The Violence of Neoliberalism: Crime, Harm and Inequality 2019012309, 9781138584761, 9781138584778, 9780429505768

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THE VIOLENCE OF NEOLIBERALISM

This book examines the impact of neoliberalism on society, bringing to the forefront a discussion of violence and harm, the inherent inequalities of neoliberalism and the ways in which our everyday lives in the Global North reproduce and facilitate this violence and harm. Drawing on a range of contemporary topics, such as state violence, the carceral state, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, death, sports and entertainment, this book unmasks the banal forms of violence and harm that are a routine part of life that usurp, commodify and consume to reify the existing status quo of harm and inequality. It aims to defamiliarize routine forms of violence and inequality, thereby highlighting our own participation in its perpetuation, through consumerism and the consumption of neoliberal dogma. It is essential reading for students across criminology, sociology and political philosophy, particularly those engaged with crimes of the powerful, state crime and social harm. Victoria E. Collins is an Associate Professor at the School of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University, USA. Victoria is the author or co-author of three books. Some of Victoria’s recent publications have appeared in journals such as Crime, Media, Culture, Social Justice, Critical Criminology, Contemporary Justice Review and Critical Sociology. Dawn L. Rothe is Director and Professor at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida Atlantic University, USA. She is the author or co-author of ten books and over 100 articles and book chapters. Her overall focus remains on issues of power, inequality and the harms and violence of the powerful.

THE VIOLENCE OF NEOLIBERALISM Crime, Harm and Inequality

Victoria E. Collins and Dawn L. Rothe

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Victoria E. Collins and Dawn L. Rothe The right of Victoria E. Collins and Dawn L. Rothe to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Collins, Victoria E., author. | Rothe, Dawn Lynnette, author. Title: The violence of neoliberalism: crime, harm and inequality / Victoria E. Collins and Dawn L. Rothe. Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019012309 | ISBN 9781138584761 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138584778 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780429505768 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Neoliberalism–Political aspects. | Violence–Political aspects. | Equality. Classification: LCC HB95 .C645 2019 | DDC 303.6–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019012309 ISBN: 978-1-138-58476-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-58477-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-50576-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

Foreword vii   1 An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism: Crime, harm and inequality

1

  2 Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market

11

  3 Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

25

  4 The commoditized spectacle: Sports, violence and entertainment40   5 The cycle of oppression and inequality

57

  6 Neoliberalism as a tool and toolmaker in defining the value of the dead

73

  7 Neoliberalism, the carceral state and violence

84

  8 Neoliberalism and the selling of patriarchy

98

  9 The environmental death march: Destruction, greed, profit and consumption

110

vi Contents

10 The silent role of non-profit organizations in the neoliberalism trap

124

11 The commodification and illusion of resistance

138

12 Concluding thoughts

150

Index155

FOREWORD

Every day: a brief rant on cynical instrumentalism, nihilistic hedonia and some interstices. Every day on the streets of Toronto, someone, usually multiple ‘someones’, nearly kill me. To the best of my knowledge, these ‘someones’ are not homicidal maniacs or professional assassins, stalking me out of an uncontrollable desire for pleasure or a perverse want of money. Nor, for that matter, are they callous corporate executives or politicians who think that their bottom line or approval rating (perhaps one and the same) are more important than my life. No, statistically speaking, they are probably not any of those things. They are motorists. And every day that I walk, or ride my bicycle or motorcycle, on the streets of the city one or more of them does something that endangers my life. Every. Day. Even though they have not managed to kill me (though they came pretty bloody close on at least a couple of occasions) they do me all manner of emotional and spiritual damage. I arrive at work, or the grocery store, or the shop, or if I am lucky, the bar, far worse off than I was when I left my house—in the case of the latter, it could be argued that if I did not need a drink before I left the house I certainly did upon my arrival. I am frazzled, angry, drained and often quite contemptuous of my fellow human beings. This is what Toronto’s drivers do to me. And that is to say nothing of what their driving habits are doing to all the other road users (themselves included), the environment, domestic companion animals and urban wildlife. Why is the near-homicidal driving etiquette in my city (and likely yours, or ones near you, as well) so rampant? And, perhaps more importantly, why does it warrant mention in the preface to a book about neoliberalism. The answer is that the brutal practices and ethos of driving in a city like Toronto is a poignant metaphor for life under neoliberalism.

