Neoliberalism and the weaponising of language and education

Race & Class ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Giroux

This forceful piece by a leading educational theorist, examines the ways in which democracy is under attack in the US by a combination of neoliberalism and white supremacist Trumpism. What we are witnessing is a mode of governing fuelled by fantasies of exclusion accompanied by a full-scale attack on morality, thoughtful reasoning and collective resistance rooted in democratic forms of struggles. As more people revolt against this dystopian project, neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialised out of legitimate grievances against the government, controlling privileged elites and the hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism. The current crisis of agency, representation, values and language demands a discursive shift that can call into question and defeat the formative culture and ideological scaffolding through which a savage neoliberal capitalism reproduces itself.

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis M. Hsu ◽  
Judy Hayman ◽  
Judith Koch ◽  
Debbie Mandell

Summary: In the United States' normative population for the WAIS-R, differences (Ds) between persons' verbal and performance IQs (VIQs and PIQs) tend to increase with an increase in full scale IQs (FSIQs). This suggests that norm-referenced interpretations of Ds should take FSIQs into account. Two new graphs are presented to facilitate this type of interpretation. One of these graphs estimates the mean of absolute values of D (called typical D) at each FSIQ level of the US normative population. The other graph estimates the absolute value of D that is exceeded only 5% of the time (called abnormal D) at each FSIQ level of this population. A graph for the identification of conventional “statistically significant Ds” (also called “reliable Ds”) is also presented. A reliable D is defined in the context of classical true score theory as an absolute D that is unlikely (p < .05) to be exceeded by a person whose true VIQ and PIQ are equal. As conventionally defined reliable Ds do not depend on the FSIQ. The graphs of typical and abnormal Ds are based on quadratic models of the relation of sizes of Ds to FSIQs. These models are generalizations of models described in Hsu (1996) . The new graphical method of identifying Abnormal Ds is compared to the conventional Payne-Jones method of identifying these Ds. Implications of the three juxtaposed graphs for the interpretation of VIQ-PIQ differences are discussed.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-168
Author(s):  
Aditya Paramita Alhayat

Meskipun Indonesia telah mengenakan tindakan anti-dumping terhadap beberapa jenis produk baja, namun impor produk tersebut masih meningkat. Salah satu kemungkinan penyebabnya adalah importasi melalui produk yang dimodifikasi secara tidak substansial atau melalui negara ketiga yang tidak dikenakan tindakan anti-dumping, yang dalam perdagangan internasional umum disebut sebagai praktik circumvention. Studi ini ditujukan untuk membuktikan bahwa circumvention mengakibatkan tindakan anti-dumping atas impor produk baja Indonesia tidak efektif dan untuk memberikan masukan berdasarkan praktik di negara lain supaya kebijakan anti-dumping Indonesia lebih efektif. Circumvention dianalisis dengan membandingkan pola perdagangan antara sebelum dan setelah pengenaan bea masuk anti-dumping (BMAD) menggunakan data sekunder dari Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS) maupun Global Trade Information Services (GTIS). Hasil analisis menunjukkan adanya indikasi kuat bahwa circumvention mengkibatkan pengenaan tindakan anti-dumping impor produk baja di Indonesia menjadi tidak efektif. Oleh karena itu, sangat penting bagi Pemerintah Indonesia untuk segera melakukan penyempurnaan terhadap Peraturan Pemerintah No. 34/2011 tentang Tindakan Antidumping, Tindakan Imbalan, dan Tindakan Pengamanan Perdagangan dengan memasukkan klausul tindakan anti-circumvention yang setidaknya mencakup bentuk-bentuk dan prosedur tindakan, sebagaimana yang telah dilakukan beberapa negara seperti: AS, EU, Australia, dan India. Although Indonesia has imposed anti-dumping measures on several types of steel products, the import of steel products is still increasing. One possible cause is that imports are made by non-substantial modification of product or through a third country which is not subject to anti-dumping measures, which is generally referred as circumvention practice. This study is aimed to prove that circumvention made Indonesian anti-dumping actions on the steel products ineffective. This also study provides recommendation for a best practice for other countries so that Indonesia's anti-dumping policy can be more effective. Circumvention was analyzed by comparing trade patterns between before and after the imposition of anti-dumping duty using secondary data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (BPS) and the Global Trade Information Services (GTIS). The results of the analysis indicate that circumvention became the reason why Indonesian anti-dumping measures on imported steel products are ineffective. Therefore, it is very important for the Government of Indonesia to immediately make amendments to the Government Regulation No. 34/2011 on Antidumping, Countervailing, and Safeguard Measures by adopting clauses of anti-circumvention. This can be done bycovering the forms/types and procedures of action, as has been implemented by several countries such as the US, EU, Australia, and India.


