Neoliberalism from Below

Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies

Verónica Gago, Liz Mason-Deese, Liz Mason-Deese

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780822372738
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Volkswirtschaft

In Neoliberalism from Below —first published in Argentina in 2014—Verónica Gago examines how Latin American neoliberalism is propelled not just from above by international finance, corporations, and government, but also by the activities of migrant workers, vendors, sweatshop workers, and other marginalized groups. Using the massive illegal market La Salada in Buenos Aires as a point of departure, Gago shows how alternative economic practices, such as the sale of counterfeit goods produced in illegal textile factories, resist neoliberalism while simultaneously succumbing to its models of exploitative labor and production. Gago demonstrates how La Salada's economic dynamics mirrorthose found throughout urban Latin America. In so doing, she provides a new theory of neoliberalism and a nuanced view of the tense mix of calculation and freedom, obedience and resistance, individualism and community, and legality and illegality that fuels the increasingly powerful popular economies of the global South's large cities.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. ​Neoliberalism from Below: A Perspective from Latin America
• 1. Between the Proletarian Microeconomy and the Transnational Network: La Salada
• 2. Between La Salada and the Workshop: Communitarian Wealth in Dispute
• 3. Between Servitude and the New Popular Entrepreneurship: The Clandestine Textile Workshop
• 4. Between the Workshop and the Villa: A Discussion about Neoliberalism
• 5. Between Postnational Citizenship and the Ghetto: The Motley City
• 6. Between Populism and the Politics of the Governed: Governmentality and Autonomy
• Conclusion. ​Neoliberal Reason
• Notes
• References
• Index