Contesting variegated neoliberalisation in Amsterdam
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Keywords: variegated neoliberalisation, diverse economies, democratisation
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract
Authors:
Charlotte Cator,
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Abstract
The realisation of post-neoliberal initiatives promoting just and sustainable urban futures hinges on local specificities and their relation to ongoing uneven and combined developments of “variegated neoliberalisation”. Currently in Amsterdam, various projects with post-neoliberal aspirations take place. These projects introduce new economic practices through different uses of land or urban space. They explicitly aim to go beyond pure romanticisations of radical local action, and include reflections on the vertical relations with communities and the state. Specifically, there is a coalition of Amsterdam’s citizens, who, inspired by ‘Doughnut Economics’, work with, in and beyond the local state to drive alternative economic projects and promote democratic participation. By forging new relations between the local state and citizens through so-called ‘public-civil partnerships’, the coalition pushes back against processes of neoliberalisation.
In this paper, I aim to understand how such contestatory processes play into the complex landscape of variegated neoliberalisation. To do this, I analyse the projects in Amsterdam through a lens of diverse economies to see how they may promote new kinds of economic subjects and relations. I look into how these processes unfold across scales and against the background of ongoing and variable processes of neoliberalisation. Through this reading of the case of Amsterdam, I shed light on how the literatures on diverse economies and variegated neoliberalisation might be fruitfully brought together to understand the mechanisms through which social change takes place, and post-neoliberal intentsions of citizens and (parts of) the local state may come true.
Contesting variegated neoliberalisation in Amsterdam
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Paper Abstract