Author(s):  
J. R. McNeill

This chapter discusses the emergence of environmental history, which developed in the context of the environmental concerns that began in the 1960s with worries about local industrial pollution, but which has since evolved into a full-scale global crisis of climate change. Environmental history is ‘the history of the relationship between human societies and the rest of nature’. It includes three chief areas of inquiry: the study of material environmental history, political and policy-related environmental history, and a form of environmental history which concerns what humans have thought, believed, written, and more rarely, painted, sculpted, sung, or danced that deals with the relationship between society and nature. Since 1980, environmental history has come to flourish in many corners of the world, and scholars everywhere have found models, approaches, and perspectives rather different from those developed for the US context.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642199944
Author(s):  
Quinn Slobodian

This article recounts the backlash against the neoliberal constitutionalism that locked in free trade and capital rights through the multilateral treaty organizations of the 1990s. It argues that we can find important forces in the disruption of the status quo among the elite losers of the 1990s settlement. Undercut by competition from China, the US steel industry, in particular, became a vocal opponent of unconditional free trade and a red thread linking all of Trump’s primary advisers on matters of trade. Steel lobbyists themselves helped frame a critique of actually existing neoliberal globalism, which Trump both adopted and acted on as part of his trade war. By searching for the contemporary attack on neoliberal constitutionalism among the disgruntled corporate elite, we find that our current crisis must be framed as a backlash from above as well as one from below.


2020 ◽  
pp. 194277862097931
Author(s):  
Halley L. Glier ◽  
Temperance Staples ◽  
Megan Martínez ◽  
Anita Fábos ◽  
S.E.D. Mitchell ◽  
...  

This paper draws on observational research conducted in McAllen, Texas, during the summer of 2019, of three major stakeholder groups involved in asylum management: Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC); federal government agencies; and the McAllen community. Each group holds a unique, pluralistic perspective on migration, informing intra-group relations and exposing uneven power dynamics between them. Our analysis is contextualized by a local voice, a former long-term volunteer at the HRC, who speaks of the evolution of the McAllen border in her lifetime, as well as federal authority over McAllen and the HRC to process asylees. We dissect how this power dynamic produces a highly violent, detention-dominant immigration landscape in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV), antithetical to the practiced intersectional culture of voces locales. We reimagine how the US responds to asylum seekers by offering a community action-based framework, where these pluralistic perspectives are equitably valued. Based on interactions and conversations had with each group, we advocate a paradigm shift reflective of La Frontera’s (The Border’s) intersectional identity. This can be achieved by prioritizing voces locales and building capacity for the humanitarian sector, which is already doing critical work at the southern border. We look to contemporary movements like “Defund the Police” as examples, where divesting from the status-quo system of oppression can nurture reparative justice and empowerment to the RGV. In reimagining a more adaptive, asylum justice-oriented paradigm shift, we also recognize the need to abandon the government-controlled deterrence paradigm, which repeatedly causes tremendous harm.


2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 607-624
Author(s):  
Christine Kim

This article evaluates the US ‘Monuments Men’ operations in Korea, focusing on wartime and postwar efforts undertaken by the government of the USA to preserve and restore artwork seized by Japan. The Asian initiative, conceived a year after the European model was established, likewise drew upon cultural, intellectual, and academic resources. Yet fundamental differences in personnel, perceptions of Korean cultural backwardness, prevailing imperialist attitudes, and Cold War sensibilities rendered a very different kind of project. Ultimately the ‘Monuments Men’ succeeded primarily in preserving the cultural patrimony of Japan, but it failed to recover any plundered objects from Korea, or the rest of Asia for that matter. Focusing on the US deliberations regarding repatriation of Korean looted art, this article lays bare both the US preoccupation with maintaining the national interests of its newest ally, and exposes an understanding of East Asian cultural hierarchy that privileged Japan’s artistic achievement and modern society above all.


