The 'N' word: Australian particularism, taxonomies of development and epistemology

Abstract

Reading accounts of neoliberalism's spread and influence these days frequently leaves me with feelings of ambivalence. On the one hand, I find myself cringing at the often sweeping, cavalier fashion in which the term is bandied about in its various noun, adjectival or verb forms, weighed down with a grab bag of ideas and processes that, in reality, seem to bear little resemblance to the accepted wisdom regarding neoliberalism's defining characteristics. In the hands of the polemicist, neoliberalism can all too easily appear as a monolithic bête noire and antithesis to decent society – a convenient but not an altogether plausible target. Even in less excitable hands the tendency towards homogenizing, totalizing perspectives on neoliberalism's pathways into and impacts on societies and economies – as if there was only ever one strain - can lurk. And yet, as more careful analyses have revealed, whilst neoliberalism contains a more or less coherent and solid ideational core, the process of translating its ideas and ideals to actually existing societies, polities and economies, through all scales from the national to the local, is a precarious activity, subject to resistance, partial application and/or outright failure. Hence, the growing literature on neoliberalism's frequently hybrid and variegated forms.