Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful concepts to emerge within geography over the past two decades. But whilst the number of scholars writing about neoliberalism has grown exponentially, there remains significant debate on what “neoliberalism” actually is, whether it exists at all, and its utility as a means of theorizing what appears to be a general shift in economic and social regulation. At a base level, neoliberalism denotes a set of social, economic and political arrangements, emphasizing market relations, re-tasking of the role of the state and individual responsibility. Yet attention to the historical development of state projects, policy objects and socio-political imaginaries being mobilized under the banner of neoliberalism reveals some very different, but also necessarily overlapping, ideas and policies. The result is an understanding of neoliberalism not as a pure and static set of socio-economic and political arrangements, but rather as a dynamic and unfolding process involving the extension of competitive markets into all areas of life. Key to this process is an attempt to instil a set of particular values and practices in policy subjects. Recognizing that the embodied effects and lived realities of neoliberalism are not uniform, geographers have documented the socio-spatial transformations involved in the production, promotion and preservation of the market in a diverse range of economic matrixes, social contexts, policy environments and institutional settings. Much of this geographical work is orientated towards supporting the resistances that have emerged and enabling alternatives that might help to overcome the inequalities in wealth, power and possibility that have arisen as a consequence of market(-like) rule.