The potential influence of Neoliberalism on the capacity and form of spatial adaptation

Human spatial environments must adapt to climate change. Spatial planning is central to climate change adaptation and potentially well suited to the task, however neoliberal influences and trends threaten this capacity. This paper explores the potential interaction of emerging research areas, the first of which pursues climate change adaptation through spatial planning and the second of which has observed the neoliberalisation of urban planning, The potential capacity and form of spatial adaptation within the context a planning environment influenced by neoliberal principles is evaluated. This influence relates to the themes of spatial scale, temporal scale, responsibility for action, strategies and mechanisms, accrual of benefits, negotiation of priorities and approach to uncertainty. This paper presents a conceptual framework of the influence of neoliberalism on spatial adaptation and presents examples of this approach in documents which underpin adaptation in Australia. It identifies the potential characteristics and the challenges and opportunities of spatial adaptation under a neoliberal frame. The neoliberal frame does not entirely preclude spatial adaptation but significantly influence its form. Neoliberal approaches involve individual action in response to private incentives and near term impacts while collective action, regulatory mechanisms and long term planning is approached cautiously. Challenges concern the degree to which collective action and a long term orientation are necessary, how individual adaptation relates to collective vulnerability and the prioritisation of adaptation by markets. Opportunities might involve the operability of individual and local adaptation, the existence of private incentives to adapt and the potential to align adaptation with entrepreneurial projects.

Old-fashioned and forward looking : Neoliberalism and nostalgia in the Daring Books for Girls

This paper interogates the international bestselling series, The Daring Books for Girls (Buchanan & Peskowitz, 2007, 2008), asking what kinds of girls are produced through these texts.

Six theories of Neoliberalism

This paper takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is ‘oft-invoked but ill-defined’ (Mudge 2008: 703). It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: (1) an all-purpose denunciatory category; (2) ‘the way things are’; (3) a particular institutional framework characterizing Anglo-American forms of national capitalism; (4) a dominant ideology of global capitalism; (5) a form of governmentality and hegemony; and (6) a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978-79 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics (Foucault, 2008) are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories.

How neoliberalism and ecological modernization shaped environmental policy in Australia

‘Sustainability’ provides the dominant frame within which environmental policy debate occurs, notwithstanding its divergent meanings. However, how different discourses combine to shape understanding of the environment, the causes of environmental issues, and the responses required, is less clear cut. Drawing primarily on the approach to critical discourse analysis (CDA) developed by Fairclough, this paper explores the way in which neoliberal and ecologically modern discourses combine to shape environmental policy. Environmental scholars have made relatively little use of this approach to CDA to date, despite the significant interest in the discursive aspects of environmental issues, and its wide use in other areas of policy interest. Using the case of environmental policy-making in Victoria, Australia, this paper illustrates how neoliberalism and weak ecological modernization represented sustainability in ways that seriously limited the importance of environmental issues.

Neoliberalism and Spatial Adaptation

Human spatial environments must adapt to climate change. Spatial planning is central to climate change adaptation and potentially well suited to the task, however neoliberal influences and trends threaten this capacity. This paper explores the significance of neoliberal influences on urban planning to climate change adaptation. The potential form of spatial adaptation within the context of a planning environment influenced by neoliberal principles is evaluated. This influence relates to spatial scale, temporal scale, responsibility for action, strategies and mechanisms, accrual of benefits, negotiation of priorities and approach to uncertainty. This paper presents a conceptual framework of the influence of neoliberalism on spatial adaptation. It identifies the potential characteristics, challenges and opportunities of spatial adaptation under a neoliberal frame. The neoliberal frame does not entirely preclude spatial adaptation but significantly influence its form. Neoliberal approaches involve individual action in response to private incentives and near term impacts while collective action, regulatory mechanisms and long term planning is approached cautiously. Challenges concern the degree to which collective action and a long term orientation are necessary, how individual adaptation relates to collective vulnerability and the prioritisation of adaptation by markets. Opportunities might involve the operability of individual and local adaptation, the existence of private incentives to adapt and the potential to align adaptation with entrepreneurial projects.

