The construction and deconstruction of the (post)capitalist economy through a

The previous chapter explored how my experience as a cooperative practitioner and practitioner-researcher blurred the theory-action-research divide and gave rise to a weak theoretical stance and participatory worldview. From this perspective, theories are not understood as structures that categorise or describe reality-as-is. Rather they are expressions of our epistemological and ontological stance that shape our reactions, interactions, and interconnections with others (Denzin and Lincoln, 2005); inform how and why data is generated, interpreted, and presented; and offer frameworks that help us to both understand and create our circumstances, and imagine our futures (Gibson-Graham et al., 2001: 19). Theory is, in other words, one player in the performation of an ever-becoming reality. Encompassed within this position is an understanding of meaning-making as an everyday, embodied and intersubjective praxis, and reality and identity as plural and irreducible to a core essence. Reflecting these understandings, the proceeding sections develop, connect, and make sense of theory through participants’ words, experiences and actions. This approach

reconfigures the researcher’s role, away from the critique of dominant theories of capitalism and neoliberalism, and towards the exploration of the economy-as-lived and the use of this exploration as a mean to opening spaces of economic possibility

(Springer, 2016).

3.1: Neoliberal-capitalist economy

I was struck in the Preface to Jamie Peck's (2010) book 'Constructions of Neoliberal Reason' that bringing our own experiences of neoliberal-capitalism into economic debate, in his case experiences of 'Tangling with Maggie', pulls neoliberalism and capitalism back down to earth, giving otherwise abstract concepts a human scale. Adopting the researcher role outlined above, this section seeks to perform a similar act, drawing on participants’ experiences to illustrate the challenges, contradictions, and performative dominance of the neoliberal-capitalist economy. Recognising the vast literature that exists on the topic (Venugopal, 2015; Springer, 2012) the section focuses on theoretical work that reveals economic diversity. As such, it lays the

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foundations for sections 3.2 and 3.3 that explore approaches to challenging capitalist dominance and expanding spaces of economic possibility. Section 3.4 focuses on ‘the [everyday] revolutionary art of self-cultivation’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006a xvii) that sees the emergence of thinking, theorising economic subjects. Together, sections 3.2-3.5 take us through the four stages that Gibson-Graham (2006b) identify as necessary to enacting post-capitalist economies: deconstructing the hegemony of capitalism, fostering a language of economic difference, cultivating post-capitalist subjectivities, and building community economies. Running throughout these stages is the

epistemological and ontological work needed to break away from capitalist hegemony and move towards a more diverse and interconnected understanding of the economy. The role of democracy in relation to this work and the first three stages of post-

capitalist transformation, will be empirically explored in chapter 5.

3.1.1: Inducing, managing and morphing in response to crisis

Contrary to the unity portrayed through 'popular representations [and] the journalistic mania for attributing coherent thought systems to politicians' (Mirowski, 2009: 421), Mirowski and Plehwe (2009) reveal neoliberalism as a project of becoming (see also Birch and Mykhnenko, 2010; Larner, 2003; Springer, 2012). Neoliberalism and the establishment of 'market81_{-rule' is not, and never has been, about rolling out a}

coherent and 'institutionally polycentric' regime. Rather (Peck et al., 2010: 107):

It has been about learning by doing (and by failing) within an evolving framework of market-orientated reform parameters and strategic objectives.

Starting with its development in response to Fordist-Keynsian capitalism, ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ has evolved through progressive crises and contradictions, often of its own making (Peck et al., 2009; Peck, 2004). Drawing attention to this 'crisis-induced, crisis-managing and crisis-inducing' cycle, Brenner et al. (2010: 207)

81 _{While recognising, like Miller (2011: 10) that there is a need to decouple ‘markets’ and ‘capitalism’ – to recognise} that ‘capitalism requires markets, but markets do not require capitalism – in this chapter the term ‘market’ is used to denote the ‘neoliberal market’ through which capitalist modes of production are organised.

highlight the variegated nature of neoliberalisation, and specifically the 'cumulatively transformative' shift from the uneven development of neoliberalisation toward the neoliberalisation of uneven regulatory development. This shift encompasses a growing recognition82 _{that neoliberalism will materialise in varying hybrid and mutated forms}

‘contingent upon existing historical contexts [including previous crises], geographical landscapes, institutional legacies, and embodied subjectivities’ (Springer, 2012: 135; see also Peck & Tickell, 2002; for examples see Birch and Tickle, 2010; Swain et al., 2010). In light of this shift it follows that, through contextually embedded ‘neoliberal programmes of capitalist restructuring’, capitalism too will adopt a path dependent form (Peck et al., 2009b: 54; Peck and Theodore, 2007). Recognising also the rooting of neoliberal programmes in ‘a fixed set of attributes’ (Ong, 2006: 383_{), and idealised}

visions of market rule and competitive individualism, Gough (2014: 200) explains:

Different territorial capitalisms evolve through uneven and combined development: 'uneven' in that each territory develops specific social relations and durable solutions; 'combined' in that the development of territories is subject to flows of commodity, money and productive capital between them, and reciprocally creates the pressure for these flows.

