Despite the fact that the first substantially neoliberal regime was actually in the far South, the civil-military dictatorship in Chile, neoliberalism is generally attributed to western and developed countries. “Where in the world does Neoliberalism come from? The market agenda in southern perspective” is a very interesting (free access) paper illuminating the other angle of the Neoliberal conquest.
Mainstream theoretical work on the emergence and transmission of neoliberalism is dominated by two narratives: Neoliberalism is generally understood as a system of ideas circulated by a network of right-wing intellectuals, or as an economic system mutation resulting from crises of profitability in capitalism. Raewyn Connell and Nour Dados (University of Sidney) argue that both interpretations places the Global North (North America, Western Europe and developed parts of East Asia) at the centre of the account of the development of neoliberalism and eschews the experience of the global South. Therefore the authors propose an approach to neoliberalism that prioritizes the experience of the global South, and sees neoliberalism gaining its main political strength as a development strategy displacing those hegemonic before the 1970s.
From Southern perspectives, a distinct set of issues about neoliberalism becomes central: the formative role of the state, including the military; the expansion of world commodity trade, including minerals; agriculture, informality, and the transformation of rural society. Thinkers from the global South who have foregrounded these issues need close attention from the North and exemplify a new architecture of knowledge in critical social science. Changing the lens needed for seeing neoliberalism on a world scale.
(To the paper on the journal website)
