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

34 Amanda Gouws
tional. The free market exercises social control in aggressive and punitive ways,
through making those who are not successful feel like failures, not fitting in
and not belonging. 9 Many children are now preoccupied with issues that show
alack of psychological well-being, such as anxiety, depression, and feelings of
exclusion—feeling that they do not belong, manifesting as emotional insecurity.
In what Sami Timimi calls the “McDonaldization” of children’s mental health—
where pharmaceutical interventions can be bought as fast as atakeaway hamburger—children
are not made to feel secure and connected, but rather are pathologized
because they do not fit in. Children need webs of care outside the education
system that focus on respect, dignity, and interdependence. 10 As Michael
Rustin argues, 11 the development of human potentialities and capabilities is dependent
onthe quality of the relationships in which they are nurtured, and this
also to alarge extent determines their future contributions to society.
QuentinDuroy maintains that certain mentalconstructs legitimize the dominance
of neoliberal institutions and policies. 12 Drawing on the work of Thorstein
Veblen, 13 he argues that habits of mind are the guides to an individual’s interpretation
of the world and actions that has an institutional, cultural, and individual
dimension. Neoliberalism produces ideas and habits of mind (subjectivities)
that foreground the individual’s access to the market that has also
influenced cultural expressions. On an institutional level, neoliberalism has delegitimized
the ability of the state to assert its political sovereignty in the market,
and culture has become instrumentalized for the purposes of making money.
Culture and institutions therefore conspire to socialize values that support
neoliberal capitalism. This includes objectifying relations and individuals
through commodification in terms of their productivity, efficiency, and profit.
Aperson’s value is therefore contingent on his or her relations to profit. 14 Education
itself has become instrumentalized to meet ends that suit the market,
rather than valorized for the values it can transfer.
The consequences of neoliberalism are powerful and have culminated in
aglobal project, through which space is reconfigured.Neoliberalism has become
institutionalized through governmental programs, social formations, as well as
9
10
11
12
13
14
Ibid., 696.
Dympna Devine and Wendy Lutrell, “Children and Value—Education in Neo-Liberal
Times,” Children and Society 27, no. 4(2013): 231–44.
Michael Rustin, “A Relational Society,” Soundings 54 (2013): 23–36.
Quentin Duroy, “Thinking Like aTrader: The Impact of Neoliberal Doctrine on Habits of
Thought,” Journal of Economic Issues 50, no. 2(2016): 603–10.
Thorstein Veblen, The Vested Interests and the State of the Industrial Arts (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1919).
Ryan Willilams LaMothe, “The Colonizing Realities of Neoliberal Capitalism,” Pastoral
Psychology 65 (2016): 23–40, at 28.