Open AccessNeoLiberalism Unshaken: A Report from the Disaster Zone
Author(s) -
Cornelia Sears,
Leonard Wilcox,
Jessica Johnston
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
excursions/excursions journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2055-494X
pISSN - 2044-4095
DOI - 10.20919/exs.3.2012.153
Subject(s) - neoliberalism (international relations) , expediting , sociology , political science , state (computer science) , political economy , management , economics , algorithm , computer science
We report here on our experiences working, in a large university, in Christchurch, New Zealand in the wake of the 22 February 2011 earthquake. The state of emergency, our experiences suggest, produces the idealised condition of neoliberalism, expediting, operationalising and realising to perfection the modes and methods of neoliberal agendas—urgency, crisis, instability and “the bottom line.” At the University of Canterbury, which like so many universities elsewhere has been experiencing the processes of corporatisation and marketisation for the last two decades, neoliberalism, we argue, thrived within the disaster zone.