Neoliberalism and neoliberals: What are we talking about?

Abstract

The terms neoliberalism and neoliberal play a variety of roles ranging from major to trivial in the papers they appear in. Both phrases carry pejorative connotations in nurse writing. Yet irrespective of the role assumed in argument, readers are rarely provided with enough information to determine what the descriptors mean in a substantive or concrete sense. It is proposed that scholars who use these terms in their work should consider expressing themselves more carefully than often occurs at present. Virtue signalling in academic writing should, absent critical argument, be discouraged.

Can nursing educators learn to trust the world’s most trusted profession?

“…Being cognisant of Lipscombe's (2020) wise caution that ‘neoliberalism’ should not be used as a kind of ‘boo, hiss’ cliché, we draw upon McGregor's definition that ‘Neoliberalism is comprised of three principles: individualism, free market via privatization and deregulation, and decentralization’ (McGregor, 2001, p. 82). Such a definition is however sparse and does not adequately convey the ‘nature of the beast’ of neoliberalism or the extent to which it reformats every aspect of our world, compared with the forensic detail provided by (Smyth, 2017) in his discussion of the impact of neoliberalism on universities.…”

Methodology, Fake Learning, and Emotional Performativity

“…The flip side of this undiluted adulation is where some ideas and concepts are roundly condemned as beyond the pale. Examples of concepts regularly subject to condemnation include “managerialism” and “positivism.” Similarly, the word “neoliberalism” is now used by academic writers as a term of abuse too (Lipscomb, 2019) having had its true meaning largely hollowed out in much the same way as “fascism” became little more than a swear word in the 1940s, as Orwell (1944) observed.…”

Love and resistance: Re‐inventing radical nurses in everyday struggles

“…Right now, various nursing scholars concerned with critique of neoliberalism, including myself, have been accused of bandying around the terminology without paying sufficient attention to definition (Lipscomb, ). Whilst acknowledging a scholarly need for precision in language and conceptualisation within papers written for an academic audience, I do not think such exactitude ought to apply to activist discourse, which clearly has a different purpose of motivating and sustaining resistance to perceived oppressions.…”