Paper short abstract:

This research is based on an ethnographic research in a community outreach organization. It explores the mechanisms and processes of transmission of values and moral, operating in discourses and practices about drugs, health and living together.

Paper long abstract:

Inspired by Anthropology of moralities and ethics, my research is based on an ethnographic fieldwork in a Canadian city's outreach community organization, within a context of drug consumption concerns. I focused on three groups of actors: the management team, the outreach workers, and the services users. The harm reduction approach invites health professional workers to adopt different points of view from the moralistic one which forbids any drug consumption. This approach aims a tolerant and a-moral intervention within the drug consumption to reduce the harms effects. Yet, health anthropologists assume that, even in a will to be a-moral, social workers participate passing on values and norms (Bourgeault 2003 ; Massé 2003 ; Massé 2013). Concerning symbolic Interactionism, we admit the co-existence of different systems of norms in a society. Also, from Anthropology of moralities' point of view, we can say that community actors are part of those interactions. They discuss, act and share values, as they are part of the building or rebuilding of systems of norms. Among others, it will be possible to observe the tension between liberty and security in a neoliberal world of illicit drug using. Observing those systems: Which values and how these values are passed on from one to another? It could help us to understand the normalisation and moralisation on drugs, identities and health among different actors. Finally, this could question the basis of social changes and give some clues to understand how we should live together.

Paper short abstract:

In November 2016, Quebec adopted the Bill 70 to force first-time welfare recipients to enlist in employment programs, otherwise they could see their assistance reduced from $ 623 to $ 399 a month. This presentation analyses the impact of neoliberal economies on poverty reduction programs in Quebec.

Paper long abstract:

On the 10th of November 2016, the Government of Quebec adopted An Act to allow a better match between training and jobs and to facilitate labour market entry (bill 70), to force first-time welfare recipients considered "employable" to enlist in employment programs, otherwise they could see their assistance reduced from $623 to $399 a month. However, in 2002, the National Assembly adopted unanimously An Act to combat poverty and social exclusion (Bill 112) "to guide the Government… to combat poverty and counter social exclusion and strive towards a poverty-free society" (Quebec 2002, 2). Despite those hopeful intentions, a strong meritocratic mentality had already taken over the original inclusive model created in the 1960s. Since the end of 1970s, along with the neoliberalization of the economy, provincial and federal governments gradually redirected the responsibility towards individuals, focussing on employment programs and thereby creating welfare categories such as people with "severely limited capacity", "temporally limited capacity" or "without limited capacity for employment". This presentation analyses the impact of neoliberal economies on poverty reduction programs in Quebec, moving from a welfare to a workfare state, making individuals responsible for their own conditions without considering the socio-economic and other structural mechanisms that produce and reproduce poverty in society.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses everyday neoliberalism in transnational philanthropy and private social investment. It analyses how Brazilian and U.S. elites articulate in the field and architecture public policies and new modes of governance, claiming on individual responsibility and risk taking.

Paper long abstract:

After the so-called global financial crisis, North American scholars and "social experts" started publishing works about a new approach to philanthropy: philanthrocapitalism. Within this framework, a wide range of practices and discourses emerge such as new philanthropy, venture philanthropy, effective altruism, and strategic philanthropy, among others. This paper addresses how transnational elites articulate in this field, a blurred area where categories such as governments, the private sector and the third sector intertwine, playing a key role in the architecture of public policies and new modes of governance, claiming on individual responsibility and risk taking. Anthropologist Bill Maurer evens asks if we might be experiencing the rise of a modern feudalism with the privatization of state functions. Having neoliberalism as a starting point to the analysis, I identified and analyzed the new philanthropy and private social investment in Brazil and in the United States. Brazilian experts and philanthropists consider the latter as the benchmark of philanthropy and volunteerism in the world and it was possible to follow these flows of knowledge building and exchanges between elites of both countries. I conducted this research through observant participation, in depth interviews and the attendance of a massive online open course on strategic philanthropy. Whereas in Brazil some propose what is being called the "sector 2.5", in the United States scholars propose the fourth sector, or a "for benefit sector" in place of the "for profit model". These analyses resulted in the notions of Philanthrocapitalism in the U.S. and Philanthroestatism in Brazil.

