Critical Analysis of the Evolving Process of Neoliberal Global Capitalism

This chapter aims to make a critical analysis of the evolving process of neoliberal capitalism globalization. It begins with the assumption that the neoliberal capitalism system is undergoing a mutation in the globalization processes as a dynamic element in continuous economic and financial crisis representing the development of the logic of capital based on the neoliberal ideology that promotes the free market. The evolving process of globalization is the history of international free trade framed by the classical liberal and neoliberal economic theory. The discussion focuses on a critical analysis of the paradigm of deglobalization as an alternative to the global capitalist regime that proposes local and regional economic protectionism solutions as an alternative to keep growing the national economies but still neglecting social justice and inequality inclusiveness and socio-ecological development.

FEMINISME SEBAGAI KRITIK KAPITALISME: MEMPERKENALKAN TEORI KRITIS NANCY FRASER

<em>This article is an overview of the intellectual and historical background of Nancy Fraser's thought. Intellectually, Fraser is a socialist feminist and critical theorist of the Frankfurt school who sought to reconnect gender analysis and the critique of capitalism. According to Fraser, the shift from state-managed-capitalism to neoliberal capitalism is the historical context that separates gender analysis and capitalism criticism in such a way that feminism is trapped as a handmaiden of neoliberalism. Based on an examination of Fraser's works and related literature, this article shows the problems of feminism in the neoliberal era and Fraser's critical theory offers to reclaim it.</em><br /><br /><strong>Key words:</strong> socialist feminism, critical theory, the Frankfurt School, gender, capitalism.

The Meaning of Freedom and the Kingdom of God: A Struggle against the Fetishization of Our Present World

In their respective contexts of Roman empire and global neoliberal capitalism, the Jesus movement and the Zapatistas announce that another world is possible and that this world has irrupted in the struggle for that other possible world. This article argues that the practical and theoretical work of the Zapatistas offers to theologians a way to articulate the meaning of the kingdom of God as a world of hope and struggle that is actualized in and informed by struggles to resist fetishization.

Neoliberal Fatigue: The Effects of Private Refugee Sponsorship on Canadians’ Political Consciousness

Private sponsorship has become a primary way that refugees access resettlement to Canada. Key in this program are the private Canadians who volunteer their money, time, and labor to sponsor and support refugees. Drawing on 25 interviews, this article examines the insights that these privileged citizens of the global north gain as they help refugees struggling with the marginalizing consequences of neoliberal austerity in their new hostland. While sponsors learn about the challenges facing working-class racialized newcomers (otherwise obscured to sponsors by their racial, class, and citizenship privileges), the program robs sponsors of the time and mental bandwidth to reflect on the structural nature of these challenges. Consequently, sponsors rarely understand refugees’ struggles as public troubles necessitating broader intervention, including modest policy reform. I call this cognitive outcome neoliberal fatigue. I conclude by discussing how this fatigue thwarts social change and reinforces neoliberal capitalism.

Associative Democracy: From ‘the real third way’ back to utopianism or towards a colourful socialism for the 21st century?

Associative Democracy (AD) has been developed as a specific response to statist socialism and neoliberal capitalism, drawing on older traditions such as associationalism, democratic socialism, and cooperative socialism. As the ‘real third way’, it is distinct from neoliberal privatization and deregulation in the Blair–Schröder varieties of social democracy and in the conservative Reagan–Thatcher–Cameron varieties. This article summarizes what seemed to make AD an attractive realist utopia: its combination of economic, societal and political democracy; its focus on democratic institutional pluralism in all these regards; its considered moral/political minimalism; and its practical experimentalism. It recapitalizes some of the important economic, societal and political changes during the last decennia that seem to make AD plainly utopian again. It focuses on an outline of basic principles and institutions of socio-economic alternatives to capitalism because, if neoliberalism rules supreme, no viable alternatives can emerge and grow. Even if there is not one institutional design that fits all countries and contexts, we can show what the basic tenets of such alternatives are and how such a colourful democratic socialism relates to and can integrate other approaches such as ‘circular economy’, ‘foundational economy’ and ‘radical social innovation’. The hope is that AD’s broad institutional pluralism and its emphasis on practical experimentalism show new ways of thinking which are urgently needed for sustainable and socially fair economic development and for renewing representative democracy.

