‘Neoliberalism:’ Throw it around or throw it away?

Abstract

Juliana M Zanotto In his comment to my paper (Zanotto, 2019b), Edwin Buitelaar raises a valid concern regarding the overuse of the term ‘neoliberalism,’ suggesting that it has been thrown around without much explanation. Because it has been employed abstractly, it has lost its analytical value (so, maybe we should throw it away!). His comment also indicates a concern with the term being generally given a negative connotation. He and I seem to agree that the second concern is not a problem per se. As for the first concern, like Buitelaar, I am – and I hope all scholars are – concerned with the use of abstract terms to mean anything. Thus, like him, I would also like to see more ‘explaining’ done. This is exactly why I conduct research they way I do and why I wrote the paper he commented on. So, while I fully agree with a call for more ‘explaining’ rather than abstraction, I must disagree that my paper is an example of the latter. In this short reply to Buitelaar’s comment, I raise three important points to clarify how the term neoliberalism was treated in the paper. Rather than using neoliberalism abstractly to mean a lot of things, the paper provides a deeper understand of how a set of principles often related to the notion of neoliberalism operate in practice in a specific context. To do that, the paper provides an account of neoliberalism in action and details its meaning in the context of Brazilian planning in general, and the production of suburban gated communities, in particular. First, it is important to point out that the purpose of the research from which this paper resulted sought to understand how a particular kind of space (i.e. suburban gated communities), which in planning literature is associated with regressive outcomes, has proliferated in Brazil. As the larger research and the papers published from it (Zanotto, 2019a, 2019b) make clear, the answer does not lie solely on market forces, consumer preference, and the work of private developers. Instead, the proliferation of suburban gated communities in Brazil results from a combination of local and global forces, including specific policies and practices. Planners in both private and public sectors have supported these policies. In justifying and legitimizing potentially controversial policies that advance segregation and the privatization of public spaces, planners and other actors reproduce a dominant discourse. The deconstruction of this discourse, which is the focus of the paper, reveals an ideological basis I identified as neoliberal. Buitelaar suggests that for something to be associated with neoliberalism it must involve the absence of government. This is, in my view, a narrow understanding