This thesis explores Officer Cadets' social construction of leadership at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS). It addresses calls for more research into leadership behaviours. Taking a social constructionist perspective, the thesis focuses on unmasking the social construction of Leadership amongst Officer Cadets. This study adopts a reflexive approach, acknowledging the centrality of the researcher in the co-construction of the data. The thesis develops interdisciplinary links between the theoretical areas of Dark Leadership to problematize and inform contemporary understandings of Officer (...) Cadets' social construction of leadership through the emergent findings of the study. This qualitative study employed a mono-method research design consisting of semistructured interviews. Through these, participants shared their lived experiences and gave descriptions and understandings of their past leadership experiences before and current experiences within Sandhurst with a reflexive interview approach. The thesis utilises Reflexive Thematic analysis to interpret the data, with the results presented thematically. The thesis uses reflexive thematic analysis to explore dark leadership through a social constructionist lens; the research has evidenced functional changes to practices within Sandhurst and developed a model of what dark leadership at Sandhurst is from an Officer Cadets view. This approach highlights the importance of contextuality, the person and the situation through a holistic Leadership approach. The thesis proposes a holistic framework for leadership, which would advance toward de-coupling the dichotomies of leadership. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this wide-ranging interview, Bob Jessop discusses the development of, and many of the main themes in, his work over the last fifty years. He explains how he became interested in realism and Marxism; and he describes the various influences on his highly influential theory of the state. The discussion explores his strategic-relational approach, his thoughts on regulation theory, variegated capitalism, post-disciplinarity, cultural political economy and his ‘spatial-turn’, as well as neoliberalism, contemporary events and looming problems of climate change (...) and crisis. (shrink)

This chapter touches upon the damaging impact of neoliberal reason on institutions of higher education, and my efforts as a teacher to help turn things around by re-vitalizing the classroom. After a critique of current neoliberal ‘borderline times’, the chapter takes the reader on a journey of diffractive re-imaginings in which I share some of my experiences of co-learning with undergraduates in an American feminist-philosophical classroom. My central argument is that the neoliberalism-induced crisis in education can be affirmatively counteracted through (...) experimentations with various posthuman and new materialist theories, and the Harawayan-Baradian methodology of diffraction in particular. Furthermore, informed by the impression that theory and pedagogical praxis go hand in hand in many contemporary feminist new materialisms, I zoom in on daily acts of resistance against the neoliberal corporatization of the American university, acts that actualized themselves as feminist new materialist pedagogies. Three examples of diffractive pedagogical strategies are then discussed in detail. (shrink)

The rise in popularity in recent times of dystopian fiction is reflective of contemporary anxieties about law: the inhumanity of judicial-coercive machinery; the influence of corporate power; the lack of democratic imagination despite the desperate need for political reform; and the threat of order imposed through violence and victimisation. These dystopian texts often tell fear-inducing stories of law’s failure to protect; or of law’s unsuccessful struggle against unbridled power; or even sometimes of law’s ‘bastardised’ reconstruction. Indeed comics, with their visual (...) and narrative intricacies, thrive on dystopia as a key vehicle for contributing to collective notions of fear and trembling about the future. Yet, at the same time, these texts also contain within them the blueprints for hope—the idea that with transformation, heroic intervention, and/or faith in ‘justice’, the law will ultimately prevail. Law’s ability to be transformed is thus simultaneously portrayed as society’s downfall, AND as the key to enlivening humanity. This article attempts to understand this schismatic role of law as presented in the recent dystopian comic book series From Above by Australian creator Craig Bruyn. In this series set in futuristic Melbourne, where law has given way to an unaccountable corporate rule, the social divide is made manifest by the absence of ‘order’, ‘law’ and ‘justice’ in certain segments of society, and yet hope in law’s return is ever-present. The paper will interrogate expectations of law and justice that is mediated through the complex interaction of fear and hope, and contextualise this within current contemporary anxieties. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to reactivate the Marxist transition debate, by conceptualising transition as a problem in its own right, moving away from a stagist vision of the development of modes of production. Part I outlines the historical materialist parameters of the ontology of transition, and traces the concept across classical and western Marxism. This section draws from Althusserian theory to sketch out a conception of historical time as a multiplicity of dislocated trajectories. This is followed by a critique of post-Marxism, (...) based on the disappearance of the concept of transition in the discursive turn. It is argued that transition should be retained as a sociologically rigorous concept, and that among various strands of Marxist theory there is evidence of its efficacy. Part II analyses contemporary left theory and politics through the dichotomy of melancholy and utopia, and argues that they exemplify temporal complexity and illuminate current impasses on the left. Part III applies the findings of the preceding parts to strategic questions of demands, agency and strategy. This is achieved through a substantive discussion of postwork theory as a new postcapitalist vision, embodying issues of temporality, transition and utopia. The thesis concludes that the neglected problem of transition and the notion of multiple temporalities are important theoretical tools for addressing questions of historical epistemology and left strategy. Understanding transition as an embedded societal tendency is valuable to critical social theory, and provides the means to theorise postcapitalist futures. (shrink)

With globalisation and neoliberalism as significant phenomena impacting the function and role of higher education institutions (Barnett, 2013), the discursive practices of such institutions as mani...