viii Foreword

Toronto is a city with approximately six million road users, but with an infrastructure that can at best accommodate a million and a half. For example, consider the MacDonald-Cartier Freeway, better known as Highway 401. It was built in the 1950s and is just one of several highways that crisscross the region. It is the busiest highway on the continent, with the 40 kilometer stretch through Toronto carrying almost half-a-million vehicles daily. It simply cannot handle the volume of traffic. So, too, decades of short-sighted political leadership pandering to greedy corporate interests and whining people, who see themselves as taxpayers and consumers rather than citizens, has led to, among other things, a vastly oversubscribed, underfunded and (no surprise here) expensive public transit system. Between automobile gridlock, crowded and frequently interrupted public transit services, it is not surprising that commuting in Toronto has become a nightmarish ordeal. The average daily round-trip commute times have risen consistently over the decades and now are well over an hour in the city. Indeed, risk has been socialized when it comes to Toronto’s traffic. And rather than demanding immediate redress—demanding that our leaders do better, by, for example, adequately funding infrastructure improvements—we seek individual solace in the marketplace. We buy even bigger, more powerful, allegedly better, automobiles. Sleek cars and the ubiquitous trucks that have been successfully marketed to us for more than a generation as sport utility vehicles, equipped with the latest technology: self-correcting steering (lest we need to steer ourselves), rear-facing cameras and side proximity alarms (lest we need to turn our heads and look) and links to our home’s AI (lest we need to actually sit in the vehicle to start it). According to the Canadian Wellness Index, commuting is one of our least favorite activities, and commuting alone in a car is the worst-case scenario, contributing to feelings of alienation, isolation and powerlessness. Under such conditions, is it any wonder that drivers are seemingly so desperate, angry, aggressive and uncaring? When coupled with poor skills, lack of knowledge of the rules of the road and the competitive individualism that fuels a sort of four-wheeled fetishistic disavowal it is perhaps surprising that there is not more traffic carnage on our streets. Wait. No, check that. Driving in Toronto is not a metaphor for neoliberalism, it is a microcosm of it! It is a small snapshot of the banality and viciousness that has accompanied the colonization of social life by the economic logic of late capitalism. Right, … here’s a metaphor: like the inattentive, unskilled narcissists driving their privately owned passenger vehicles on Toronto’s roads, who feed my sense of hopelessness and growing contempt for humanity, neoliberalism has turned us all into monsters. Neoliberalism has not only undermined the economy but is also disorienting and unhinging people. As Steve Hall and Simon Winlow (see particularly, 2004) adroitly address in their works on pseudo-pacification, the sublimation of destructive physical violence into functionally aggressive competitive individualism has produced a new form of barbarism. In little more than a few decades,

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we have devolved. We are atavists, without the telltale indentation in the area of the median optical fossa. We are clearly ill-suited to the demands of modern life. Neoliberalism is in the process of turning us all into degenerates. Despite considerable evidence of an epidemic of pathological narcissism, the truth is that we hate ourselves. We hate ourselves and we hate each other. Neoliberalism’s mass sensibility was forged in a fantasy world of venture capitalism, hyper-wealth and unlimited personal and natural resources. Of course, barbarism is a fait accompli. People are detached from reality, frustrated, anxious and lack any true sense of community or solidarity. In lieu of any real spiritual, emotional and political connections to other people, we seek out other forms of social meaning and belonging. Most of these hinge on a rank, dog-eat-dog individualism and a fortress mentality, and are at best disruptive, if not outright destructive. Certainly pathological and often inherently contradictory, the malaise of neoliberalism is a population characterized by total cynicism, no opinions (except as they relate to the incontrovertibly mundane), no hope, a sense of entitlement, hopelessness, unrealistic expectations, giddiness, melancholia, overconfidence and insecurity. As new forms of social division emerge and instrumentality dominates our lives the deplorable codes of conduct that once (and for a very long time) were primarily evidenced by the criminal elite transnational classes have come to inform the attitudes and behaviors of all of us. Perhaps foremost among them is the belief that you are not only permitted, but in fact, expected to do whatever it takes to achieve what you want, be it capital accumulation, prestige or even f leeting visceral satisfaction, regardless of the harm it may do to other people, animals, the natural environment or the social fabric. To be certain, dear scholarly reader, the repulsive replacement fantasies that have emerged from this ethos are not restricted to the ‘real world’ of dangerous driving habits, white nationalists, global organized crime syndicates, consumerist neo-tribes, Islamic fundamentalism, yet another public-private-partnership (P3) and so-called entertainments districts, which are nightly coated with broken bottles, vomit and blood. No indeed. They have infected the ‘ivory tower’, our supposedly sacred scholarly and political spaces at the university, and not simply in the form of the upper administration pandering to corporate interests, alumni associations and students who expect to be treated as customers in some upscale boutique—though they certainly set the tone. It is evident in academia’s middle managers (i.e. the deans and department heads, who are sometimes referred to euphemistically as academic leaders), our colleagues and our students. It is true that some of neoliberalism’s most egregious traits are, and have been for decades, core to the daily life of our institutions. Among them we can count the swelling enrollment and tremendous growth of universities’ business schools since the 1980s, the open cooperation between some of the applied sciences (particularly, but not exclusively, engineering programs) and the military-industrial complex, or, more generally, the credentialism that has resulted in universities’ mutation into proto-industry training camps. However, the malignancy of neoliberalism

