ABSTRACT
The development and global expansion of a world capitalist system of production has generated increasing disparities of wealth, income and life chances within and between the populations of the world’s nation-states. To understand this it is important to briefly examine the political economic context in which globalisation is located and that has enabled it to flourish. In the second half of the twentieth century neoliberalism has become increasingly prominent as a form of governance in countries across the globe. This is an approach to political economic practices which values individualism, strong private property rights, free markets, free trade and the free flow of capital, and sees these as the most efficient way to produce and maximise social, economic and political good (Harvey, 2007). Whilst it developed first in affluent Western countries, it is suggested that it is now a form of ‘world governmentality’ (Peters, 2001: viii), which informs government policies and economic practices across the globe – to such a degree that it is now the accepted, for the most part, unquestioned way in which economies and societies are organised. As a result market-based economies are promoted, in which competition and efficiency are highly valued, and where at the individual level, rationality, individuality and self-interest are seen to guide peoples’ actions (Peters, 2001). Some have called this a ‘market fundamentalist’ approach, as it insists that sustained economic growth only comes from reducing government interventions and leaving markets to their own devices. However, as Joseph Stiglitz argues, ‘one of the flaws of market fundamentalism is that it paid no attention to distribution of incomes or the notion of a good or fair society’ (2009: 351). Consequently, it has led to changes such as the dismantling of the welfare state, the individualisation of all actions and the growing reality of global inequality (Smith, 2012). The pursuit of capitalist and market-led goals is contrary to social, economic and political egalitarianism; capitalism produces inequality. It is also becoming more and more apparent that the sources
and manifestations of this inequality are not simply produced by the globalisation of market logics and mechanisms. The cultural dimension is increasingly significant.
