Remaking Market Society
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School of Humanities and Social Science
Sociology and Anthropology Seminar Series
Remaking Market Society
This seminar will review the core arguments presented in Antonino Palumbo and Alan Scott Remaking Market Society (Routledge, 2018). In the extensive debate on neoliberalism, the term has become overextended. As Michael Storper has recently noted, its ‘polysemic’ usage ‘facilitates an indiscriminate critique of capitalism’. Rather than abandon the concept (as some have proposed), we seek to bring analytical clarity. Building on a critical reading of Karl Polanyi, we interpret neo-liberalism neither through the lens of (neo-Marxist) political economy nor that of postmodern social theory.
Rather, we view the New Public Management ‘template’ as a form of statecraft compatible with what Michael Moran has called hyper-innovation: not just the proliferation of rules, but also of types of rules, which have further concentrated power while defusing responsibility. In this sense what we see is a continuation of the forces of rationalization and centralization identified in classical modernist social theory. We seek to identify the policy sets that have been flexibly combined to construct and defuse the NPM template. In order to resist the temptation of nostalgia for the welfare state and Keynesian settlement, we finally address the question why the coalition that supported that settlement succumbed in the face of the neoliberal reform movement.
Alan Scott
University of New England
Alan Scott is Professor of Sociology in the School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England (NSW) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). He has taught and researched at universities in the UK, Austria, Australia, and France (as the 2009 Vincent Wright Chair, Sciences Po, Paris). He has also been Vice President (for Humanities and Social Sciences) of the Austrian Research Fund (FWF) (2013-16). His main research interests are in the fields of political sociology and social theory. He is co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology (2012) and co-author (with Antonino Palumbo) of Remaking Market Society (Routledge, 2018).
All welcome.
For further details contact Akane Kanai Akane.Kanai@newcastle.edu.au
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.