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Domesticating neo‐liberalism: spaces of economic practice and social reproduction in post‐socialist cities – By Alison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rochovská and Dariusz Swiatek

2012; Wiley; Volume: 68; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1745-7939.2012.01222_6.x

1745-7939

Simon Springer,

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

Domesticating neo-liberalism: spaces of economic practice and social reproduction in post-socialist cities Alison Stenning, Adrian Smith, Alena Rochovská and Dariusz Swiatek , RGS-IBG Book Series , Wiley-Blackwell , Oxford , 2010 . 304 pp. ISBN 978-1-4051-6990-5 . Domesticating Neo-liberalism is a welcome addition to the now voluminous literature on neoliberalisation. In a body of scholarship that continues to inform but as of late has not offered much in the way of new theory, Stenning et al. have presented us with an argument that adds much to our understanding. Their starting point is an adaptation of Creed's (1998) argument, where they contend that neoliberalism and its various processes can only be understood within the context of ‘domestication’, as neoliberalisation is made possible through the practices of everyday life and social reproduction. In its rejection of ‘society’ through the promotion of an individualising ethics of autonomous self-improvement and an entrepreneurial self, Stenning et al. contend that neoliberalisation is more than just a political economic project. Through a detailed empirical study of two districts in two large cities, Nowa Huta in Kraków, Poland, and Petržalka in Bratislava, Slovakia, they appropriately shift our focus onto the social implications of neoliberalisation by examining its role in the remaking of familial spaces, household economic practices and social reproduction in the domestic sphere of these post-socialist settings. While the framing of Domesticating Neo-liberalism may not appear to be a radically different interpretation of neoliberalisation than what we have already seen in the governmentality literature, where Stenning et al.'s argument thrives – and indeed pushes the literature forward – is in its meticulous attention to the specificities of the mundane practices of individuals, communities and households. Much of the governmentalities literature on neoliberalism focuses on how neoliberalising practices are articulated with existing institutional frameworks and political economic circumstances through the actions of local elites, with little consideration of how everyday people adopt and at times de-stabilise neoliberal modalities. Stenning et al. rectify this imbalance by making the latter the locus of their concern. What we are accordingly presented with is a book that charts new territory into the functions and dysfunctions of neoliberalism as it explicitly relates to the quotidian workings of lived experience. This is a valuable analytic lens, and through a robust, multi-method approach that attends to the complexity of forms of household practices and social reproduction, Stenning et al. are to be commended for bringing it into such vivid focus. The conclusion to Domesticating Neo-liberalism outlines the violence of neoliberalism in relation to class, gender, generation and ethnicity in Nowa Huta and Petržalka. While I think the authors do an admirable job of situating these particular arguments within the post-socialist literature, which paints a disturbing picture of the emotional and material violence that is experienced through conditions of poverty, stress, alienation and fear, my only minor complaint stems from the fact that Stenning et al. have largely ignored the geographical writing on the relationship between neoliberalism and violence (see Springer 2008, 2010a,b). This absence is not a major fault, and of course I am referring primarily to my own research, but I do feel it represents a missed opportunity to draw the relational connections of their localised account of neoliberalised violence in Kraków and Bratislava further afield, even if only perfunctorily, to another ‘post-socialist’ context like Phnom Penh, Cambodia. On the whole, Domesticating Neo-Liberalism receives my highest recommendation. This is rich and detailed study that provides considerable insight into the flourishing other-than-neoliberal subjectivities that have been negotiated in this ‘no alternative’ age, revealing a series of geographies (housing, labour markets, food provisioning, access to land, caring practices and friendship networks) that at times conform with neoliberal rationalism, but importantly, at other times break with such ‘wisdom’ by countering it with an ethics of solidarity, generosity and mutual aid.