ABSTRACT
Social life and politics are everywhere – West, East and South – increasingly market-driven. This is in part the result of the impersonal pressures of the global economy, in part the outcome of political policy making inspired by neoliberal ideology, encouraged and assisted by such bodies as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. It has been well said that ‘neoliberalism’s ascendancy has been associated with the political construction of markets, coupled with the deliberate extension of competitive logics and privatized management into hitherto relatively socialized spheres’.1 Non-market areas of social life are transformed into markets, and this involves commodification and profit making. This marketization involves a series of transformations. Goods or services are reconfigured so that they can be priced and sold. People are induced to want to buy them. The motivation of the work force producing or providing them is redirected from collective aims and a service ethic to profit seeking and market discipline. But if politics is ever more marketdriven, the market is, in turn, politically driven. Neoliberalization is itself state-sponsored, and in some cases, notably the United Kingdom, when capital moves into a previously non-market sphere, risk is underwritten by the state.
