising from systematic irresponsibility in environmental governance. This irresponsibility is promulgated by an overarching hostility to any regulatory interference with free markets, as well as specific regulatory gaps that produce environmental risks. The paper also serves as a case study of the extent to which neoliberalism is constituted by environmental governance reform, and conversely, how environmental governance reform is reconfigured as part of the emergent neoliberal mode of social regulation.     

`Our resistance will be as transnational as capital': Convergence space and strategy in globalising resistance

This paper analyses the emerging globalising networks of communication, solidarity, and information-sharing between social movements and other resistance formations in opposition to neoliberal globalisation. In particular, the paper focuses upon People's Global Action – a network of various social movemnets and grassroots intitiatives from around the world. The paper argues that such a network represents not an organisation, but rather a convergence space – a heterogenous affinity of common ground between resistance formations wherein certain interests, goals, tactics and strategies converge. The paper analyses how space and strategy are negotiated in these globalising terrains of resistance, and argues that place-specific struggles are engaging with alliances and collaborations across diverse boundaries of gender, generation, class, and ethnicity – globalising the common ground between different struggles. Explaining how the internet has been crucial to the development of these networks, the paper argues that the strategies of such networks can be interpreted, in part, through the Taoist text, The Art of War, especially the Taoist notions of terrain, knowing others, and form/lessness. In addition, the paper argues that convergence spaces are fragmented by important issues of language, power, and mobility.     

The neoliberalization of Contemporary Christian Music’s new Social Gospel

This paper explores how Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) forges neoliberal subjectivities. CCM, popular music featuring evangelical Christian lyrics, is one of the most widely consumed forms of commercial entertainment for America’s 70–80 million white evangelical Christians. I argue that by synthesizing evangelical individualism and an insular community ethos, the everyday practices of CCM help constitute particularly neoliberal senses of self and power relations with others. These ostensibly apolitical subjectivities sustain neoliberal ventures such as the reinvention of the Social Gospel through Christian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As well as demonstrating the role of religious and musical practices in cultivating neoliberal subjectivities, CCM helps illuminate neoliberalism’s fractures, dynamism, and multiplicities.     

The ethno-environmental fix and its limits: Indigenous land titling and the production of not-quite-neoliberal natures in Bolivia

During the 1980s and 1990s, an era of neoliberal reform, global development institutions like the World Bank began promoting and financing the collective titling of indigenous territories. Extending and linking existing discussions of neoliberal multiculturalism and neoliberal natures, this paper interrogates indigenous land rights as a type of “ethno-environmental fix”, designed to synergise protection of vulnerable populations and highly-valued natures from the destructive effects of markets, in an era of multiple countermovements. Using the example of the titling of TCOs (Original Communal Lands) in Bolivia, the paper explores how governmental aspirations for indigenous territories unravelled in practice, producing hybrid, double-edged and “not-quite-neoliberal” spaces – spaces which have, paradoxically, emerged as key sites for the construction of more radical indigenous projects.     

Welcome to the Gig Economy: neoliberal industrial relations and the case of Uber

The competitive pressures of neoliberal economies have compelled employers to devolve responsibilities to contractors and subcontractors. The rise information technology platforms have significantly accelerated this trend over past decade. “Sharing economy” companies have such widespread adoption of neoliberalism’s industrial relations that a new moniker—“the Gig Economy”—has taken root. Although shareholders and consumers have benefited, middle-class jobs have been squeezed in the process. This paper uses Uber as a case study to discuss how Sharing Economy entities are merely the latest iteration of companies to enact the neoliberal playbook, including (a) (mis)classifying workers, (b) engaging in regime shopping, and (c) employing the most economically vulnerable, rather than giving rise to a new world of work altogether. The result is a crowding out of middle-class employment by precarious ‘gigs’ that lack legal protections and benefits.     

Neoliberalism and natural resource management: Agri-environmental standards and the governing of farming practices

Private standards and certification schemes are widely acknowledged as playing an increasingly important role in agri-environmental governance. While much of the existing research concludes that these mechanisms consolidate the global extension of neoliberalism – enhancing the power of corporate actors to the detriment of smaller producers – we argue that this overlooks the complex ways in which standards are used by governments and farmers in the governing of farming practices. Focusing specifically on a process standard – Environmental Management Systems (EMS) – promoted by the Australian government as a way of verifying the ‘clean and green’ status of agricultural exports, we examine how one regional group of producers has sought to use EMS standards in practice. Our analysis of a case study in the state of Victoria appears to confirm that EMS was a successful instrument for the extension of neoliberal governance, reinforcing the production of neoliberal subjectivities and practices amongst farmer participants and enabling the government to compensate for gaps in environmental provision. However, it would be a mistake to interpret the development of this EMS scheme as an example of naïve farmers manipulated by the state. In practice, farmers used the opportunities provided by government funding to undertake actions which expressed their own agri-environmental values and practices. Establishment of an EMS and associated eco-label enabled producers to demonstrate and extend their capacity to act as good environmental stewards. Our research highlights how the local application of environmental standards negotiates and shapes, rather than simply contributes to, neoliberal rule.     

