Neoliberal Urban Planning Through Social Government: Notes on the Demographic Re-engineering of Malmö

Neoliberal urban governance is often framed as a break with the social statecraft of the postwar period. If we approach social government as a specific mode of biopolitical population politics, neoliberal reforms can instead be understood as re-articulating the welfarist version of postwar social planning. In this article, I analyze how social urban government can become the basis of neoliberal planning through a study of the Swedish city of Malmö, which has shifted its approach from emblematic Scandinavian social democratic welfare urbanism to a particular kind of neoliberal planning. Malmö is a city where distinctions between desirable and unwanted populations are produced by municipal social planning that concerns itself with accumulating human resources. Postwar social planning technologies are thus re-articulated as the basis for making space competitive for certain residents. This mode of planning is described as a type of ‘social neoliberalism’, which, instead of circumscribing neoliberal economics, extends the reach of neoliberalism into social government. This study suggests that calls for a return to social planning need to be complicated by accounts of how social government itself has been remade by neoliberal reforms. It also points out how the divisions produced by social neoliberalism expose powerful fault lines that reveal a terrain of political struggle.     

Comments on Four Papers on Economics and Human Heterogeneity

A bstract .   These comments focus on some issues raised in the papers by Dimand, Peart and Levy, Cot, and Leonard. These papers are fascinating, but not without weaknesses. It is argued that Dimand's presentation of what he calls the "general principle" of classical economics is misconceived. There is a confusion in this paper between the classical view of equal capacity and the much newer concept of equally rational actual performance. Peart and Levy discuss the idea of unequal capacity for pleasure in Edgeworth, but do not draw a link back to the idea in J. S. Mill of different qualities of pleasure. Cot and Leonard provide informative accounts of the American eugenic movement and its links to progressivism, but with an insufficient degree of distinction between the various positions and agendas that were concerned.     

Forging a ‘new’ organizational infrastructure for Los Angeles’ progressive community

What margins of maneuverability do urban‐based progressive movements have for affecting policy outcomes in entrepreneurial and neoliberal political systems? This article provides a partial answer to this question by examining how relations developed and stabilized between actors in the different sectors (community based organizations, labor, university) of Los Angeles’ progressive community. Such relations are a necessary but not sufficient condition for affecting policy outcomes. I argue that these relations have resulted from a 20‐year process of interactions between the more innovative agents of each of the sectors. Through their repeated experimentation in building frameworks to coordinate their partnerships, I argue that a variety of complex mechanisms have taken shape that nourish relations and coordinate complex forms of collective action. Functioning as ‘relational platforms’, these coordinating mechanisms have combined to form an emergent ‘organizational infrastructure’ that facilitates both ongoing relational processes and the mobilization of collective resources in politically effective ways. Thus, by examining the organizational infrastructure that makes such a broad based ‘movement’ possible and sustainable, the article offers the reader one insight into how urban progressives have been able to build the power necessary to affect policies in one of the world's most entrepreneurial and neoliberal cities.     

From Occupation to Recuperation: Property,Politics and Provincialization in Contemporary Madrid

Recent debates have once again engaged with the substance and meaning of urban politics within our increasingly complex and startling contemporary landscapes. Yet these debates, while giving nods in the direction of feminist and postcolonial scholarship, largely work through traditional lenses of class, labor and the dynamic workings of neoliberal capitalism. In this article, I focus on spaces of difference and their engagement with the urban to demonstrate how politics ‘happens' in locations often left off the map of both scholarship and popular imaginaries, and, crucially, how those locations can, in fact, illuminate shifting political arrangements elided by other methodologies. By juxtaposing European okupa debates with postcolonial discussions of urban informality, I trace what I argue is a new iteration of squatting within a city both ravaged by edicts of neoliberal austerity and buoyed by the efflorescence of social movements and alternative political projects. I then explicate the role of property in constituting the urban within Spain, using the concept of ‘provincialization'. In doing so, I think relationally between systems of property and emergent forms of insurgency to argue that we are witnessing an anticipatory politics that fundamentally challenges hegemonic relationships between everyday citizens and regimes of property ownership.     

Neoliberalism is Dead … Long Live Neoliberalism!

