Shore and Wright on Neoliberalism

In their 2016 “Neoliberalisation and the ‘Death of the Public University,’” Cris Shore and Susan Wright give a handy summary of how one might think about the sometimes overused term “neoliberalism”:

Neoliberalism is a problematic concept. Excessive use of the term as a portmanteau for explaining everything that is wrong with contemporary capitalist societies has rendered it an empty signifier devoid of analytical value. As a noun, it suggests something universal and ascribes uniformity and coherence to an assemblage of processes and practices that are far from uniform, consistent or coherent. Like Peck and Tickell (2002: 463), therefore, we prefer to use the term “neoliberalisation” as it highlights the multi-faceted and continually changing set of process associated with neoliberal reform agendas, which assume different forms in different countries. That said, these reforms usually bear close “family resemblances”, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. These include an emphasis on creating an institutional framework that promotes competition, entrepreneurship, commercialisation, profit making and “private good” research and the prevalence of a metanarrative about the importance of markets for promoting the virtues of freedom, choice and prosperity.

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A growing research bibliography

As I’ve noted in several of our recent posts, we have started using the online bibliography Zotero to keep track of our growing library of critical research on higher education. So this is just a small announcement: you can view our growing library on the Academography Zotero page.

Zotero has some useful tagging functions, so we’ve tried to classify everything we write about in terms of topic, geographical region, etc. I’ve also started adding new work that I’d like to write about, and tagging it “queue,” to help me keep track of everything that’s out there. So if you are ever curious to see what new research work is coming out, you can consult our queue on Zotero — there is always more new work than we can possibly discuss here in detail.