The ‘uneven’ and ‘combined’ territorial development described by Gough (2014) is captured by Regather participants in the following FG3 exchange:

Nicole: When I first moved to Sheffield I felt like I had gone back in time. It was like there wasn't hummus anywhere and there was just hot roast pork sandwiches everywhere. And it’s just starting to catch up now but it's like 10, 15 years behind Leeds and Manchester even.

Tim: What with the food thing?

82 _{This is reflected in literature through a propensity to replace discussion of neoliberalism with a language of} neoliberalisms and neoliberalisation. These languages (particularly the latter) (re)frame neoliberalism as a process rather than an end state (Springer, 2012; Peck and Tickle, 2002; Larner, 2003).

83 _{Including privatisation of state run assets, liberalisation of trade, deregulation of labour and product markets, and} the marketisation of society (Birch and Mykhnenko, 2010: 5).

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Nicole: The food thing is so behind here, like bread even. There are now some proper bakers in Sheffield but that's in the last 5 years.

Tim: Yes, that's true. One thing I really like though when coming to Sheffield, was the like Mum run, I know it's not always that, but these shops that sell just like huge baps and they are like so local vibe. There's not a bit of branding or any stuff on them, and although they don't do the good food stuff, it’s probably terrible, unethical (Nicole: No nutrition) but they’re actually like well local, and they are run by the people and they own it, you know.

[…]

Gareth: The non-hipster independent businesses.

Nicole: The problem is they are all shopping in the same wholesale, that's the issue with these places.

Gareth: They are all going to the parkway market. Nicole: So they all have the same stuff.

Gareth: Yes, yes because that's the infrastructure for supplying food to the city, but on the small business level they are owner managers that employ themselves and other people, and they produce… the sandwich is a good example, [they produce] the classic Sheffield sandwich that has got like sliced boiled egg in it and salad cream.

Laughing

Nicole: Yes, when did a boiled egg become a piece of salad? Definitely a Sheffield thing!

Gareth: Yes, exactly, that is a definitive product. And then Greggs came along84_.

Through comparison of Sheffield to neighbouring cities and the foregrounding of a product unique to Sheffield, Nicole, Tim and Gareth bring to the fore the culturally and relationally situated, and temporally uneven, nature of the neoliberal-capitalist

economy. Delving beyond this surface image, they reveal the flows that connect and

84 _{While I have focused here on the issue of combined and territorial development, the discussion also reveals a} desire to promote and develop an economy focused on artisanal, organic and high-quality production and a concomitant negative depiction of some elements of working class culture.

disrupt the uniqueness of place, from the more subtle common use of certain forms of commodity exchange, to the more obvious spread of the chain store. Here we see glimpses of neoliberal-capitalism as discourse (explored further in below) that

deepens, not through the simple transference of a hegemonic ideological project from one location to another, but through the implementation of context specific ‘socio- political institutional mechanisms’ that simultaneously destroy and create (Peck et al., 2009: 58). In the case above, the spread of the chain stores illustrates a ‘retreat from community-oriented planning’ and the erosion of home-grown solutions in favour of projects designed to attract corporate investment and implement a generic approach to urban development (ibid.: 63)85_{. Such processes of destruction and creation are}

supported by the everyday reproduction of neoliberalising modes of exchange and socio-capital relations, through which they become accepted as inevitable and ‘common sense’ (Springer, 2012).

A similar argument can be made in relation to the marketisation of Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) discussed in chapter 1. We see here the crisis and austerity driven development of market-mediated and capital-centric modes of organising, implemented in and through certain neoliberalising policy frameworks. Lisa’s narrative of working in charitable organisations highlights how changes in policy and investment programmes (see section 1.1) push organisations to ‘adapt or die’ (McMillan, 2015).

The 2012 Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (Laspo) took away legal aid for all immigration cases, including those relying on Article 8

.

85 _{This can be seen clearly in the recent development of ‘The Moore’ in Sheffield (see appendix 21). The}

development (and particularly the relocation of Castle Market to The Moore), and its impact on the cost of market stall hire, particularly on independent businesses, was discussed by Regather members during the research. 86 _{Taylor (2004: 44) similarly highlights the impact of policy, not only on the organisations, but on the lives of} workers and their ‘work trajectory’.