In this essay I argue that the ideology of neoliberalism may have failed, but that neoliberal practice is alive and kicking. Most of the ‘solutions’ to the crisis are in the spirit of neoliberalism, rather than enraptured by neoliberal spirit. Yet, this neoliberal solution is not a solution; it is part of the problem in the sense that it is leading to more problems — not just today but also in decades to come. This so‐called solution is often presented as Keynesian, but it is only partly so. A better way to classify this solution is as an attempt to save the existing, neoliberal, system. The big crisis of our time did not become a crisis of the hegemony of neoliberalism, because actually existing neoliberalism is flexible enough to influence policy in other ways than through the mantra of free markets: it thrives on presenting existing socioeconomic conditions as failing and neoliberalism as the best solution. Considering the many blows neoliberal ideology has received during this crisis, it should already be dead, but like a creeping cancer neoliberal practice is able to resurface and show up in both new and unexpected, and old and predictable, ways.     

Mutating Neoliberalism: The Promotion of Italian Investors in Slovakia before and after the Global Financial Crisis

In the context of the literature on ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’, this article analyzes the policies and services supporting Italian foreign direct investment (FDI) in Slovakia. It identifies a group of organizations, both Slovak and Italian, which shape and deliver neoliberal pro‐FDI policies. By studying such an ‘investment promotion community’ (IPC) before and after the global financial crisis of 2009, and during Italy's prolonged crisis, this article shows both the persistence and adaptability of neoliberal policies and institutions. In so doing, it highlights some of the transnational flows underpinning the ‘domestication’ of neoliberalism in Slovakia. These findings support recent literature arguing that post‐crisis neoliberalism can be interpreted as a stunted Polanyian double movement, in which the state has improved some of its regulatory functions but without questioning the overarching neoliberal principles. Specifically, it shows that FDI policies and the support of Italian investors rest upon a professional community that has not changed much since the 2009 crisis. This community played a crucial role in embedding neoliberal rationalities in Slovakia and supports the persistence of this ideology in the post‐crisis environment.     

Symmetrical Absence/Symmetrical Absurdity: Critical Notes on the Production of Actor-Network Accounts

ABSTRACT   An enduring concern within management and organization studies (MOS) is how to conduct research from perspectives deemed 'alternatives' to those of functionalism and positivism. Our aim is to address this concern with regard to an approach employed by Karen Legge in research on knowledge workers, namely that of actor-network theory (ANT) (or the 'sociology of translation'). Following an introduction to ANT, the views of some its key proponents, and Legge's own use of the approach, the paper presents critical notes on five issues related to the production of ANT accounts – the inclusion and exclusion of actors; the treatment of humans and non-humans; the nature of privileging and status; the handling of agency and structure; and the nature of politics and power in 'heterogeneous engineering'. We discuss the relationships between these issues and the key ANT goal of achieving a sense of 'general symmetry' in the accounting process. In so doing we note how ANT authors are frequently chastised for either failing to take sufficient account of, or promoting too strong a sense of, analytical symmetry in their writing. It is argued that the primary challenge facing ANT researchers is to produce accounts that are robust enough to negate the twin charges of symmetrical absence and symmetrical absurdity.     

National Values and Economic Growth

A bstract    Using data on economic values and attitudes for various nations from the World Value Study, I show that the strength of values associated with market success does not appear to have a significant impact on the rate of economic growth in a sample of developing and developed market economies. I also show that such values do not seem related to the economic system and have an ambiguous relation to the overall level of economic development. These negative results suggest that, contrary to common belief, knowledge about such values does not seem very useful in helping us understand economic growth or differences in levels of economic development or economic systems in various countries.     

Showdown at Kykuit: Field-Configuring Events as Loci for Conventionalizing Accounts

abstract    Despite the centrality of fields as a concept in organizational research, the processes by which fields form and change have not been studied in great depth. By situating action in time and space, field-configuring events (FCEs) offer valuable settings for researchers seeking insight into such processes. This paper develops a theory of accounts as a way to understand a mechanism by which institutional entrepreneurs seek to shape fields and influence the institutions that govern them. Actors produce and distribute justified accounts – narratives that describe the way work in the field ought to be done – and attempt to persuade powerful actors in the field to adopt them as conventions. FCEs can thus be understood as loci for conventionalizing accounts. The theory of accounts and field-level change is illustrated with a case study of a turning point FCE during which competing institutional entrepreneurs in the field of 'non-profit technology assistance providers' present alternative accounts. Successful institutional entrepreneurship comes from recognizing political opportunities to align one's account with the dominant orders of worth in the field, thereby convincing powerful actors to accept one's account as convention.     

