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Where in the world does neoliberalism come from?

The market agenda in southern perspective

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Abstract

Neoliberalism is generally understood as a system of ideas circulated by a network of right-wing intellectuals, or as an economic system mutation resulting from crises of profitability in capitalism. Both interpretations prioritize the global North. We propose an approach to neoliberalism that prioritizes the experience of the global South, and sees neoliberalism gaining its main political strength as a development strategy displacing those hegemonic before the 1970s. From Southern perspectives, a distinct set of issues about neoliberalism becomes central: the formative role of the state, including the military; the expansion of world commodity trade, including minerals; agriculture, informality, and the transformation of rural society. Thinkers from the global South who have foregrounded these issues need close attention from the North and exemplify a new architecture of knowledge in critical social science.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council’s discovery project grant DP 110102372, “The making of market society on a world scale”. We are grateful for advice from many colleagues, especially in the reading group associated with the project, and at annual conferences of The Australian Sociological Association.

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  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Education Building (A35), Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia

    Raewyn Connell & Nour Dados

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Connell, R., Dados, N. Where in the world does neoliberalism come from?. Theor Soc 43, 117–138 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-014-9212-9

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