2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-955 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAN LEIGH

AbstractThis article argues that there is a need to modernise the law governing accountability of the UK security and intelligence agencies following changes in their work in the last decade. Since 9/11 the agencies have come increasingly into the spotlight, especially because of the adoption of controversial counter-terrorism policies by the government (in particular forms of executive detention) and by its international partners, notably the US. The article discusses the options for reform in three specific areas: the use in legal proceedings of evidence obtained by interception of communications; with regard to the increased importance and scle of collaboration with overseas agencies; and to safeguard the political independence of the agencies in the light of their substantially higher public profile. In each it is argued that protection of human rights and the need for public accountability requires a new balance to be struck with the imperatives of national security.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Zia Wahdat ◽  
Michael Gunderson

PurposeThe study investigates whether there is an association between climate types and farm risk attitudes of principal operators.Design/methodology/approachThe study exploits temperature variation in the diverse climate types across the US and defines hot- and cold-climate states. Ordered logit and generalized ordered logit models are used to model principal operators' farm risk attitudes, which are measured on a Likert scale. The study uses two datasets. The first dataset is a 2017 survey of US large commercial producers (LCPs). The second dataset provides a Köppen-Geiger climate classification of the US at a spatial resolution of 5 arcmin for a 25-year period (1986–2010).FindingsThe study finds that principal operators in hot-climate states are 4–5% more likely to have a higher willingness to take farm risk compared to principal operators in cold-climate states.Research limitations/implicationsIt is likely that farm risk mitigation decisions differ between hot- and cold-climate states. For instance, the authors show that corn acres' enrollment in federal crop insurance and computers' usage for farm business are pursued more intensely in cold-climate states than in hot-climate states. A differentiation of farm risk attitude by hot- and cold-climate states may help agribusiness, the government and economists in their farm product offerings, farm risk management programs and agricultural finance models, respectively.Originality/valueBased on Köppen-Geiger climate classification, the study introduces hot- and cold-climate concepts to understand the relationship between climate types and principal operators' farm risk attitudes.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Stuelke

Since the 1990s, literary and queer studies scholars have eschewed Marxist and Foucauldian critique and hailed the reparative mode of criticism as a more humane and humble way of approaching literature and culture. The reparative turn has traveled far beyond the academy, influencing how people imagine justice, solidarity, and social change. In The Ruse of Repair, Patricia Stuelke locates the reparative turn's hidden history in the failed struggle against US empire and neoliberal capitalism in the 1970s and 1980s. She shows how feminist, antiracist, and anti-imperialist liberation movements' visions of connection across difference, practices of self care, and other reparative modes of artistic and cultural production have unintentionally reinforced forms of neoliberal governance. At the same time, the US government and military, universities, and other institutions have appropriated and depoliticized these same techniques to sidestep addressing structural racism and imperialism in more substantive ways. In tracing the reparative turn's complicated and fraught genealogy, Stuelke questions reparative criticism's efficacy in ways that will prompt critics to reevaluate their own reading practices.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-290
Author(s):  
Siduri J Haslerig ◽  
Rican Vue ◽  
Sara E Grummert

As the most watched college sport broadcast of all time, the US Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN)’s College GameDay (CGD) is one source of socialization that primes US audiences to make certain associations. Through disaggregated analysis of regular- and post-season CGD pre-game and game-of-the-week broadcasts during the 2016 football season, the authors examine the coverage of players’ physicality and injuries, contrasting the portrayals of Black and white American football players. The paper documents prominent narratives that promoted Black players as relatively invulnerable, while making the case that these narratives serve to prime audiences to ascribe inhuman abilities to Black people and thereby reinforce white supremacist ideology.


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