Perils of Turkey’s Urban Wilderness in the 1970s and After

A graphic novel written by a noted scholar contributes to a recent opening in Turkish culture for revisiting the era of the country’s 1980 coup, previously a taboo subject. The book evokes a time of political violence and student unrest and idealism, before a turn to repression and neoliberal capitalism.

Contesting neoliberalism: Mapping the terrain of social conflict

This article explores the terrain of social conflict as it developed across advanced capitalist democracies throughout the ‘age of austerity’ that followed the global economic crisis. It shows how a (broadly defined) working class mobilised in different ways in different capitalist contexts, contesting the institutional forms (and the crises that emerged from them) which constitute each particular model of capitalism. Considered this way, we are able to conceptualise and explain the forms of working-class mobilisation that have emerged in opposition to contemporary neoliberalism. In doing so, we go beyond a narrow focus on workplace-focused or trade-union-led forms of working-class mobilisation, highlighting the continuing contestation of neoliberal capitalism. Drawing on a protest event analysis of 1,167 protest events in five countries (Spain, Germany, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom), and developing a Régulation Theory approach to the study of protest/social movements, we provide an overview of the most visible patterns of social contestation in each national neoliberal capitalist context, tracing links to the institutional configurations that constitute those national models of capitalism. While there exists no direct (linear) process of causality between the model of neoliberal capitalism and the forms of mobilised dissent witnessed, nevertheless we are able to clearly trace the different pressures of capital accumulation that have given rise to the protest/social movements identified in each case, thereby allowing us to gain a better insight into both each particular model of capitalism and the forms of dissent that constitute it.

Commons, Commoning and Co-Becoming: Nurturing Life-in-Common and Post-Capitalist Futures (An Introduction to the Theme Issue)

Over the last decade, there has been an expansion of scholarly and activist engagement with the commons. This interest corresponds to a growing quest for alternatives to capitalism in view of ongoing socio- ecological crises. As neoliberal capitalism intensifies enclosure of the commons, local actions to reclaim old commons and invent new ones to counter these processes are also on the rise. However, there are diverse conceptions of the commons, and pitfalls in their reproduction and in mobilizing this vocabulary in the dominant neoliberal individualistic culture. Our understanding remains limited about how spaces for commons and commoning practices can be expanded, as well as about specific practices, relations and imaginaries that support commons and subjectivities of being-in-common. This Special Issue on the “Commons, Commoning and Co-becomings” seeks to deepen our understanding of ‘actually-existing’ and ‘more-than- human’ commons in the world, and how ways of relating to them open up possibilities of responding to current socioenvironmental challenges and generating beyond-capitalist ways of life. Exploring commoning experiences in diverse settings, the papers assembled in this Special Issue illustrate the role that commons and commoning practices play in reconfiguring human-nature relations. Thinking with these papers, we draw attention to three interrelated areas: relational aspects of the work of commoning (practices, labor, care) in transforming our world and being transformed by it; the role of commons and commoning practices in generating subjectivities of being-in-common; and difference and divergences (or, un-commoning) that persist and emerge in commoning processes. We offer these themes as directions to better understand and enact the potential of commons and commoning for worlding—crafting, (re)producing—of a pluriverse of post-capitalist worlds and life in- common.

Testing hypotheses about the harm that capitalism causes to the mind and brain: a theoretical framework for neuroscience research

This article reviews and discusses the part of neuroscience relevant to mental health within the contemporary capitalist context, and suggests ways in which the effects of this context on the nervous system can be reconceptualised and researched in the future. Firstly, the principal components of neoliberal capitalism are presented together with how it has historically influenced neuroscience. We then argue in favour of a neurodiversity perspective, as opposed to the dominant model of conceptualising neural (mal-)functioning, brain plasticity and potential for change and adaptation. We review the available empirical research indicating that the socio-economic environment is harmful to minds and brains. Lastly, we set out a theoretical framework that can generate neuroscientific hypotheses with regards to the effects of the capitalist context on brains and minds, as well as a frame for post-capitalist research.