Few have treated the critical literature on neoliberalism as an object of study in its own right. Those that have question the literature’s partisanship, theoretical coherence, and explanatory power, denouncing it as a thinly veiled form of leftist politics. Rather than leave the matter there, I pick up the thread and ask the following: if the critical theorization of neoliberalism is a leftist pursuit, what does it do for the left? How does the critique of neoliberalism affect the left’s self-understanding, (...) coherence, direction, and future? In this article, I argue that the critique of neoliberalism defines today’s political left via the negation of its neoliberal Other, is the ideological–discursive means by which the left articulates its diverse constituencies, and builds theoretical resources necessary for the left to go beyond marriages of convenience and achieve unity. Regarding the latter, the literature augurs a left battling for the subjectivity of popular actors, with solidarity, social freedom, and democracy as both the weapons and the stakes. I conclude the article by reflecting on what often goes missing in the literature – namely, Kapitalkritik and socialism – and the significance of these omissions for the left in light of the arguments above. (shrink)

El proyecto de emancipación que Paul Lafargue presenta en Le droit à la paresse constituye no solo uno de los primeros documentos de análisis de la sociedad capitalista y sus posibilidades revolucionarias, sino que supone, a la vez, el punto de arranque de una tradición de emancipación diferente a la del socialismo clásico. Sin embargo, en el propio desarrollo del análisis ya se vislumbran de forma teórica los problemas prácticos que dicha tradición ha acabado por desarrollar.

In recent years, there has been a panoply of new forms of ‘social’ government, as manifest in ‘social enterprise’ and ‘social media’. This follows an era of neoliberalism in which social logics were apparently being eliminated, through the expansion of economic rationalities. To understand this, the article explores the critique of the very notion of the ‘social’, as manifest in neoliberal contributions to the socialist calculation debate from the 1920s onwards. Understood as a zone lying between market and state, the (...) social was accused by Mises and Hayek of being both unaccountable (lacking any units of measurement) and formless (lacking instruments of explication). The article then asks to what extent these critiques still retain their purchase, following recent developments in hedonic measurement and data analytics. The argument is made that new post-neoliberal forms of ‘social government’ may now be entirely plausible, though focusing on the corporation rather than the state. (shrink)

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources—Foucault and Deleuze, Bourdieu, Levinas and Butler —to analyse the topic of the My School website and associated new accountabilities in Australia schooling. This article argues that their usage of the My School website must (...) be seen as a condensation symbol to signify a broader neo-liberal agenda in Australian schooling that has global as well as national elements to it. The fact that the social today is no longer straightforwardly homologous with the nation also challenges ‘methodological nationalism’ and suggests the pressing need to ‘deparochialize’ theory in research and reject a reading of Northern theory as universal. The article uses the provocations of these articles to reflect upon the necessity of theory in educational research more generally, and to consider its usage in research with different purposes, while accepting that theory should be endemic in all stages of research. Theory serves a different purpose in research with different goals; quantitative correlational research demands theory to move to explanation, interpretive research requires theory to strengthen interpretation and plausibility, while critical research utilizes theory to uncover the hidden as a step towards emancipation. These articles implicitly suggest alternative forms of accountability and politics, but I argue in conclusion that, additionally, we need a broader politics that will move us towards a non-utopian post neo-liberal social imaginary. (shrink)

As an intellectual, economic, political and legal project, neoliberalism is not directed towards the rolling back of the state as an aim in itself. While its deregulatory tendencies, its commodification of public services and the undermining of systems of social welfare superficially suggest a generalised reduction in state power, it has been clear from the early 1980s that one of neoliberalism’s primary concerns has been the authoritarian reshaping of state power to engineer particular social outcomes, whether in criminal justice, the (...) disciplining of organised labour, the militarisation of national territory and migration, or the extension and deepening of regimes of austerity. This article introduces the recent work of Maurizio Lazzarato, who has argued that the asymmetrical creditor-debtor relationship is now the archetype of contemporary, neoliberal social relations. Ultimately, Lazzarato’s perspective tends to exaggerate the totalising powers of finance capital and leads him to endorse a form of political voluntarism, which fails to address the role of the neoliberal state as a site for forms of authoritarianism which are not solely generated by the debt relation. As a response, it will be suggested that aspects of Nicos Poulantzas’s concept of ‘authoritarian statism’ can be used to both strengthen our understanding of the authoritarian characteristics of the neoliberal state, and to imagine possibilities for resisting its expressions of power. (shrink)