Paper short abstract:

Two features of Welfare Reform are the implementation of Active Employment Policies and privatisation by handing management to the Third Sector. During this process, NGOs managing social programs adopt the taken for granted hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1990s, EU governments started to favour Active Employment Policies over passive ones to tackle unemployment. During this process, the Welfare State has not been dismantled nor has significantly shrunk in the EU; rather, it has changed its character. In this article, I focus on one of the aspects of this change: a process of privatisation by a progressive handing of management to the third sector, in a context of structural unemployment and labour market reform.

The present case study examines how a Local Assembly of the Spanish Red Cross, an "impartial, neutral and independent organisation" that bases its work on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, came to assume the role of the state in implementing Active Employment Policies. These policies reinforced the hegemonic ideology of neoliberalism regarding the self, which hallmarks are independence and self-responsibility, in a context of welfare reform, economic austerity, and devaluation of labour. Despite their intentions, these policies did not produce equal individuals before the market; rather, they reproduced social stereotypes between groups of immigrant and local workers at the lower end of the labour market. Different groups of workers, according to ethnicity, were categorised as fit for certain types of jobs while excluded from others, determining their incomes and social status. Therefore, they contributed to the production of difference.

Fieldwork data were collected through participant observation in the Employment Program of the Spanish Red Cross in a town in Southern Spain between January 2015 and June 2016.

Paper short abstract:

This paper considers the significance of having and demonstrating "passion" in an undergraduate computer science program in Singapore, exploring how students and others are called upon to continually (re)make themselves as passionate (and thereby employable and competitive) persons.

Paper long abstract:

Experiences of learning and doing computer science are permeated by forms of affect, such as the common joys and frustrations involved in making code work, or the intimate devotion some show for solving computing problems. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in an undergraduate computer science program in Singapore, this paper explores discussions and performances among students, professors, and computing professionals of the significance of "passion" in computer science. For many of my participants, having and demonstrating passion were seen as necessary to being/becoming a "good" computer scientist. Entrepreneurship was additionally encouraged and cultivated through academic programs and government policies that "summoned" students to become passionate technical citizens and subjects. This paper explores several implications of this primacy of passion. I consider how, while many I spoke with agreed on the importance of passion for doing "good" computer science, few could clearly explain what precisely it means. As such, those in positions of power, especially employers, can arbitrarily determine what displays of passion are valued, and by who. Additionally, as both a moving target and a performative project, passion is never fully be achieved. Like the entrepreneurs in Carla Freeman's research in Barbados, many students and others continually worked to (re)make themselves as passionate persons, and thereby as persons dedicated to neoliberal entrepreneurialism and competition. This intersection of passion with neoliberalism easily sets the grounds for over-work and exploitation as students and employees dedicate their time and selves in the name of creativity, innovation, and passionate work.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will present an ethnographic study of Bristol Learning City through mundane learning practices, focusing on learning as a site of intersection with neoliberal practices as well as potential contestations.

Paper long abstract:

The conception of the learning city is increasingly promoted in the fields of lifelong learning and international policy through UNESCO, EU and OECD programmes. The framework of the learning city emphasises the proliferation of learning and innovation on individual, community and city-wide levels as well as the development of human capital, competitiveness and economic growth. Recently, however, the ideas of lifelong learning and of the learning city have recently been problematized in terms of their connections to neoliberal paradigms and links with power and knowledge (Fejes and Nicoll 2008). Critics pointed to the rhetoric of the learning city vision as an uncritical rendering of the ideological froth (Harvey, 2003) of neoliberal transformations of the knowledge economy (Plumb et al 2007).

This paper, based on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork of the city of Bristol and the Bristol Learning City program, provides a critical understanding of urban learning in an anthropological perspective. This research combined participant observation and participatory research in the streets, community centers, urban protests, informal learning activities and conference rooms around Bristol. Through a discussion of the multiple arenas of the learning city, in particular the ordinary domains and alternative learning practices, it is demonstrated that learning sits at the intersection of neoliberal practices and spaces of contestation and possibility. An insight into mundane urban learning infrastructures as well as emerging learning instances of dissent allows us to overcome the essentialized and individualistic frameworks of the learning city.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the neoliberal ideologies about motherhood produced by, and disseminated through, Ontario Early Years Centres (OEYCs).

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how neoliberal philosophies are worked out, domesticated and negotiated in one of the most intimate domains of everyday life: motherhood. Specifically, it focuses on the discourses about motherhood produced by, and disseminated through, Ontario Early Years Centres (OEYCs). OEYCs are government funded institutions that serve as umbrella spaces for many public health initiatives targeted at mothers with young children; thus, they are important instruments of state production and reproduction of ideas about what it means to be a (good) mother. These include the values of individuality and independence, the reliance on "expert knowledge," and an emphasis on "technologies of the self" through which mothers are expected to enterprise and optimize themselves. The paper then attends to the role of the OEYC employees (the "experts") in perpetuating these norms. Finally, it considers the ways in which mothers themselves selectively adopt or reject these discourses. This research stems from my own participant observation in various OEYC workshops and activities, as both a mother and an anthropologist.

