Piet Naudé | Michael Welker | John Witte, Jr. (Eds.): The Impact of Political Economy (Leseprobe)

Neoliberal Political Economy and Value Transmission 33
service delivery (of course, at acost). 3 What makes neoliberalism dangerous is
its ability to adapt to new circumstances while maintaining certain key elements,
therefore making it very difficult for acoherent set of criticisms to be
successful. It is also dangerous because it depoliticizes processes through which
social phenomena are maintained. 4 Deregulation allows hypermobility of capital
and the increased power ofcapital interests, leading to an overreliance on capital
growth and investment, rather than providing for human well-beingand the
sustainability of resources. 5 This resilience of neoliberalism leads to an exclusion
of alternative frameworks of managing economies, the formation of subjectivities
that embrace neoliberal principles, and the unequal redistribution of resources.
Neoliberalism has aserious impact on democracy because it undermines
practices, cultures, and institutions of democracy as rule by the people, and instead
privileges the individual over the collective of the polity. 6 The focus of all
transactionsbecomes the human being as an economic unit, rather than the distribution
of resources among the collective that can lead to socially responsible
and critical citizenship. Change therefore becomes the restructuring of individual
agency rather than the restructuring of conditions that lead toinequality,
discrimination, and precariousness. 7 When neoliberalism becomes apervasive
ethos, it influences value transmission through which subjectivities are formed.
The economization of subjectivity reinforces asymmetrical power relations that
disproportionately affect those who cannot access the market successfully and
those on the fringes of societies—often women and people of color—because neoliberal
globalization is araced and gendered process through which economically
disempowered people often are exploited to the benefit of those who are economically
empowered.
One outcome of neoliberalism on the subject formation of humans is anarcissistic
value system—that of manipulating relationships and the lack of deep
interpersonal connections. This value permeates social institutions, leading, for
example, to children internalizing the values, beliefs, and practicesofaconsumer
culture’s individualized demands. 8 This trend is enhanced and reproduced
through the exposure to social media that drives consumer culture and self-representation,rather
than deeper values of attentiveness and care that is interrela-
3
4
5
6
7
8
Schmidt and Thatcher, “Theorizing Ideational Continuity,” 17.
Ibid., 15.
V. Spike Peterson, “International/Global Political Economy,” in Gender Matters in Global
Politics, ed. Laura J. Shepherd (London: Routledge, 2015), 173–85.
Morley, “Gender in the Neo-Liberal Research Economy,” 20.
Ibid., 26.
Sami Timimi, “The McDonaldization of Childhood: Children’sMental Health in Neo-Liberal
Market Cultures,” Transcultural Psychiatry 47, no. 5(2010): 686–706, at 686.