Social Welfare Institutions

1. Think about the management of waste. Can you draw some parallels with the management of terrorism, health, poverty, etc…? Are there distinctly neoliberal responses to each of these problems? What are the characteristics of these policy/ideological responses that would make them neoliberal? What are the problems with these sorts of responses? Are there assumptions built into their logic that could stand to be critiqued? How is privatisation incorporated into each? How about sanitization? Purity? Markets? Try to tackle a handful of these issues by focussing on a comparison of neoliberal policy responses to at least two different social issues.

2. What role does “personal responsibility” play within the logic of neoliberal policy solutions? Write a paper critiquing the use of this concept in at least two different policy issues, and explain how there might be alternative ways to frame responsibility and what such an alternative might look like.

3. Discuss a specific battle over resource privatisation (such as the battle presented in the movie “Waterfront”) or the battles over the patenting of agricultural technologies, or a battle surrounding the building of a dam, or over the privatisation of public education, or social security, or the military. Make sure that you clearly express what specifically is at stake in regards to privatisation, and what the ultimate impact of such an effort might be - benefits AND drawbacks. How does this push towards privatisation fit into broader neoliberal policy responses? Also explain how this specific privatisation battles fit into a broader context of globalisation and the world economy.

4. Food Politics: How does the global agricultural system work? Explain the role of agricultural subsidies, free trade agreements, structural adjustment programs, import subsistitution strategies, fertilizeer and pesticide, and the production and patenting of genetically modified foods. In particular, offer a critique of the neoliberal ideology of free trade by showing how historically this agricultural trade is far from ‘free’. What is the implication for our general understanding of neoliberalism, capitalism, and globalisation?

5. How does privatisation figure in the general operations of global agriculture? Write about some form of “new enclosures” in the global agricultural sector. This could be anything from structural adjustment to the patenting of agricultural technologies. What is similar and what is different about the sorts of privatisation/enclosure going on today, and the sort that went on hundreds of years ago at the dawn of capitalism? Relate Part 8 of Capital Vol. 1 to an account of modern enclosure, drawing similarities and differences. Is Marx’s analysis still relevant today? Why or why not?

6. Greenwashing/Whitewashing/Freedomwashing… Explain some of the ways that corporate interests portray an image that is far from reality, and how they use these images in their business strategy. What role does this play in the construction of neoliberal ideology? Relate this to the idea of free trade - what is and is not ‘free’ about free trade?

7. Explore the concept of “consumer soveriegnty” and critique it as an ideological construction. Are consumers really the driving force of the economy? In what ways does this not tell the entire story? Use a specific example (or two) to make a case that any focus on consumer demand as justification for corporate actions is actually not telling the whole story - and be explicit about what is being left out of the story.

8. SUPER HARD QUESTION: Write a paper about consumer debt and/or micro credit - how do they function differently, how do they function similarly?  How have they each functioned within the neoliberal economy?  Try to explain what is happening with the current credit crisis in terms of a crisis of capital accumulation, or a crisis of neoliberalism.  Maybe explain the concept of fictitious capital - and how it relates to speculative bubbles and the current housing meltdown.