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Contextualised in the destruction of ‘a mixed [and collaborative] provision of welfare’ and the creation of models based on competition and ‘responsibilised autonomy’ (Hustinx et al., 2015, 115-6; Dees, 2007) the Law Centre was exhorted to find 'market- based solutions to social problems' (Eikenberry, 2009: 585), adopt ‘mainstream business practices’ (Cameron, 2010: 1), and engage with the market on its own

neoliberal terms (Arvidson et al., 2013; Dayson, 2012; Arthur et al., 2010). My purpose in drawing attention to this process of “hybridisation” (problematised in appendix 1) is to highlight not only the extension of neoliberal logics and attributes to the non- capitalist economy, but also the adaptability and mutability of capitalism itself (Thrift, 2005).

Focusing his attention on the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, Farrell (2015: 256) reveals this adaptability in the form of ‘conscience capitalisms’. These re-formations seek to bring conscience to capitalism or capitalism to conscience through four interconnected processes: the alignment of profit-seeking and social/environmental goals; the foregrounding of business-society interdependencies, and the concomitant re-framing of poverty/environment as a ‘lucrative but as yet untapped market’ (Farrell, 2015: 262), and the market as an effective moral mechanism for the alleviation of poverty and environmental degradation (Peters, 2016; Shamir, 2008). We see in this example evidence of Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005; 2007; see also Du Gay and Morgan, 2013) claim that the robustness of the capitalist system is attributable, in part, to its ability to respond to and displace social and environmental criticisms. This ability is captured in the ‘spirit of capitalism’ that emerges from, and evolves in response to, the ‘interaction between capitalism on the one side and criticism of capitalism on the other’ (Chipello, 2014:62) so as to ‘justify people’s commitment to capitalism [and render] this commitment attractive’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005: 162). Du Gay and Morgan (2013: 20) add that ‘in this way, even the most radical of critiques can be put to the service of capitalism, while modifications of capitalism can be traced back to the travail of its critique’. The Public Service (Social Value) Act, Social Impact Bonds, the Big Society and new opportunities to develop public sector mutual can, like conscious capitalism, be understood as a product of this capitalism-criticism interaction, and therefore as a means to prove capitalism’s continued worth and

legitimacy. Throughout these re-formations markets maintain and (re)justify their status as the linchpin of freedom, individual agency, and social and economic progress (Pickerill and Chatterton, 2006). Thus, the ‘teleology of capital accumulation’ persists: the complex reality of crisis is reduced to an expression of the contradictions inherent in, or as necessary to, the maintenance of accumulation processes87_{; and growth}

remains the ‘preordained trajectory’ with competition and exploitation at its essence (Graham, 1990: 56).

It has been argued in this section that shifting our focus from neoliberalism as a 'coherent ideological project' (Barnett, 2005: 4) to actually existing neoliberal- capitalisms reveals that neither neoliberalism nor capitalism can be understood as identifiable or knowable wholes. Releasing us from the hold of a prexisting economy we are met with an alternative form of dominance: namely the performative

(neoliberalising) processes that seek to support a given ideological position by bringing certain realities into being and creating the conditions for their maintenance. These processes see what Ong (2007) refers to as small ‘n’88 _{and big ‘N’}89 _{neoliberalism}

engaged in a ‘circular discourse’ (see figure 3.1): ‘a process of becoming through which one simultaneously obtains the constitution of a subject(ivity) and undergoes

subjection’ (Springer, 2012: 139). From this perspective, neoliberal ideology is not a determining force, but a no less powerful constraining and constituting force (ibid.).

87 _{A similar argument can be made in relation to shifts from bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic management. While} framed as a project of worker empowerment, and the enhancement of flexibility and creativity, when situated in a search for ongoing accumulation, this shift is more accurately viewed as a means to co-opt workers’ ‘hearts and minds for the purpose of profit’ (Williams, 2007a: 166; see also Thrift, 2005).

88 _{A ‘technology of governing ‘free subjects’ that co-exists with other political rationalities’ (Ong, 2007: 4)} 89 _{A modality that collapses multiple socio-political values into a single measure or structure’ (Ong, 2007: 4) and} frames neoliberalism as a ‘fixed set of attributes’ (Ong, 2007: 3).

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Figure 3.1: Neoliberalism as discourse: a circuitous understanding of neoliberalism (Springer, 2012: 136).

Complicating Springer’s image this circuitous discourse does not, as we have seen above, result in the reproduction of a single form of neoliberal-capitalism. In response to crises, criticism and a desire for expansion we see neoliberal-capitalism reproducing its dominance, and maintaining the commitment of workers essential to ongoing accumulation, by morphing, mutating and infecting non-capitalist spaces, and in the process subtly changing its form (Jessop, 2010; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). From this perspective the economy (Butler, 2010: 1; see also Callon, 2006):

[…] becomes singular and monolithic by virtue of the convergence [and re-convergence] of certain kinds of processes and practices that produce the 'effect' of [a temporally] unified economy.

