VAD e.V.

Privately regulated spaces: Articulations and disarticulations of neoliberalism in Africa

Convenors: Stefan Ouma Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spambots geschützt! Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie sie sehen können. Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spam Bots geschützt, Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie es sehen können (Frankfurt), Martin Doevenspeck Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spambots geschützt! Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie sie sehen können. Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spam Bots geschützt, Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie es sehen können (Bayreuth)

In African Studies, neoliberalism has often been conceived of in a structuralist and monolithic fashion as a homogenous policy formation which is mobilized to restructure societies via the primacy of the market as a mean for coordinating social relations, allocating resources, and deliver public and private goods. This is done with little acknowledgement of the inherent schisms and contradictions of neoliberal policy formations, which are more facetted, amorphous, parasitic and adaptive in situ than many social science accounts would suggest.

Therefore, the panel seeks to excavate the social, economic, political and regulatory articulations and disarticulations of neolibalisation in a historical and comparative perspective, to which space is a central category. Neoliberal politico-economic transformation is very much about the renegotiation of claims over territories and resources and the redrawing of social and physical boundaries as the workings of the market unfold. This may either articulate itself directly through purposeful policy choices or indirectly through the side-effects of neoliberalisation as the emergence of privately regulated spaces of production (e.g. export processing zones), extraction (e.g. enclave economies in Congo or Angola) and living (e.g. gated communities) indicate. These variable phenomena can all be rooted in the wider, transnationally entangled neoliberal transformation of African political economies, which, however, is path-dependent and locally fractured. Insofar the panel ties into the theme of the VAD conference “continuities, dislocations and transformations”.

The panel wants to invite scholars from all disciplines to provide both theoretical and empirical accounts of the social, economic, political, regulatory, and spatial articulations and disarticulations of neoliberalisation, helping to advance our understanding of how economic models and ideas actually work on the ground, have developed in a historical perspective, built on and transform existing political economies, and how such a process reconfigures both physical and social boundaries.

Contributions are welcome in English or German. We expect contributors to hand in a meaningful abstract of no more than 400 words.