x Foreword

has spread well beyond these established lairs to infect our own disciplines, the supposed bastions of critical thought in the social sciences. Contrary to the official chatter of rigorous inquiry, problem-solving skills and the marketplace (pun intended) of ideas in the service of radical social transformation, a tightly controlled yet tremendously unstable culture of political-academic liquid modernity exists. A simulacrum of critical sociology and social justice thrives under the aegis of self-proclaimed progressives pushing the authoritarianism of a liberal left populism. Fiefdoms of ‘diversity’ and ‘equity’ have been established by those who, in more honest times, would have been called out and put down as faux revolutionaries and Gucci socialists. Virtue signaling and gesture politics in sociology departments are the new strategies and techniques that serve neoliberalism’s will to power in the university. The hypercontrol and hyperconsumption that characterize life under neoliberalism are no less true in the ivory tower than in the real world—only its forms are different. An unhealthy obsession with approved and fugitive language, topics and groups, dangerous identity politics and minutiae and a culture of offense inside the academy, do the same vital regulatory work of neoliberalism as militarized police forces, online shopping and professional sports do outside of it. Sadly, rather than preparing our students, the best and brightest of whom will presumably take up roles as managers, civil servants and other members of the political classes (a few may even join us in the ranks of the professoriate), to challenge and confront the pathologies of neoliberalism, we try to insulate and protect them from the ravages of neoliberal savagery. Somehow we have deluded ourselves into thinking that resume workshops, service-learning projects and the importance of e-mail signatures specifying a preferred gender pronoun will serve as a balm against their future of precarious work, crippling debt, political impotence and emotional emptiness. As we come to the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it appears as though we have truly refined the business of killing ourselves—both literally and figuratively. Our bodies, minds and souls are daily poisoned by the carcinogens of neoliberalism. We buy stuff that we do not need with money that we do not (and possibly will not ever) have, until we throw it away (further polluting our water, air and soil and irrevocably harming the wildlife and the disproportionate number of poor and racialized people who live near these contaminated sites, both here and elsewhere throughout the world) and buy some new stuff. And then repeat. Do not pause, as it may result in self-ref lection, … just repeat. We resent those around us—seeing them as the competition—not our brothers and sisters. We despise those below us—characterizing them as undeserving of help or even sympathy (unless of course, it serves some important self-aggrandizing end, such as highlighting our own virtue, empathy and commitment to social justice). We also hate those above us, rhetorically framing them (not necessarily incorrectly) as Machiavellian plutocrats, but it does not stop us from secretly wanting and sometimes, a little less secretly, getting a little piece of what

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xi

they have in the form of a luxury vehicle, an all-inclusive tropical holiday (in a former colony), a spa day, tooth whitening or anus bleaching. And every day it gets worse. It becomes more toxic and more dangerous. And every day we wonder why. We continue to hope against hope that the quality of our lives will get better. We think that the free market, or the alt-this or the neo-that, or the anti-the-other-thing will save us. Every. Day. And every day we are surprised that they do not. Instead, our lives continue to ferment into a noxious brew of desperation, pettiness, unrealized aspirations and wasted promise. And every day we think that perhaps a tonic can be found in something other than complete destruction of neoliberalism. Every. Day. Stephen L. Muzzatti Toronto February 19, 2019

Reference Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (2004) ‘Barbarians at the gate’: Crime and violence in the breakdown of the pseudo-pacification process. In Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., Morrison, W., and Presdee, M. (Eds), Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 275–286). London: GlassHouse Press.

1 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE VIOLENCE OF NEOLIBERALISM Crime, harm and inequality

It seems prudent to us to begin this chapter with a brief discussion of neoliberalism while not ignoring the fact that it is embedded within the capitalistic state. In other words, one should be cognizant that neoliberalism is still capitalism, which has always fostered inequality, harms and violence. Often the term neoliberalism, while widely used, is ambiguous or unclear in its usage or it is defined most stringently as an economic theory or economic policy. Another widely utilized definition is that neoliberalism is a policy model “that transfers control of economic factors to the private sector from the public sector” (Kenton, 2018). Or it is believed to be nothing more than laissez-faire economic liberalism and the value of free market competition. David Harvey (2016) suggests that neoliberalism is a political project carried out by the corporate capitalist class as they felt intensely threatened both politically and economically towards the end of the 1960s into the 1970s. It was an ideological assault but also an economic assault … [and] the corporate capitalist class put it into motion bit by bit. While we agree that neoliberalism is a political ideology, we do not think it can be attributed solely to the corporate class. Indeed, the process of ‘neoliberalization’ includes the deepening “penetration of capitalism into political and social institutions as well as cultural consciousness itself ” (Thompson, 2005, p. 23). Neoliberalism is the “elevation of capitalism, into an ethic, a set of political imperatives, and a cultural logic” (Thompson, 2005, p. 23). Here we draw heavily from Kotsko’s conceptualization of neoliberalism, where it can be thought of as taking the form of theology. It serves to let us know about our world and how it should be, and we, the believers, accept this as true, obvious and without question. As brilliantly put forth by Kotsko in

