ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes that funding technologies is a suitable concept to use in analyses of the neoliberal reconfiguration of civil society, which not only highlights the ways in which the financial support of these organizations involve technical procedures and instruments but also illuminates how these technologies shape specific relations between state and civil society. The neoliberal orientation in Scandinavia has mainly come about through the establishment by government of market mechanisms, forms of contract-based or competitive systems, but also by the privatization of welfare services and greater emphasis on a free choice ideology. In their analysis of what neoliberalism means for feminist politics, feminist scholars have debated several possible alternatives. Some, like Nancy Fraser and Angela McRobbie, have emphasized the links between women's empowerment and capitalism as problematic for feminist projects aimed at social justice. Situated in these complex dynamics, the examples discussed in the chapter illustrate the difficult and contradictory conditions within which women's organizations are located.