This performative understanding has three affects. On the one hand it serves to foreground the adaptability and robustness of capitalism, and reinforce

capitalocentrism by positioning crisis and critique within, and in the service of,

the sub-section 3.2.1, this theoretical stance maintains a constant state of imbalance that prevents capitalism’s domination and can be used to challenge its perceived inevitability (ibid.).

3.1.2: Becoming homo economicus

Re-framing neoliberalism as a performative and circuitous process rather than an end state (Peck and Tickle, 2002) brought to the fore a 'double truth doctrine' (Mirowski, 2009: 426) that can be understood to underlie and maintain the neoliberal-capitalist project (Aalbers, 2013a). On one side, we see the elevation of spontaneous over rationally constructed orders and expertise, and concomitant 'tales of "rolling back the nanny state" and being "free to choose" (Mirowski, 2009: 444). On the other we see a recognised need to construct the conditions of neoliberal existence through the redefinition, rather than destruction of the state; the constraint of democracy to a 'source of popular legitimacy'90 _{(Mirowski, 2009: 436); and the restriction of freedom}

to the realm of the consumer and self-governing individual, "free" to express

themselves through the market (see also Parker et al., 2014a; Aalber, 2013a; 2013b). Thus, as Peck (2004: 395) explains:

While neoliberal rhetoric derives some of its power from the image of the absentee state - and its idealized companion, the liberated, independent and competitive subject - the practical content of neoliberal reform strategies is often quite 'interventionist'.

From this perspective, the notion of the market as an 'invisible hand' and natural independent force is not a reality but a way of thinking that shapes narratives and action, and provides the necessary conditions for competition, individualism and the profit motive (Parker et al., 2014a).

In highlighting the necessity of certain ways of thinking we recognise, as Peck does in the quote above, that neoliberal-capitalism is (re)produced, not only through state

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intervention, modes of production and forms of social-economic relations, but also in an individual’s subjectivity. Emphasising this point Parker et al. (2014a: 9; emphasis added) state:

Capitalism requires and produces certain types of human beings: 'free' autonomous agents maximising their own utility through both work and consumption […]. Indeed the two figures of the freely choosing consumer and the self-investing flexible worker are central motifs of modern

capitalism.

In this quote, Parker et al. emphasise that the ‘performation of self-interested agency’ (Callon, 2006: 46), understood as characteristic of neoliberal-capitalist subjectivities, is itself produced through the modes of production and forms of relations referred to above. As Callon (2006) illustrates through the example of Norwegian fishermen and the development of fishing quotas91_{, neoliberal-capitalism’s ‘idealized companion’ is}

enabled by the ‘disentaglement’ and ‘re-entanglement’ of agents and objective things, in and through (state supported) processes of commodification and labour abstraction. Thus, it is in the production of 'homo economicus', together with the interconnected development and re-development of ‘the spirit of capitalism’, that the neoliberal belief in the invisible hand of the free market and capitalist production as the only route to human flourishing become embodied (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007; Peters, 2016). This embodiment sees the 'self becom[ing] an enterprise' taking 'investment

decisions', engaging in self-promotion and branding and 'managing employment prospects' (Parker et al., 2014a: 9; see also Williams, 2007a; Bloom, 2013), not based on values or social interest, but on market-based principles of cost (risk)-benefit (returns) analysis (Peters, 2016; Jessop, 2002; Restakis, 2010). In his narrative (shared in FG1) Dave captures the competitive consequences of this capitalist subjectification. Reflecting on his experience of working for a large corporate company he describes his desire to escape:

91 _{Callon illustrates in this example how the quantification and commodification of the fishing stock transformed} fishermen’s’ relationship with fish, fishing and the environment.

[…] all the back biting and all the people wanting to climb over people wanting to get on. It was just horrible. And it is getting worse and worse because things like pay rises, they are only giving to the top 10% these days; just singling people out. It doesn't feel right to me. You can work your arse off and feel that you have got very little reward.

This ‘economic individualism that promotes the right to want and get more and that sees this unchecked desire as a crucial motivating force behind [economic growth]’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006b: 90) is produced and reproduced in education, family, work and housing: everyday activities contextualised in a 'welfare system that preaches freedom, responsibility and self-provisioning' (Lowe and Meers, 2015: 55), and pits (deserving) strivers against (underserving) skivers (Kelly, 2015). Reflecting on their employment journeys participants captured a sense of this (re)production:

I got into working in financial services as had no idea what I wanted to do when I left school and ‘an office job’ was the straightforward choice – my dad had an office job and Norwich Union was recruiting a lot of school leavers. And then it became a career with a bit of hard work and taking the opportunities that cropped up. (Dave, Beanies, narrative)

I did an art foundation course, and in between doing various rubbish jobs,