2  An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism

his 2018 volume titled Neoliberalism’s Demons, “neoliberal ideology [is] a form of theology—it is a discourse that aims to reshape the world” (p. 7). He states that neoliberalism’s “attempt at self-legitimation” is done through the concept of freedom—defined in “deeply individualistic terms that render market competition the highest actualization of human liberty” (p. 10). In this sense, it seems to us to be fruitful to think of neoliberalism as a theology that legitimates itself with the promise of economic freedom. Neoliberalism is politics and economy, it is an ideology, or ‘theology’, that shapes and reshapes our world, including the most banal everyday aspects one can think of. We agree with Kotsko, it is more than merely capitalism or a capitalistic state. Neoliberalism is an impelling force that engulfs all of society, repackaging its subjects to its action through commodification including its harms, violence and inequalities: thus legitimating itself at the same time. Simply, the violence and harms of neoliberalism are reproduced and legitimated through the relationships of everyday life, consumption and commodification. To wit, the system continues in the production and reproduction of itself, its systemic violence and crimes. “Neoliberalism is, in sum, a totalizing world order, an integral self-reinforcing system of political theology” (Kotsko, 2018, p. 95). As such, neoliberalism includes the corrosive consumer culture that we participate in—where people bowed and prayed to the neon gods (neoliberalism and consumption) they made. Before laying out our guiding theme and structure of this book, we first turn our attention to the issues of crime, criminological scholarship and the relational approach of this book.

Crime versus harm? It can be safely asserted that the term crime has had quite diverse meanings throughout the long history of its use, although some understandings of crime have been dominant and others more marginal. Certainly, there is a long and enduring history of invoking the term ‘crime’ without any attempt to define it. For many people the meaning of the term crime is taken to be obvious, so much so that there is no need to define it. Following this assertion then, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart’s celebrated observation about pornography (and obscenity)—“I know it when I see it”—also applies to crime (Slade, 2000, p. 4). It also seems reasonable to claim that the term crime is most widely equated with conventional criminal offenses, or violations of the criminal law that are exemplified by the FBI’s ‘index’ crimes: murder; rape; assault; robbery; burglary; auto theft; larceny; and arson. This is surely the type of crime of most concern to the American public, along with drug-related offenses and recent concerns about terrorism, and these offenses account for most of the “mass imprisonment” of the recent era (Abramsky, 2007). The largest proportion of criminological scholarship through the present period encompasses one or more of these types of crime. But it is also indisputably true that there is a long tradition critical of the limitations of a conventional conception of crime. Accordingly, the claim is made that much of the focus of mainstream criminologists is seriously

An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism  3

skewed. A recent anthology—Mary Bosworth and Carolyn Hoyle’s (2011) What is Criminology?—recognizes that there are vastly different conceptions of what criminology is and ought to be, and consequently how crime is best defined. There is a long-standing tradition of critiquing conventional conceptions of crime that have been advanced by self-described radical or critical criminologists. Examples include, but are not limited to, the widely cited “humanistic” definition of crime put forth by Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1970). Stuart Henry and Mark Lanier (2001), in an in-depth consideration of the definition of crime, have advanced a “prism of crime” definition. In addition, the last decade has seen an increasing movement toward the study of social harm as a means of deepening or ‘going beyond’ more traditional understandings of crime. Others have expanded on this definitional approach to argue for a needs-based approach. They suggest this should be done independently of formal social controls (the legal system), and should include harms such as lack of access to food, shelter and clothing, and the denial of the right to realize full human potential—thus challenging traditional conceptualizations of crime. Other notable challenges to the definition of crime, include Hillyard, Pantazis, Tombs and Gordon’s (2004) book, Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, which argued for an alternative lens on crime and deviance that abandons criminology in favor of ‘zemiology’— defined as the study of social harm. However, despite the continued focus of some critical criminologists on broadening the definition of crime, there remains significant neglect within the field more broadly on the topic of social harm. Specifically, there are numerous structural harms that have fallen outside the scope of the field of criminology, such as poverty, contagious diseases, malnutrition, famine and more that should be reincorporated. Pemberton (2007) argues that this results from the limitation of the field to “intentional harm” rather than the broader and more inclusive notion of “preventable harm” (p. 29). In 2015, Pemberton advocated using a language of social harm as the systemic compromising of human f lourishing. It is this that we have adopted here in our effort to move beyond ‘intentional’ harms and include the violence and harms, and their reproductions in our everyday life, and the mundane banality of consumption and neoliberalism. To us, using a social harm frame is potent and transformative, as “some of the most significant problems facing contemporary society not only lie beyond the present scope of legal prohibition but are thoroughly normalized and integral to the functioning of liberal capitalist political economy” (Raymen, 2018, p. 1) including “the corrosive consumer culture that generates significant harm”, crime and violence. After all, the worst of harms are entrenched in our broader sociopolitical and economic systems that structure society. They allow criminologists to move beyond harms, violence and crimes of actual physical violence to include symbolic violence, embodied violence and more banal forms. We believe the social ills of today’s society, and how they are a normalization of and produced through neoliberalism, are indeed social harm and crimes. As such, for us, these terms are interchangeable. In addition, using crime to frame harm and

4  An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism

violence has the symbolic effect of calling them what they are—how we suggest they should be seen, interpreted and discussed—as this removes the political sanitization of the harms and violence. In this sense, we do not want to limit ourselves to only the most “visible and obvious forms of social harm” or dismiss “genuine harmful processes and practices as merely mildly injurious, or only discuss them as ethical dilemmas or ‘social harm’ when the harmful processes generate sufficiently extreme and problematic outcomes” (Raymen, 2018, p. 2).

