Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Purpose

To explore the experience of a key member of the UK equalities policy‐making elite, interrogating her shift from activist to top‐ranking equalities professional. To focus attention on the under‐explored area of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender equalities work.

Design/methodology/approach

The interview is prefaced with a critical commentary on current UK equalities policy, contextualising the interview discussion, which links personal and collective histories and provides a comparison of equalities work over time.

Findings

Angela Mason, while top‐ranking civil servant, continues to claim the label activist. Like a variety of other equalities workers she uses multiple tactics to appeal to different constituents at different times and in different contexts.

Originality/value

This is an interview with one of the key protagonists in the development of UK equalities policies over the last 30 years. It is unique in its focus on the current overhaul of UK equalities policy from an “insider” and in its timing at the interim point of this reorganisation (October 2006).

Citation

Proctor‐Thomson, S.B. (2007), "Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism", Equal Opportunities International, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 507-510. https://doi.org/10.1108/02610150710756694

The collected volume Working in the Spaces of Neoliberalism, edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi, provides an excellent platform for thinking through some of the key concerns discussed in this special issue. Contributors to this volume present a series of close studies of the professionalisation of community activism within the context of diverse regional and national neoliberal spaces. As such, this volume offers multiple ways of thinking around a range of issues discussed in this special issue including: the ambiguities and ambivalent outcomes of increasing professionalisation and institutionalisation of equality work; the opportunities within these spaces for activists to challenge state agendas; and the global distribution of technologies that aim to audit, assess and mainstream equality. For theorists and practitioners interested in reflecting on the “politics of equality”, this will be an exciting and stimulating text.

The volume is split into two parts. Part 1 consists of an introductory chapter by the editors and nine chapters that explore empirical cases of state/third‐sector partnership, international development programmes, the professionalisation of the gap year, indigenous knowledge production, community psychotherapeutic counselling, lesbian/gay activism and academic work, and community forestry programmes. Part 2 is made up of four commentary chapters, each of which reviews and develops a different selection of the proceeding chapters.

The editors frame this collection in their introductory chapter as a response to a shared sense of “uncertainty, ambivalence and perplexity” about the politics of professionalisation within the spaces of neoliberalism. Rather than assuming an exhaustive and absolute co‐optation, incorporation or neutralisation of potentially radical challenges of the state within neoliberal state processes, the contributors of this volume draw out the complexities and pluralities of these, which in some cases is argued to provide positive opportunities for developing the power of community activists and opening up spaces for critique. The careful teasing out of the ambiguities and tensions of the key themes of partnership, activism, knowledge production and neoliberal subjectivities within and across the empirical chapters is one of the key strengths of this volume.

A first central theme that is dealt with in this volume is the nature of the relationship between local and community activists, development agencies, and the neoliberal state. In Chapter 1, Wendy Larner and David Craig consider the emergence of the concept of “partnership” as a normative and mandatory tool in the neoliberal space of local and community development programmes in Aotearoa/New Zealand. These authors emphasise that models of “partnership” may offer new axes of influence for community activists in programmes of social change, and/or draw activists into proliferating neoliberal state agendas. They argue that analyses must take into consideration the paradoxical processes of neoliberalism and partnership given that “neo‐liberal spaces and subjectivities are not simply imposed from above, nor is ‘resistance’ simply a bottom‐up political response to macro‐level structural processes” (p. 27). Nicholas Fyfe's contribution (Chapter 7) also takes up the concept of partnership by exploring New Labour's neoliberal and neocommunitarian approach to the “third sector” through notions of partnership and the development of “compacts” between the government and voluntary sector. Fyfe is less ambivalent and more critical of these relationships than Larner and Craig, suggesting that such models of partnership exemplify Foucauldian theorising of governmentality, in which the development of compacts that promote self‐regulation can be read as an attempt to mobilise the third sector as a “shadow state” and limit its potential for resistance.

Relating to this last point, a second theme raised by a number of contributors is the danger of reducing politicisation of activists and community agencies within spheres of neoliberal governance. For example, Diane Richardson (Chapter 6) discusses the changing politics of lesbian and gay activism in the context of increasing professionalisation and the emergence of neoliberal discourses of citizenship. Richardson argues that the shift from rights activism, which cast lesbians and gays as “different but equal”, to a model where lesbians and gays seek rights as “normal ordinary citizens” contributes to the normalisation of lesbians/gays as governable subjects and ignores critical divisions around class, race and gender. Rebecca Dolhinow (Chapter 8) is also suspicious of the reduction of political power through the professionalisation of community activism in her account of the practices of national government organisations (NGOs) and activists within colonias along the Mexico‐US border. Dolhinow argues that the funding processes and requirements of donor organisations in this region effectively disable activism and leave NGOs unable to resist “the demands of mainstream civil society”. However, even in Dolhinow's less‐than‐optimistic discussion of the impacts of neoliberalism on NGO practices, she argues for the possibilities of politically progressive NGOs to take a major role in challenging state structures and promoting politicisation and social change.