Global Standardization of Organizational Forms and Management Practices? What New Institutionalism and the Business‐Systems Approach Can Learn from Each Other*

abstract The debate as to the effects of globalization on organizational forms and management practices is well known. Our paper focuses on two institutionalist traditions in organization theory which make a significant contribution to this discussion: new institutionalism and the business‐systems approach. Both emphasize the adaptation of organizations to their institutional environments but come to very different conclusions as to the global standardization of organizational forms and management practices. Our paper aims to move them beyond the convergence‐divergence dichotomy to account for signs of both global standardization and continued persistence of national differences. We do so by systematically comparing the two traditions, suggesting how they can be cross‐fertilized and developing an agenda for future empirical research. We also highlight that they cannot learn from each other on the issue of agency and point to structuration theory as a way in which they can integrate agency into their accounts of the global standardization debate.     

Henry George in Australia

A bstract .   Some biographies of Henry George give brief accounts of his lecture tour of Australia in 1890, based mainly on his diary and on reports he sent back from Australia for publication in his New York newspaper, The Standard . This study supplements previous accounts with further details of the 48 lectures and 9 Sunday sermons he gave in 38 towns and cities during his 98-day stay in Australia, based on contemporary Australian newspaper reports. With an obvious proviso about the accuracy of the reporting, the Australian lectures are a valuable source of additional information on George's life and policies.     

Urban Entrepreneurialism Vs Market Society: The Geography of China's Neoliberal Urbanism

Existing literature on China's neoliberal urbanism is preoccupied with its institutional incentives and political-economy dynamics, which are characterized by state dominance through sponsorship and supervision of capital-market operations that drive pro-growth aspirations and gentrification strategies. Meanwhile, society, confronted with brutal neoliberal production of urban space, is vulnerable to dispossession and displacement. In this article, we draw upon an ethnographic study conducted at the Higher Education Mega Centre (HEMC) of Guangzhou in an attempt to revisit China's neoliberal urbanism beyond the Marxian political-economy repertoire, and shift the theoretical focus from production to consumption. In an institutionalized neoliberal context, the state–market–society nexus is closely intertwined—a process that manifests itself as the entangling of state and market, the establishment of a market society, the reflexive effects between neoliberalization and Chinese urban entrepreneurialism, and the capital-centric rule in urban (re)development. In particular, the socioeconomic and sociospatial contradictions in the HEMC case indicate aggressive and insatiable production of urban space, which has been led by the entrepreneurial local state, but is bounded by the market-oriented and capital-centric rules of institutionalized neoliberalization. The article concludes by calling for pragmatic reflection on the ‘hard’ neoliberal urbanism of the global South.     

试论应收账款的管理

应收账款与其他结算方式相比有着无法比拟的优势,但是,由于企业缺乏有效的控制与良好的社会经济信用环境,加大了企业的经营风险。因此,必须制定信用政策与管理制度、改进经济信用环境的建设等,使应收账款这种结算方式得以发挥积极的作用。     

Classification schemes and the study of social mobility: A detailed examination of the Blau-Duncan categories

The Blau-Duncan system of seventeen occuptational categories has frequently been used as the basis for the study of social mobility patterns in the contemporary United States. In this paper, we examine the validity of these categories by subdividing them in various ways and examining the mobility flows in this more detailed classification. Initial log-linear and cluster analyses using data from the Occupational Changes in a Generation II (OCG-II) survey suggest that the Blau-Duncan scheme hides certain patterns of social structuration, and we form new classification systems on the basis of these results. However, cross-validation analyses using the cumulative General Social Survey data set show that the improvements associated with our schemes do not generalize beyond the OCG-II data. Thus, we recommend continued use of the Blau-Duncan categories, given that they have been employed so often in previous work.     

Neoliberalism,Contingency and Urban Policy: The Case of Social Housing in Ontario

Various authors have argued that common understandings of neoliberalism are flawed because they do not adequately account for its geographical contingency or internal contradictions. Many have suggested that neoliberalism is either too internally riven with contradiction to be considered a singular consistent project, or that its implementation is so locally contingent that we cannot plausibly speak of one ideal‐type placeless ideology. Primarily based on interviews with over half of the municipal housing providers in Ontario, this article explores the extent to which the meta‐ideas of neoliberalism are filtered and manifest (or not) locally. Social policy has been neoliberalized in Ontario at least since the advent of the ‘common sense revolution’ in 1995, when a Tory government was elected on a platform of neoliberal reform. The experience of social housing in the province, before, after and during the transition offers a useful window into the debate about the dissonance (or lack thereof) between ideal‐type and contingent neoliberalism. Based on this case, we argue that, despite its obvious conceptual flaws, it is politically and analytically important to understand ideal‐type neoliberalism better.     