Our guiding theme and structure of the book Our goal with this volume is to unmask the banal forms of violence and harm that are a routine part of life that usurp, commodify and consume, to reify the existing status quo of harm and inequality. Much of what we draw on may seem ‘obviously so’, though we believe a reminder of what is going on within our everyday choices (though we think we have choices) is necessary given our ‘busyness’. We are hopeful, however, that some readers may see this volume with a shock of recognition of the hidden obviousness of it all. Likewise, we do not want readers to see our efforts here as yet another example of someone throwing the ‘culture of blameworthiness torch’ that already penetrates our hyper-individualized lives under neoliberalism. Nor are we laying out some sort of ‘moral entrapment’ where everything is and continues because of our choices. That would be naïve at best. Rather we, as citizens, perpetuate the inequalities and violence of the system through consumerism and the willing consumption of hegemonic ideology or neoliberal theology as we have no alternative—it is our prison and our forced participation. In this sense, we are active agents in reproducing the hegemonic ideology and system where the violence becomes the abnormal ‘celebrated normality’. The consistent theoretical frames guiding each chapter are grounded in, but not limited to, Gramsci, Neocleous, Baudrillard, Foucault and Simmel, including their work on hegemony, governmentality, power, consumption and social identity. As such, the subsequent chapters are focused on routine forms of inequality, violence and harm that are celebrated, commoditized and consumed in our everyday lives, including, but not limited to, state violence, patriarchy, hypermasculinity, death, sports, entertainment, nongovernmental and notfor-profit organizations, efforts of resistance and more banal forms of everyday oppression that are masked within the broader neoliberal cultural (re)production. After all, the commodification of violence, inequality and harm are present every day, and have come to be seen as a “fact of life” that “nicely captures the dominant social meaning of banal goods” (Goold, Loader & Thumala, 2013, p. 978). Furthermore, this violence and harm is systemic, inherent in the social conditions of neoliberalism and the symbolic violence embodied in language and its forms, which, in turn, naturalize the systemic violence (Ži žek, 2008). We agree with Young (1976) in his Foreword to Frank’s Pearce’s book, Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance, when he argues that it is “the system itself that must be investigated” (p. 11).

An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism  5

Our goal is to provide a radical critique of our own disavowal, knowingly or unwittingly, of our complicity in more banal and normalized forms: consumption and consent through neoliberal commodification. Again, this is not fostering more blameworthiness hegemony. Rather, it is to allow us to ref lect on the totality of neoliberalism and our everyday life. In other words, our goal is ‘unveiling the neon god’ and recognizing our role in the perpetuation of the harms, violence and crimes of neoliberalism that prevents us from seeing beyond the box of hegemony and hegemonic discourse that serve to ensure our domination by consent. This violence and harm then becomes banal, disavowed, depoliticized and normalized through cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse (Neocleous, 2008, pp. 73–74). We begin with Chapter 2 where we examine the intersection between neoliberalism and capital acquisition as it manifests itself in global markets. We acknowledge that the ‘global’ is touted as being beneficial to the average citizen, especially as it relates to the ease with which they can now access specific services and goods, cross borders and promote economic success through the laissez-faire policies that promote competitiveness, free trade and lower prices for consumers. However, we emphasize what is often ignored and is the focus here, the harms and the violence, or what Renner (2002) has termed the “invisible imprint of violence” (p. 53) that results from a common everyday purchase. The global markets that facilitate the ease in which goods and services are consumed are divorced from the violent oppressions and inequalities that go into their production. This is especially so in Global North countries where materialism and capital acquisition have become part of everyday life, normalized and even celebrated, so much so that there is little recognition as to our own complicity in the exploitation, oppression and harm that allows for our consumption. Chapter 3 unpacks how through the neoliberal processes of ‘responsibilization’, privatization and individualization, self-defense is promoted as the answer to violent threats, insecurity and harm. Despite the duty of care to its citizenry, the state is complicit in the propagation of self-defense measures that rationalize the risk of violence and insecurity as being the responsibility of the individual. This narrative extends beyond interactional violence to include situational protection efforts as they manifest themselves in our homes and institutions. When the emphasis is a greater need for self-defense and personal responsibility in all these aspects, little attention is paid to the capitalist agenda of the security industry. Through marketing techniques that enhance insecurities, the security sector (i.e. corporations that sell personal and home alarms, weapons, self-defense classes, insurance, personal security, etc.) continues to accumulate capital. However, access to self-defense and security measures as marketed is not equally available to all people. Ironically, when the state is involved in overt forms of violence against the citizen, such as is evident in current cases of police violence, the rhetoric of self-defense is negated and the citizens that fight back are then blamed for the violence committed against them. Chapter 4 focuses on the role of sport as a project that reifies the long-held relationship between spectacle and violence. We highlight that sport in society is