Paper short abstract:

How does existence of and enthusiasm for the federal government's private refugee sponsorship program fit into and shape broader patterns of neoliberalism in the everyday lives of Canadians?

Paper long abstract:

In the fall of 2016, Minister of Immigration John McCallum was taking Canada's private refugee sponsorship program abroad, presenting Canada's approach to resettling Syrian refugees as a model for the rest of the world to emulate. Now well known to Canadians, private sponsorship was first used to bring Vietnamese refugees to the country in the 1970s. It is based on the idea that citizens take the driver's seat, so to speak. In the case of its recent application, this meant that groups of ordinary people provided the funding, other resources and supports necessary to bring Syrians to their region. Individuals donated much money and time. Media coverage of resettlement highlighted the central role of Canadian do-gooders, leaving Syrians as "extras" in stories that were supposed to be about them. The use of ordinary Canadians as de facto agents of the state and the public support for this program raise troubling questions. How did it impact actual government personnel, for example, when inflows of refugees overburdened social services beyond the scope of the program? How do these developments overlap, moreover, with other gaps in social services such as that which leaves the provision of food security also in the hands of private citizens? How does such enthusiasm for private sponsorship fit into and shape broader patterns of neoliberalism in the everyday lives of Canadians?

Paper short abstract:

How are understandings of neoliberalism and generational change intertwined in Campeche? How have neoliberal reforms been absorbed into daily life and discourses of sociality and change?

Paper long abstract:

I began fieldwork in Campeche, Mexico in 1996 when NAFTA and the Zapatista rebellion were two years old. To make itself eligible to join free trade agreements Mexico had been a poster child of neoliberal reforms, including selling off parastatal enterprises and revising the article of the constitution concerning agrarian reform. A great deal of social research was done predicting the impacts of the end of agrarian reform on small-scale agriculture and rural life. So much research, in fact, that in my doctoral research I shied away from writing about neoliberalism. But the evidence of its effects was everywhere. Returning to Campeche in 2016 to begin a new project I saw the effects of neoliberal reforms laid bare and exacerbated by climate change to make milpa agriculture more uncertain than ever. A new generation of young people has grown up disciplined through conditional cash transfers and similar programs in the ways they confront the uncertain promises of education, better health, tourism, and migration. How are understandings of neoliberalism and generational change intertwined? How have neoliberal reforms been absorbed into daily life and discourses of sociality and change in Calakmul?

Paper short abstract:

This paper uses research on first-time home buying in metropolitan St. John’s NL to ask how effective government programs aimed at inculcating self-reliance and individual initiative have been at instilling neoliberal ways of thinking and being in relation to the most everyday arena of home life.

Paper long abstract:

From William Levitt's conviction that homeownership was a weapon against communism, to Margaret Thatcher's anti-Socialist strategies for "property-owning democracy," homeownership has long figured in programmatic attempts to remake political subjectivities in their most "everyday" guises. In the case of Thatcherism, the sale of public housing to its tenants was a central plank in a policy architecture aimed at making individualistic and self-reliant national citizens. This ideology of individual responsibility now extends through neoliberal forms of "asset-based welfare," in which homeownership is a gap-filler in the face of diminished public spending. Here, the privately owned home that remains the heart of everyday life for many people is also leveraged to offset attenuated social provisions, subsidizing university education here, supplementing inadequate pensions there.

Combining policy analysis with research on the perspectives of first-time homebuyers and the professionals who advise them, this paper asks how much homeownership has become an arena of everyday neoliberalism in greater St. John's, the capital of a province often portrayed as insufficiently competitive and market-driven. Certainly, recent government initiatives project a neoliberal impetus. A program targeting otherwise-creditworthy people who have trouble saving a downpayment, for example, promotes homeownership as a "solid investment" and includes compulsory financial education. More diffusely, tax and social policies increasingly promote self-reliance. But do official discourses and policies aimed at inculcating neoliberal habits of thought and action always hit their mark? I suggest that that people's "investments" in owned homes do make the, spaces of lived neoliberalism, but only in contradictory and incomplete ways.