Doing adaptation differently? Does neoliberalism influence adaptation planning in Queensland?

Australian cities are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Adapting to climate change is a critical task for contemporary spatial planning, one that is widely recognised by the planning profession and beginning to receive substantive attention in planning policy. However adaptation takes place within the context of established spatial governance regimes and planning cultures, and examples of effective adaptation are often grounded in progressive contexts markedly different than Australia. In Australia, planning is subject to strong neoliberal reform agendas (Gleeson & Low, 2000a, 2000b) and national adaptation policies align with neoliberal views (Granberg & Glover, 2011). Planning in Queensland has been subject to deregulation (Buxton et al., 2012) and the continued influence of neoliberalism (Wright & Cleary, 2012). The influence of neoliberalism on climate change adaptation has received little consideration in research and literature. This paper reviews a case study of adaptation planning through the lens of the recent and contemporary influences of neoliberalism. It examines spatial/land-use planning for climate change adaptation in Queensland, identifying the underlying rationales, priorities and strategies. A justification for such an investigation is advanced based on the challenges to planning facilitating adaptation and identified links to neoliberalism. A preliminary analysis of interviews with planners is then used to identify and discuss the ideological influences practitioners perceive in current approaches to adaptation in Queensland and the implications of such.

A toothless chihuahua? : the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, neoliberalism and supermarket power in Australia

During the Senate Inquiry into 'milk price wars' in 2011, Senator Nick Xenophon accused the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) of being 'less effective than a toothless Chihuahua'. This follows the ACCC's lack of action regarding the reported abuse of market power of Australia's supermarket duopoly, where an extensive inquiry into the competitiveness of retail prices in 2008 found grocery retailing to be 'workably competitive' despite numerous claims to the contrary. How can farmers' submissions to the inquiry that cite market abuse be reconciled with the ACCC's finding that all is well in the food supply chain? Following an in-depth examination of 53 farmer submissions to the inquiry, we conclude that the findings of the ACCC are commensurate with the neoliberal economisation of the political sphere, where commercial entities 'legitimately' govern beyond their corporate boundaries, often using disciplinary measures that were once exclusive to governments. We argue that such clear structural inequalities between farmers and major corporations is reason to re-regulate markets and reinsert a stronger role for government to 'level the playing field'.

Food security in Australia in an era of neoliberalism, productivism and climate change

For over 150 years Australia has exported bulk, undifferentiated, commodities such as wool, wheat, meat and sugar to the UK and more recently to Japan, Korea, and the Middle East. It is estimated that, each year, Australia's farming system feeds a domestic population of some 22 million people, while exporting enough food to feed another 40 million. With the Australian population expected to double in the next 40 years, and with the anticipated growth in the world's population to reach a level of some 9 billion (from its present level of 7 billion) in the same period, there are strong incentives for an expansion of food production in Australia. Neoliberal settings are encouraging this expansion at the same time as they are facilitating importation of foods, higher levels of foreign direct investment and the commoditisation of resources (such as water). Yet, expansion in food production – and in an era of climate change – will continue to compromise the environment. After discussing Australia's neoliberal framework and its relation to farming, this paper outlines how Australia is attempting to address the issue of food security. It argues that productivist farming approaches that are favoured by both industry and government are proving incapable of bringing about long-term production outcomes that will guarantee national food security.

Prison rates, social democracy, neoliberalism and justice reinvestment

This chapter will begin with a brief summary of some recent research in the field of comparative penology. This work will be examined to explore the benefits, difficulties and limits of attempting to link criminal justice issues to types of advanced democratic polities, with particular emphasis on political economies. This stream of comparative penology examines data such as imprisonment rates and levels of punitiveness in different countries, before drawing conclusions based on the patterns which seem to emerge. Foremost among these is that the high imprisoning countries tend to be the advanced western liberal democracies which have gone furthest in adopting neoliberal economic and social policies, as against the lower imprisonment rates of social democracies, which variably have attempted to temper free-market economic policies in various ways. Such work brings both social democracy and neoliberalism into focus as issues for, or subjects of, criminology. Not in the sense of new ‘brands’ of criminology but rather as an examination of the connections between the political projects of social democracy and neoliberalism, and issues of crime and criminal justice. In the new comparative penology, social democracy and neoliberalism are cast in opposition, simultaneously raising the questions of to what extent and how adequately both social democracy and neoliberalism have been constituted as subjects in criminology and whether dichotomy is the only available trope of analysis?