6  An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism

a cultural product that is consumed and legitimated through its commodification and consumption. Drawing on both historical and modern-day examples, we analyze the role of the commodification of violence as it manifests itself in different sports and in events around the world. This includes macro level analyses of mega sporting events, such as the World Cup and the Olympics, that have caused significant economic and social harm to hosting countries, as well as micro level analyses of the body as a site for violence. Here, we argue that the detachment of the consumer from the violence, harm and risks to the athletes has become a normalized part of the spectacle of sport. Lastly, we examine issues of race and gender inequality that persist through the social consumption and celebration of sport. The normalization of these inequalities permits the fan, or consumer, to enjoy their sport divorced from the reality of the harms that allow for their fandom. Chapter 5 provides a renewed discussion of the policies of the carceral state via neoliberalism that have generated further exclusionary practices, as well as a focus on our consent and consumption of the hegemonic discourse and truth about inequalities in general. Then, more specifically, it focuses on refugees, immigrants and the homeless in an effort to turn the discussions away from the issues of inequality, refugees, immigrants and the homeless as ‘a problem’ to a denunciation of the system that produces these issues. This also includes an acknowledgement of our own role in this reproduction to disavow the carceral state, the inequalities and the manufacturing of the socially dead populations, and that needs to include recognizing our own roles in its reproduction. Chapter 6 focuses on how capitalism has led to the appropriation of oppressed groups, their experiences and narratives. This includes narratives and the given value of the dead where there remains a continuation of inequalities of life unto death and being dead. Specifically, we suggest that the discrepancy of the value of the dead is the result of the links between power, politics and hegemonic discourse embedded in neoliberalism that propagate and reify unequal power edifices that value some groups over others, in life and death. The state, entrenched within the capitalistic neoliberal definition of value, also decides on the value or non-value of the dead. Our hope is that this chapter is a step toward bringing the political out of its concealment and demystifying the construction of value. After all, the ‘value’ of the dead is a principal object of state power and the reification of the neoliberal order. Chapter 7 demonstrates how the violent carceral state is framed as benign, consumed and celebrated—as being for the benefit of the citizenry to purchase and celebrate. Simply, the power of the carceral state, through hegemonic operations, is canalized among and through neoliberalism into projects of consumerism. Here the consumer is complicit in the glorification of state violence. We have chosen to focus on the more overt displays of carceral logics and violence through commodities and consumption in order to highlight how state violence is turned into entertainment and products for consumption, while remaining sanitized and removed from the realities of its viciousness. Moreover,

An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism  7

we suggest that, regardless of the function or meaning of the consumption of carceral state violence, the fact that it is consumed grants a form of consent. Chapter 8 extends our discussion to include the selling, consumption and reification of patriarchy through ideology, policy and our own consumption. After all, the commodification of culture is consumed and reified by the very population it oppresses (i.e. women). This chapter argues that violence against women is commodified and eagerly consumed in an age of neoliberalism, legitimizing the patriarchal power structures that subordinate women. Using examples from the media and the consumer market, we hope to begin a broader discussion of how patriarchy, gender roles and inequality are reinforced through everyday banal consumption by both sexes. However, this banal consumption by women and girls not only lends to the legitimization of the heteronormative patriarchal status quo but also makes them active participants in the continuation of inequality and power structures inherent within this patriarchal society. Chapter 9 brings to the fore the recent regulatory rollbacks and climate change denial of the Trump administration in the United States. The neoliberal agenda of prioritizing corporate profit-making is examined as it relates to the substantial environmental harms that are being committed with little regard for the destructive implications for the immediate future. In direct contradiction to the warnings from the scientific community that stress the urgency for action, we draw on recent examples from the Trump administration, as well as from around the world, to illustrate the blatant tactics of neoliberal capitalists who promote their corporate interests through tactics of distraction, dismissal and denial. Chapter 10 moves beyond the focus of neoliberalism’s impact on nonprofit organizations or the created need for their existence within the global neoliberalist economic system. We argue that nonprofit organizations play a role in promoting ‘consent’ for neoliberalism and the status quo by depoliticizing social problems and legitimizing the neoliberal project. As such, given that the focus of this book is on the violence of capitalism/neoliberalism, it seems necessary to continue to draw attention to how nonprofit organizations’ existence, legitimacy and roles within the broader system unwittingly provide a bedrock for the continuation of the harms and violence of the capitalism they aim to provide relief from. We do not, however, suggest that we should not have nongovernmental organizations, as their work is significant and necessary, only that we must also seek to change the root cause. Chapter 11 focuses on neoliberalism in relation to resistance. While protests and acts of resistance are central to democracy and the potential for social change, what is often ignored is the usurping of resistance through commodification and consumption. We argue that it is important to remember that even acts of resistance, such as we have witnessed since the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, that speak out against inequality and social harm, are commodified and consumed within the spectacular domination of the state and capital, making resistance part and parcel of the neoliberal system that commoditizes in totality. Unlike other perspectives that have suggested that mass

8  An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism

commodities can be sites for popular resistance and cultural innovation, we suggest that in the era of our hyper-neoliberal capitalistic state, the commodification of resistance serves to perpetuate the system. The concluding chapter draws together the themes and discussions of each chapter to synthesize the main arguments made, drawing them back to the basic discussion of how the violence and harm of neoliberalism are so embedded within our everyday lives, we are left with no choice but to participate, willingly or unwillingly, including in its reproduction.

