ABSTRACT

Critique in a Neoliberal Age brings a critique of ideology to main debates within economic sociology, populism studies, the neoliberal university, therapy culture, contemporary intimacies and feminism. Over the last decades, neoliberalism has worked to lift social protections and political regulations from the market and to identify modernity with capitalism itself. It has also engaged in an ideological project to screen alternative measurements of progress. Liberal and social democracy have been effectively disabled as grounds for weighing the costs of neoliberal predations. This volume examines the strategies through which neoliberalism has reconstituted and de-politicized liberal precepts such as universal justice, private right and a social democratic project responsive to needs. As such it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology and social and critical theory, political and social philosophy, politics, cultural studies and feminist thought.

 

chapter

Introduction

chapter 2|20 pages

Sociology and critique

chapter 3|20 pages

The dialectic of critique and progress

Comparing Peter Wagner and Theodor Adorno

chapter 4|17 pages

The embedded market and ideology critique

chapter 6|16 pages

De-politicizing needs

Therapy culture and the ‘happiness turn’

chapter 7|16 pages

The rationality potentials of intimacy

In search of a critical pulse

chapter 8|16 pages

The critic’s role

Debating Nancy Fraser’s feminism

chapter 9|12 pages

Learning from the Budapest School women

The politics of need interpretation

chapter 10|2 pages

Conclusion