Six theories of neoliberalism

This article takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is ‘oft-invoked but ill-defined’. It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: (1) an all-purpose denunciatory category; (2) ‘the way things are’; (3) an institutional framework characterizing particular forms of national capitalism, most notably the Anglo-American ones; (4) a dominant ideology of global capitalism; (5) a form of governmentality and hegemony; and (6) a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978–9 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics, are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories. It instead proposes understanding neoliberalism in terms of historical institutionalism, with Foucault’s account of historical change complementing MaxWeber’s work identifying the distinctive economic sociology of national capitalisms.

Foucault, Weber, neoliberalism and the politics of governmentality

This paper argues that Michel Foucault’s lectures that form The Birth of Biopolitics owe a considerable debt to the thought of Max Weber, particularly in their analysis of how different socio-legal regimes shape distinctive national forms of capitalist economies, and the role that is played by social and economic institutions in the shaping of individual identities. This is in contrast to a common interpretation of Foucault’s account of neoliberalism, which synthesizes his work into neo-Marxist notions of hegemony and capitalist domination. It also identifies Foucault’s approach to neoliberalism as an exploratory one, which considers insights into how a particular relationship between ideas and institutional practices may help in imagining socialist forms of government practice.

The phenomenology of utopia : reimagining the political

This thesis argues that the end of Soviet Marxism and a bipolar global political imaginary at the dissolution of the short Twentieth Century poses an obstacle for anti-systemic political action. Such a blockage of alternate political imaginaries can be discerned by reading the work of Francis Fukuyama and "Endism" as performative invocations of the closure of political alternatives, and thus as an ideological proclamation which enables and constrains forms of social action. It is contended that the search through dialectical thought for a competing universal to posit against "liberal democracy" is a fruitless one, because it reinscribes the terms of teleological theories of history which work to effect closure. Rather, constructing a phenomenological analytic of the political conjuncture, the thesis suggests that the figure of messianism without a Messiah is central to a deconstructive reframing of the possibilities of political action - a reframing attentive to the rhetorical tone of texts. The project of recovering the political is viewed through a phenomenological lens. An agonistic political distinction must be made so as to memorialise the remainders and ghosts of progress, and thus to gesture towards an indeconstructible justice which would serve as a horizon for the articulation of an empty universal. This project is furthered by a return to a certain phenomenology inspired by Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Ernesto Laclau. The thesis provides a reading of Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin as thinkers of a minor universalism, a non-prescriptive utopia, and places their work in the context of new understandings of religion and the political as quasi-transcendentals which can be utilised to think through the aporias of political time in order to grasp shards of meaning. Derrida and Chantal Mouffe's deconstructive critique and supplement to Carl Schmitt's concept of the political is read as suggestive of a reframing of political thought which would leave the political question open and thus enable the articulation of social imaginary significations able to inscribe meaning in the field of political action. Thus, the thesis gestures towards a form of thought which enables rather than constrains action under the sign of justice.

School education as social and economic governance : responsibilising communities through industry-school engagement

This article examines shifts in educational and social governance taking place in Queensland, Australia, through Industry School Engagement Strategy of Education Queensland and its Gateway Schools program. This significant educational initiative is set within the context of the social investment agenda first articulated in the education policy framework, Queensland State Education-2010. The article traces the historic extension of this governmental strategy through establishment of the Gateway Schools concept that brokers industry-school partnerships with global players in the Queensland economy. Industry sectors forming the partnerships include Minerals and Energy, Aerospace, Wine Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing and Engineering, Building and Construction and ICT. We argue that this ‘post-bureaucratic’ model of schooling represents a new social settlement of neoliberal governance, in which educational outcomes align with economic objectives, and frame the conditions for community self-governance.