The article challenges the orthodoxy of current critical readings of the European crisis that discuss the failings of the EU in terms of the triumph of ‘neo-liberalism’. Defending instead a liberal view on international migration, which stresses the potentially positive economic, political and cultural benefits of market-driven forces enabling movements across borders, it details the various ways in which European regional integration has enabled the withdrawal of state control and restriction on certain forms of external and internal migration. This implementation (...) of liberal ideas on the freedom of movement of persons has largely been of benefit to migrants, and both receiving and sending societies alike. These ideas are now threatened by democratic retrenchment. It is Britain, often held up as a negative example of ‘neo-liberalism’, which has proven to be the member state that most fulfils the EU’s core adherence to principles of mobile, open, non-discriminatory labour markets. On this question, and despite its current anti-immigration politics, it offers a positive example of how Europe as a whole could benefit from more not less liberalization. (shrink)

The sociology of emotions is a fast-growing disciplinary field. Research on emotions has enabled major advances in medical science, political science, anthropology, psychosociology etc. Turner and Smets have shown that social relations feature a kernel of phenomena with an emotional substrate ranging from face-to-face encounters to the emergence of social movements. The social arena is shaped by emotions, which are powerful agents of change. In this paper, we focus on the links between emotions, happiness and well-being apprehended as a polymorphic (...) state culturally determined by an emotional substrate. Finally, through the lenses of emotions, we sketch out the features of the structural crisis of neoliberalism and the lessons for a renewed understanding of the underlying socio-economic phenomena. (shrink)

Critical legal scholarship has recently turned to consider the form, mode and role of law in neoliberal governance. A central theme guiding much of this literature is the importance of understanding neoliberalism as not only a political or economic phenomenon, but also an inherently juridical one. This article builds on these conceptualisations of neoliberalism in turning to explore the wider historical, cultural and sociological contexts which inform the production of neoliberal authority. The papers in this collection were first presented at (...) the symposium ‘Forms of authority beyond the neoliberal state’, held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017. They consider the role of the corporation, the site of the university, the politics of debt, the genre of prestige television, and the archic sources of state violence, in order to imagine forms of authority which lie beyond neoliberalism as an ideology and a set of practices, and the ensemble of institutions which constitute the neoliberal state. The contributions draw on social theory, philosophy, cultural studies, legal geography and political theology in exploring new possibilities for cultivating judgement through and beyond the sovereign, political and aesthetic terrains of neoliberal governance. (shrink)

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. (...) A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top-down’ nor ‘bottom-up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation. (shrink)

¿Qué entendemos hoy por “neoliberalismo”? Si bien hay varias formas de contestar tal pregunta, la respuesta más frecuente consiste en asociarlo con la aplicación de un conjunto de medidas estrictamente económicas; de hecho, se dice que los neoliberales, casi por defecto congénito, no pueden pensar la realidad más allá de los números y las recetas abstractas. Siguiendo el método arqueológico-genealógico de Michel Foucault y de algunos de sus intérpretes contemporáneos, el presente artículo buscará revisar y en lo posible ampliar aquella (...) concepción crítica. Nuestra hipótesis es que el neoliberalismo no se reduce a un mero “economicismo”, sino que contiene más bien toda una dimensión “espiritual”, todo un campo de prácticas y de discursos que se conforma como respuesta ante el excesivo racionalismo de las sociedades modernas. La cuestión consiste en transformar a los hombres desde dentro, hasta el punto de tornarlos más aptos para acceder a un conjunto de valores y asimilar ciertas formas de comportamiento. Según sostiene este artículo, es en los escritos de Wilhelm Röpke, un economista y sociólogo alemán de mediados del siglo XX, donde mejor se aprecia la dimensión espiritual del neoliberalismo. Röpke proponía un “diagnóstico” y una “terapéutica”. El primero sostiene que los hombres padecen una enfermedad espiritual denominada como “masificación” y “proletarización”, mientras que la terapéutica procura hacer de esos hombres unos emprendedores de sí mismos. Tal sería el modo de superar los efectos adversos del capitalismo: transformando a los hombres masificados y proletarizados en sujetos completamente comprometidos con su profesión. No se trata sencillamente de recuperar un pensamiento casi olvidado por la historia, sino de explorar los límites de nuestro presente, especialmente de nuestras formas de subjetividad. Aunque muchas de las críticas contemporáneas no hayan reparado aún en ello, hay que preguntarse hasta qué punto los diagnósticos y las terapéuticas propuestas por neoliberales como Röpke persisten en la actualidad. Aquí no se darán respuestas tajantes y definitivas, pero sí algunos indicios al respecto. (shrink)

