"Neoliberalism and Diasporas"
Organizers: Daphne Winland (York University) and Nicholas deMaria
Harney (University of
Western Australia)
This session examines the tensions between two much studied phenomena
in the past twenty years that have rarely been explicitly conjoined:
1) the dramatic increase and politicisation in diasporic, solidaristic
transnational forms of belonging; and 2) the colonisation of life by
neoliberal forms of governance and discourse about the self. How
might an investigation of their intersection enable us to think about
alternative forms of social organisation and possibilities for
varieties of mutuality? The emergence of intensive diasporic practices
accompanied by the circulation and production of ideas, images and
goods on a global scale through technological innovation has
transformed international migration. This new intensity has coincided
with the individualising demands of neoliberal economic and governance
models that pervade sending, transit and receiving societies. What
effect do the specific features of neoliberal transformations such as
the socialisation of the self with an emphasis on flexible skills,
self-management and individualisation have on collective practices for
mutuality? Anthropologists have been attentive to the affective
attachments intensified by new technologies in the post Cold War
period but have paid less attention to how those attachments might be
influenced, constituted, undermined or refracted by neoliberalism's
many forms attached for example, to trade agreements, development
models or the demands of European integration. What are the processes
involved in the making of new mutualities and fissures? How do these
concurrent forms of neoliberalism intersect with processes such as
racialisation, commodification and aestheticisation? How might we
consider the coincident emergence of diasporic connections and
neoliberalism?
Please email Daphne Winland (winland@yorku.ca) by January 28, 2009 at
the latest.
