101 research outputs found
Brexit and the working class on Teesside: Moving beyond reductionism.
Too often members of the working class who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum have been framed as uneducated and unaware of their own economic interests. This paper, based on 26 in-depth face-to-face interviews and a further telephone interview on Teesside in the North East of England, offers an alternative perspective that is more nuanced and less reductionist. The paper critiques some of the commonly heard tropes regarding the rationale for voting leave, it then exposes how leave voters rooted their decision in a localized experience of neoliberalism’s slow-motion social dislocation linked to the deindustrialisation of the area and the failure of political parties, particularly the Labour Party, to speak for regional or working-class interests
'Levelling Up? That's never going to happen' : perceptions on Levelling Up in a 'Red Wall' locality
Stand-off identification of aerosols using mid-infrared backscattering fourier-transform spectroscopy
Targets and overwork: Neoliberalism and the maximisation of profitability from the workplace
Drawing on 25 qualitative interviews, this paper attends to and critiques neoliberalism to demonstrate how management’s enforcement of targets and the expectancy to overwork in various workplaces corrodes the relationship between managers and employees. First, the paper briefly charts how the shift from post-war Keynesian welfare state capitalism to neoliberalism in the global north placed renewed emphasis on maximising profitability, and what this meant for working methods and innovations that managers now use to make an organisation more efficient. This is often regarded as ‘management practices’. It then connects management practices to the political economy and therefore sheds further empirical light on how management practices under neoliberalism impact adversely on workers, generating psychological distress, instability, pressure and a negative working environment. The paper closes with a discussion of how managers potentially perform an ideological function, directing workers’ attention away from neoliberalism and cementing capitalist realism; the negative ideological belief that there is no alternative to the current political economy
COVID crisis, austerity and the 'left behind' city : Exploring poverty and destitution in Stoke-on-Trent.
Passport to neoliberal normality? A critical exploration of COVID-19 vaccine passports.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the world including in France, Canada, Lithuania, Austria, Italy, and Ireland imposed ‘vaccine passports’ on the premise that they would curtail transmission of the virus, reduce COVID-19 related mortalities, and enable society to return to neoliberal normality. However, vaccine passports raise several important and troubling issues that have not been given sufficient attention within the social sciences. Therefore, this article offers a critique of vaccine passports. It is structured into three key themes: (a) scientifically and ethically problematic, (b) the death of the social and the ‘Other’, and (c) digital surveillance and freedom. The article begins by exploring how vaccine passports make little scientific sense and further entrench some unvaccinated peoples’ sense of political and medical mistrust. It then discusses how they amplify social divisions, creating the unvaccinated Other in society and intensifying the neoliberal shift towards a post-social, contactless world. The paper closes with an outline of how vaccine passports were cast as enabling a return to neoliberal normality and freedom, hinging upon an assumption of harmlessness while cementing the negative ideology of capitalist realism
Passport to Neoliberal Normality? A Critical Exploration of COVID-19 Vaccine Passports
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic governments across the world including in France, Canada, Lithuania, Austria, Italy, and Ireland imposed ‘vaccine passports’ on the premise that they would curtail transmission of the virus, reduce COVID-19 related mortalities, and enable society to return to neoliberal normality. However, vaccine passports raise several issues that have not been given sufficient attention within the social sciences. Vaccine passports should be of criminological and zemiological concern because of their harmful consequences upon social
relations, surveillance implications, as well as how they aid a return to neoliberal normality with all its criminogenic implications from corporate boardrooms to zones of permanent recession. Therefore, this article offers a critique of vaccine passports. It is structured into three key themes: (a) scientifically and ethically problematic, (b) the death of the social and the ‘Other’, and (c) digital surveillance and freedom. The paper begins by exploring how vaccine passports make little
scientific sense and further entrench some unvaccinated peoples’ sense of political and medical mistrust. It then discusses how they amplify social divisions, creating the unvaccinated Other in society and intensifying the neoliberal shift towards a post-social, contactless world. The article closes with an outline of how vaccine passports were cast as enabling a return to neoliberalism and freedom, hinging upon an assumption of harmlessness while cementing the negative ideology of capitalist realism
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