For more than two decades, classes on “professionalism” have been the dominant platform for the non-technical socialization of medical students. It thus subsumes elements of previous foundation courses in bioethics and “medicine and society” in defining the appropriate relation between practitioners, patients, and society-at-large. Despite its importance, there is, however, no clear definition of what “professionalism” entails or the manner in which it serves various purported goals. This essay reviews, first, the historical role of the vocational practitioner in society, and (...) second, the introduction of “professionalism” as a newly constituted, core value in teaching. The structure of the paper is as an archaeology, a Foucauldian term for an investigation of seemingly separate but related antecedent contexts and ideas whose result is a perspective or point of view. The goal thus is an attempt to precisely locate “professionalism” within the greater history of medicine and its contemporary role in medical socialization. (shrink)

The survival of neoliberal forms of governance after their apparent repudiation during the Global Financial Crisis is a problem that continues to generate significant scholarly controversy. One of the most influential accounts of the survival of neoliberalism in the crisis draws on Michel Foucault’s The Birth of Biopolitics to claim that states intervening to support financial markets during the crisis was simply the neoliberal system working as expected. Returning to Foucault’s original text, I argue this account constitutes a systematic misreading (...) because it treats Foucault as having developed an instrumentalist theory of the neoliberal state, a possibility Foucault explicitly rejected. I suggest that the reasons that led Foucault to reject an instrumentalist theory of the state remain just as relevant today, and accordingly argue for a return to Foucault’s methodological decision to treat neoliberalism not as a theory of state but as a discourse which constructs a novel bio-political governmentality. (shrink)

This article reflects on how data circulations and data analysis have become a central and routine part of contemporary life; it does this through the lens of a particular cultural form: the game of football. More specifically, the article focuses upon the role of data in the production and playing of football, with the suggestion that forms of measurement and pattern recognition are now central to the performance of footballers and the recruitment and organization of squads. The article reflects on (...) what this case study reveals about the implications of data, metrics and analytics for contemporary culture and suggests that we can use examples like football to see how embedded these data-processes are in the social world. This article presents the concept of productive measures as one means for analysing such developments. (shrink)

The main trust of this article unfolds around the impasse of democratic politics today, marked by the fading belief in the presumably superior architecture of liberal democratic institutions to nurture emancipation on the one hand, and the seemingly inexorable rise of a variety of populist political movements on the other. The first part of the article focuses on the lure of autocratic populism. The second part considers how transforming neoliberal governance arrangements pioneered post-truth autocratic politics/policies in articulation with the imposition (...) of market rule and, in doing so, cleared the way for contemporary illiberal populisms. The third part considers the institutional configuration through which the democratic has been fundamentally transformed over the past few decades in the direction of a post-democratic constellation. The article concludes by arguing for the need to re-script emancipation as a process of political subjectivation unfolding trough a political act. (shrink)

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources—Foucault and Deleuze (Richard Niesche), Bourdieu (Carmen Mills), Levinas (Sam Sellar) and Butler (Christina Gowlett)—to analyse the topic of the My School website and associated new accountabilities in Australia schooling. This article argues that their (...) usage of the My School website must be seen as a condensation symbol to signify a broader neo-liberal agenda in Australian schooling that has global as well as national elements to it. The fact that the social today is no longer straightforwardly homologous with the nation also challenges ‘methodological nationalism’ and suggests the pressing need to ‘deparochialize’ theory in research and reject a reading of Northern theory as universal. The article uses the provocations of these articles to reflect upon the necessity of theory in educational research more generally, and to consider its usage in research with different purposes, while accepting that theory should be endemic in all stages of research. Theory serves a different purpose in research with different goals; quantitative correlational research demands theory to move to explanation, interpretive research requires theory to strengthen interpretation and plausibility, while critical research utilizes theory to uncover the hidden as a step towards emancipation. These articles implicitly suggest alternative forms of accountability and politics, but I argue in conclusion that, additionally, we need a broader politics that will move us towards a non-utopian post neo-liberal social imaginary. (shrink)