The processes involved in knowledge production is a third issue that receives considerable attention in this volume. Nina Laurie, Robert Andolina and Sarah Radcliffe (Chapter 4) perhaps provide the most hopeful account of the potential for strengthening community activism within neoliberal spaces of development. These authors demonstrate how professionalisation of indigenous activism in the Andean countries of Ecuador and Bolivia has opened up a space for indigenous people to challenge governmentality in education and insist on recognition of diverse ways of knowing in state education policy. In this way, their account goes beyond what they suggest are the “somewhat dated” debates around the domination of knowledges of expatriate development experts versus the knowledge of indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, Laurie et al.'s account stops short of detailing the conditions under which particular indigenous knowledge is now produced. A more detailed focus however is developed in Andrea Nightingale's discussion (Chapter 9), in which she provides a particularly sensitive account of how knowledge production, through the partnership of development agencies and local communities in Nepalese community forestry development, is embedded in patterns of power relating to caste and gender.

Of particular interest here are the questions that these accounts raise in terms of the evaluation of different and often competing knowledges and the transposition of “best practice” across different geopolitical contexts. For example, within the area of equality work, how might the knowledge production patterns of a growing set of toolkits for promoting equality emerging out of major international bodies and governmental organisations be analysed? Uma Kothari (Chapter 2) directly takes up this issue, reflecting on the equality practices of gender mainstreaming, gender auditing and diversity management in her discussion of the “technicalisation” of development knowledge and the production of development experts in post‐colonial contexts.

The processes of knowledge production also relate directly to the construction of professional neoliberal subjectivities, and this is the fourth key theme that I will consider here. In their discussion of models of partnership, Larner and Craig consider the rise of “the strategic broker”, and “partnership champion”, which they suggest offer differing possibilities for activists to engage in strategic community development. Like Larner and Craig, Liz Bondi (Chapter 5), in her discussion of the professionalisation of community counselling practitioners in Scotland, provides a careful analysis of the ambivalences and ambiguities produced through the neoliberal governance processes of this sector. Bondi's account demonstrates the complex ways in which practitioner subjectivities can be understood; on the one hand through models of neoliberal subject formation, and on the other through notions of empowerment, resistance and collective action. Other contributions track specific neoliberal subjectivities emerging out of “Third world” development projects, including the geographically abstracted post‐colonial development expert (Kothari), the indigenous development elite (Laurie et al.), and the high‐caste and literate forestry manager (Nightingale). Kate Simpson (Chapter 3) also maps the emergence of a “new” kind of development expert in her description of the increasing professionalisation of the “gap year” in Britain. Simpson argues that taking a gap year between secondary school and tertiary education – once an opportunity to take a break from education and employment – is now an expected and rewarded educational experience that is seen as part of the formation of the “good British citizen”. However, at the same time, processes – including the burgeoning industry of structured development programmes in the “third world” as part of the gap year – construct young British nationals as “experts” who contribute advice, support and skills to local indigenous communities.

In Part 2 the commentaries by Marcus Power (Chapter 10), Katy Jenkins (Chapter 11), Nicholas Blomley (Chapter 12) and Cindi Katz (Chapter 13) directly reflect on the coherencies and contrasts across the proceeding empirical chapters drawing out the key issues raised. These commentaries usefully provide reflective, readable and short guides through the volume's material for the busy reader. Nevertheless, in general, the commentators might have made greater use of the opportunity to link the empirical analyses of the proceeding chapters to broader theoretical issues relating to this area. Although brief, Nicholas Blomley's discussion of the concept of “the professional” in broader terms provides an example of how this approach might have contributed to these commentaries.

Edited volumes that attempt to bring together empirical analyses deviating across time, space, theoretical approach and academic discipline are always ambitious. However, in the case of this collection, the coherency and rich development of the primary research issues achieved is praiseworthy. Each successive chapter re‐works and re‐stages the ambivalent outcomes of partnership, activism, knowledge production and subjectivities in the context of neoliberal geopolitical spaces. With relevance to the focus and aims of this special issue, the re‐working of these four key themes collectively argues for a contextualised and nuanced analysis of the shifting politics of equalities work. For example, increasing professionalisation of equality work and the shrinking distance between equality activists and the state may offer greater access to influence state agendas at the same time as threatening de‐radicalisation of equality activism. In this respect, the “whole (of the collection) is more than its parts” as it insists on the multiplicity and variation of outcomes possible in shifting spaces of increasing professionalisation and bureaucratisation. It will be a valuable read for those new to these issues as well as those who have been working within these “knowledges” and spaces for some time.