The Global System of Finance

A bstract .   In the last decades, revolutionary changes in financial markets, instruments, and institutions have stimulated empirical and theoretical investigations into the interaction of the financial and the "real" side of economic systems. While a considerable body of empirical investigations seems to provide evidence of positive correlations between stock market development and economic growth, there is no consensus in other social sciences as to whether there are two-way linkages, and if so, how to conceive a possible mechanism of interaction. Particularly, the hypergrowth and ubiquity of financial markets has triggered controversial debates on how to understand today's economic landscape. With the objective of clarifying the relationship between finance and economy, this article restructures the present debate through the lenses of Talcott Parsons's and Niklas Luhmann's theories of social systems. Basic system-theoretical ideas on social aspects of finance and economy as well as on uncertainty and risk hint at new insights into the global system of finance that might go far beyond explanatory models of causality.     

Unsettling Neoliberal Rationalities: Engaged Ethnography and the Meanings of Responsibility in the Dominican Republic and Mexico

Neoliberal urban environmental governance is premised in part on the development of collaborative arrangements between state and non‐state actors through which residents in informal settlements are encouraged to participate in their own governance. The neoliberal rationality of participation is implemented through governmental techniques such as responsibilization, whereby residents are rendered responsible for provision of basic environmental services previously seen as the responsibility of government authorities. However, neoliberal urban governance is incomplete, fragmented and fractured, affording room for maneuvering and innovative social agency, whereby residents mimic, reinterpret, negotiate and contest neoliberal subject formations. In this article, we discuss how engaged scholarship can facilitate such alternative productions of neoliberal subjectivities through the development of ‘knowledge encounters'. We draw on cases of solid waste management and environmental risk governance in the informal settlements of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic, and Gaviotas Sur, Villahermosa, Mexico, to suggest that knowledge encounters facilitated through engaged ethnography furnish stages for alternative conceptions of responsibility, whereby residents negotiate neoliberal techniques of governance through diverse forms of acquiescence, reconfiguration and contestation.     

The Politics of Property in Planning: Hezbollah's Reconstruction of Haret Hreik (Beirut,Lebanon) as Case Study

This research looks at post‐2006‐war reconstruction of the southern suburbs of Beirut under the auspices of Hezbollah (the Islamic resistance movement in Lebanon). The project was widely acclaimed as an alternative to current neoliberal planning practices in the Middle East and beyond. Based on a critical reading of the conception of property issues in this planning project, the article argues that this reconstruction presents a new geometry or alternative to the mainstream configuration of neoliberal urbanism, rather than a departure from its precepts. The reason for this is that the adopted language of property corresponds closely with the conception of property advocated by neoliberal planning, one that enshrines private, individual ownership as sacred and desirable and that works to strengthen its model in the city. I further argue that the ‘neoliberal planning regime’ within which Hezbollah's urban intervention occurs is not accidental; rather, it is necessary for the party's control of this space's future and for consolidating its territory in the city. It is hence expected that Hezbollah's planning in the city will produce the same decried effects as neoliberal planning elsewhere in the city rather than usher an innovative, progressive model of planning.     

Some principles for a system of socio-demographic statistics

The changing volume and composition of demand for social statistics indicates a need to so arrange statistical products that important interrelations among major population characteristics and institutional operations can be more effectively reflected. The System of Social and Demographic Statistics (or SSDS) concentrates upon the major characteristics and activities of Canadians as they pass through the life cycle, and upon the operations, costs and benefits of the social institutions that partly regulate such passage. Essentially SSDS is a collection of related data files, concepts, classification schemes, accounts or other measures dealing with socio-economic and demographic processes for Canada and its important sub-populations. A data file, and its associated concepts, statistical accounts or other measures, and its storage-retrieval system, form a module of SSDS. The organization of data will facilitate the estimation of appropriate coefficients reflecting relations among relevant statistical series both within and between modules. The subject-matter scope of SSDS is seen as forming three spheres of observation. The first contains data on individuals, families and households. The second refers to observations concerning the operations, costs and benefits of major social institutions that partly regulate the manner of life-cycle passage by individuals and families. The third sphere deals with inventories of the nature and conditions of important facilities created for social benefit by the above-mentioned institutions. Considerable emphasis is placed on mapping patterns of change in important demographic and socio-economic characteristics; particularly in the fields of migration, fertility, marital status, education, labour force status, occupation, industry and health.     

Testing a Hazard Model for the Housing Market in New Orleans

A bstract .   The article presents a search-theoretic approach to investigate the relationship between probability of a sale and market duration in the housing market. Using a hazard model to study duration dependence, the article, on the basis of data from New Orleans, provides empirical evidence that houses do exhibit duration dependence.