ABSTRACT
Following the global recession of 1978-1983, “a concerted, long-term and highly effective ideological effort on the part of identifiable actors” (George 1999: 1) which we now call neoliberalism, brought about a dramatic turn away from Keynesian economic thinking and political-economic practices just about everywhere in the globalizing world (Conway and Heynen 2006). Harvey (2005: 3) succinctly depicts the pervasiveness of its ascendency:
Deregulation, privatization, and the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision have been all too common. Almost all states, from those newly minted after the collapse of the Soviet Union to old-style social democracies and welfare states such as New Zealand and Sweden, have embraced, sometimes voluntarily and in other instances in response to coercive pressures, some version of neoliberal theory and adjusted at least some policies and practices accordingly . . . Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse.