Summary The neoliberal carceral logics have usurped all of society and our consciousness (our way of thinking and behaving). If we consider the work of Debord (1988), we can see this process and its social nature through “the spectacle” and then the “integrated spectacle”. Debord (1988) refers to the spectacle as the autocratic reign of the market economy, which had acceded to an irresponsible sovereignty, and the totality of new techniques of government that accompanied this reign. … The spectacle has thus continued to reinforce itself, that is, to spread to the furthest limits on all sides, while increasing its density in the center. (p. 2) He also notes that “the government of the spectacle … now possesses all the means to falsify the whole of production and perception. … It reigns unchecked; it executes its summary judgments” (Debord, 1988, p. 2). Yet, he suggests, we have moved beyond the spectacle to one of an integrated spectacle: The fusion of State and economy is the most evident trend of the century; it has at the very least become the motor of the most recent economic development. The defensive and offensive pact concluded between these two powers, the economy and the State, has assured them of the greatest common advantages in every field: each may be said to own the other. … This union has also proved to be extremely favorable to the development of spectacular domination, which, precisely, from its formation, hasn’t been anything else. (Debord, 1988, p. 5) Debord also suggests that the inf luence of the integrated spectacle has never before put its mark to such a degree on almost the totality of socially produced behavior and objects. This includes presenting the social world and all of its violence as an imaginary social world based on hyper-individualism, inequality and ‘freedom’. For us, the integrated spectacle is the outcome of carceral logics and policies of the neoliberalistic carceral state. Our primary goal, then, in this

An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism  9

volume is to ‘demystify’ the ‘imaginary social world’ by reminding ourselves of the everyday banal life choices, where we internalize the hegemonic cultural ideology of the violence of neoliberalism and the carceral state—including our own role in the reification and facilitation of these harms and crimes. We argue throughout that we, as citizens, perpetuate the violence and harms through consumerism and the willing consumption of neoliberalism’s hegemonic ideology. As Foucault (1971) reminds us, the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them. (p. 171) For certain, to live an active, engaged life outside the imaginary social order of neoliberalism and the carceral state is a difficult task. Yet, we should not lose sight of the relationship between the state and its subjects—to not obfuscate the materiality of violence and domination of the social order. Moreover, we hope discussion turns from the topics covered here as ‘problems’ to a denunciation of the system that creates, facilitates and reproduces itself.

References Abramsky, S. (2007). American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Bosworth, M. & Hoyle, C. (2011). What is Criminology? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Debord, G. (1988). Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London, UK: Verso. Foucault, M. (1971). Human Nature: Justice versus Power. Noam Chomsky Debates with Michel Foucault. Retrieved from https://chomsky.info/1971xxxx/ Goold, B., Loader, I. & Thumala, A. (2013). The banality of security: The curious case of surveillance cameras. British Journal of Criminology, 53(6), 977–996. Harvey, D. (2016, July 23). Neoliberalism is a political project: An interview with David Harvey. Jacobin. Retrieved from www.j​acobinmag.​com/2​016/0​7/dav​id-ha​r vey-​neoli​ beral​ism-c​apita​l ism-​labor​- cris​is-re​sista​nce Henry, S. & Lanier, M. M. (2001). What is Crime? Controversies over the Nature of Crime and What to do About it. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S. & Gordon, D. (Eds) (2004). Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously. London, UK: Pluto Press. Kenton, W. (2018, March 28). Neoliberalism. Investopedia. Retrieved from www.i​nvest​ opedi​a.com​/term​s/n/n​eolib​erali​sm.as​p Kotsko, A. (2018). Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pearce, F. (1976). Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance. London, UK: Pluto Press.

10  An introduction to the violence of neoliberalism

Pemberton, S. (2007). Social harm future(s): Exploring the potential of the social harm approach. Crime, Law and Social Change 48(1/2), 27–41. Pemberton, S. (2015). Harmful Societies: Understanding Social Harm. Bristol: Policy Press. Raymen, T. (2018). The enigma of social harm and the barrier of liberalism: Why zemiology needs a theory of the good. Academia. Retrieved from www.a​cadem​ia.ed​u/370​ 09721​/ The_ ​E nigm ​a _of_ ​S ocia ​l _Har ​m _and ​_ the_ ​B arri​e r_of ​_ Libe ​r alis ​m _Why​_ Zemi​ology​_ need​s _a_t​heory​_of_t​he_Go​od Renner, M. (2002). The Anatomy of Resource Wars. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute. Slade, J. W. (2000). Pornography in America: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. Schwendinger, H. & Schwendinger, J. (1970). Defenders of order or guardians of human rights? Issues in Criminology, 5, 123–157. Thompson, M. J. (2005, Winter). [Review of the book A brief history of neoliberalism, by D. Harvey]. Dissent, Retrieved from www.d​issen​t maga​zine.​org/d​emocr​atiya ​_ arti​cle/ a​-brie​f-his​tory-​of-ne​olibe​ralis​m Ži žek, S. (2008). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York, NY: Pan Books.