Shopping to save lives: Gender and environment theories meet ethical consumption

Much of the current work in the field of ‘gender and environment’ has been developed around case studies of environmental roles, rights and responsibilities at the community or household scale in the South. This paper asserts that the theoretical insights developed through these case studies can be of great use when examining issues of gender and environment in the North, particularly when it comes to issues of ethical consumption. In this paper I examine the promotional discourses of two cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns (where consumption of a CRM product triggers a donation to a development cause) using two such insights: (i) the mutual constitution of gendered subjectivities and environments and (ii) a gender and environment approach to questioning neoliberalization. This approach highlights the ways in which – through consumption – gender is constituted transnationally at the same time that it is constituted in relation to environments. This approach also emphasizes a series of questions about the neoliberal aspects of CRM campaigns that are usually hidden behind discourses of motherhood and responsibility. Overall, I argue that bringing gender and environment and ethical consumption research together allows us to advance both areas of study in critical and insightful ways.     

Placing sexuality in health policies: feminist geographies and public health nursing

Despite the increasing public profile of same-sex issues, health policies are often shaped by heteronormative assumptions. The health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual/transgender, two-spirit, intersex, queer and questioning (LGBTTTIQQ) people are complex and require broadening from an often exclusively sexual health and risk focus to a more holistic approach. In this context, this paper illustrates how a critical feminist geography of health, with its focus on the mutual construction of gender relations, space and place, potentially enhances and extends current understandings of public health policy and practice. Moreover, the use of a policy lens foregrounding gender and other power relations suggests that feminist research and coalitions facilitate participatory processes that address “the politics of discourse.” In particular, public health nursing practice can enhance the construction of spaces of resistance that challenge heteronormative discourse through research strategies focused on sexual minority communities’ health experiences and their visions for supportive care. In this respect, two strategies consistent with public health priorities to increase knowledge and participate in alliances are described. Ethnographic research with childbearing lesbians demonstrates that attention to institutional dynamics that foster safe spaces can facilitate access to public health services. Public health nurses’ involvement in community coalitions can enhance dissemination of community knowledges. The implications for gender inclusive and place-sensitive public health nursing practice include the development of sensitive educators, meaningful educational curriculum and related program planning, explicit policies, community partnerships and political leadership in institutional and research venues.     

Bounding difference: Intersectionality and the material production of gender, caste, class and environment in Nepal

Current theorising in human geography draws attention to the relational emergence of space and society, challenging ideas of difference that rely on fixed identities and emphasising the importance of the everyday in the production of social inequalities. Similarly, feminist political ecology has emphasised the role of ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ in the production of subjectivities such that ideas of gender and nature arise in relation to each other. In this paper I build from these insights to explore the ways in which the embodied performance of gender, caste and other aspects of social difference collapse the distinction between the material and the symbolic. Symbolic ideas of difference are produced and expressed through embodied interactions that are firmly material. Through this kind of conceptualisation, I hope to push forward debates in geography on nature and feminist political ecology on how to understand the intersectional emergence of subjectivities, difference and socio-natures. Importantly, it is the symbolic meanings of particular spaces, practices and bodies that are (re)produced through everyday activities including forest harvesting, agricultural work, food preparation and consumption, all of which have consequences for both ecological processes and social difference. Through the performance of everyday tasks, not only are ideas of gender, caste and social difference brought into view, but the embodied nature of difference that extends beyond the body and into the spaces of everyday life is evident. I use ethnographic evidence from rural Nepal to explore the ways in which boundaries between bodies, spaces, ecologies and symbolic meanings of difference are produced and maintained relationally through practices of work and ritual.     

Imagining migration: Placing children’s understanding of ‘moving house’ in Malawi and Lesotho

Research pertaining to children’s geographies has mainly focused on children’s physical experiences of space, with their ‘imagined geographies’ receiving far less attention. The few studies of children’s imagined geographies that exist tend to focus on children’s national identities and their understanding of distant places. However, children’s lives are not necessarily static and they often move between places. Research has not so far considered children’s images of these transitional spaces or how such images are constructed.Through an examination of over 800 thematic drawings and stories, regarding ‘moving house’, produced by children aged 10-17 years in urban and rural communities of Lesotho and Malawi, this paper explores southern African children’s representations of migration. The research considers how ideas of migration are culturally-constructed based on notions of family, home and kinship, particularly in relation to the fluid family structure characteristic of most southern African societies. The results suggest that most children imagine migration as a household rather than an individual process, rarely including micro-migrations between extended family households in their drawings. Further, children’s images of migration are place-rooted in everyday life experiences. Their representations concentrate on the reasons for migration, both negative and positive, which are specifically related to their local social and environmental situations and whether house moves take place locally or over longer distances. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of these conceptualisations of moving house for children’s contemporary migration experiences, particularly in light of changing family structures due to the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.