2 NEOLIBERALISM, CONSUMERISM AND THE GLOBAL MARKET

Every year in the United States, thousands of people abandon the comfort of their homes to queue outside in the cold for the purpose of being among the first to secure the best deals in the post-Thanksgiving Black Friday shopping. This generally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season where retailers make almost half a trillion dollars (a fifth of their total sales), as consumers not only purchase a greater amount of goods and services but make more frivolous and extravagant purchases (NPR, 2011). Every year there are multiple reports in the United States of competitive and aggressive behavior over access to the best deals. For example, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in Long Island (Gould, Trapasso & Schapiro, 2008), in 2017 a young man was hospitalized having been shot in a parking lot in Missouri (Hudson & Weaver, 2017), and a woman was tasered by another shopper in a fight in a mall in Philadelphia (Murdock, 2013). While the spectacle of the violence associated with this extreme example of capitalist consumption is abhorrent, the violence of consumerism is not limited to these particular shopping events, but rather it is more pervasive and inherent in everyday purchases. As we note throughout this book, and as it relates to more specific examples, most consumers are aware of the trampling, fistfights and arguments that spill over into fatalities and hit the headlines every year, yet they are divorced from the pervasive and systemic harm and violence that allows them to engage in their material purchases. From sweatshops, to environmental pollution, to chronic health issues from pesticide exposure, to resource wars, there are numerous examples of the serious inequalities, violence and harm that are couched in the unequal practices of a neoliberal global market. Such violence and inequality become more apparent when further attention is paid to the sourcing of these products that become part of many consumers’ everyday lives—i.e. their

12  Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market

resource acquisition, corporate production and the economic competitiveness of the global market. Before providing some examples to illustrate our argument, we first give a brief review of the literature that has tackled these harms, albeit often through a differing lens than that of consumption and the violence of neoliberalism.

The harms of neoliberal consumption The rise of neoliberalism and the social consequences have been well noted since the 1990s (Bauman, 2000, 2007; Chomsky, 1999; Harvey, 2005; Kumar, 2005; Standing, 2011), drawing attention to social inequalities that are largely grounded in economic practices that deregulate and “free up” capitalist markets (Masquelier, 2017). As noted by Piketty (2014), the “widening income gap between super-managers and others” (p. 336) can largely be attributed to deregulation strategies that allow those in the highest positions to decide their own remuneration. This concentration of power and wealth based on capital acquisition has created an “accumulation of dispossession” (Harvey, 2005) whereby increased privatization (converting the public to the private) has led to, Conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights (most spectacularly represented by China); suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. (Harvey, 2005, p. 158) Therefore, while the focus for many is on the benefits of an increasingly globalized world, where there is greater interconnectedness between people, places and things (Baca Zinn & Eitzen, 2011), it is those occupying the most powerful positions in society that truly benefit. Others, however, find themselves subject to increasingly harmful practices. Consider that laissez-faire policies and casual forms of employment, directed at opening up global trade and investment with the goal of increasing economic openness, have huge diminishing impacts on labor rights: outsourcing, downward wage spiraling and poor working conditions. The pervasive inequality that is the result of such practices has been well documented, including the abuses suffered in sweatshops (Arnold & Hartman, 2006; Esbenshade, 2004; Rosen, 2002), agricultural workers’ exposure to dangerous pesticides (Flocks, 2012; Rhoades & Rhoades, 1992), the e-waste industry (Bisschop, 2014; Rothe, 2010),

Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market  13

the environmental and health consequences of toxic waste dumping (MacManus, 2014) and the environmental impacts of factory pollution (Walters, 2010). There are numerous examples, too many to adequately address here, of the harms caused by the pursuit of global capital. Other literature focuses on those most vulnerable to economic exploitation and the resulting harms of corporate production. This literature examines the role of migrant workers (Andrevski & Lyneham, 2014; Brennan, 2014), particularly women as they outnumber men in informal labor markets such as agricultural, factory and domestic work (Chinkin, 2003). While the global labor market has been touted as being beneficial for women in that it provides greater opportunities to enter the labor force, there remains significant patriarchal oppression, while, simultaneously, there has been a decline in state intervention in social welfare that disproportionately impacts women “including childcare, health and education” (Walby, 2009, p. 5). The same argument has been made relating to inequalities reinforcing current racial structures of society (Roberts & Mahtani, 2010). Racial minorities have been impacted greatly by neoliberal programs that have weakened job protection regulations, creating further insecurity for workers. Such practices have contributed to the rise of the aforementioned informal economy that relies heavily on undocumented immigrants who work as “day laborers” (Masquelier, 2017). As argued by Roberts and Mahtani (2010), those with a “precarious legal position bear the brunt of such social change as their access to legal recourses in regards to unfair employment practices are circumscribed” (p. 249). Therefore, racial and ethnic minorities experience greater precarity in the neoliberal economic market due to their dependence on the informal economy and exclusion from the formal structures of the neoliberal market. Much of this literature is framed within the subfields of white-collar, corporate, environmental and/or state-corporate crimes emphasizing the complicity of particular industries, corporations and state agencies in a specific harm or incident. However, despite the inequality and violence as it relates to social and environmental harm being recognized in the literature, the role of neoliberal consumption both as a driving force and as a theological lens (see Kotsko (2018), as discussed in Chapter 1) that can be used to examine the problem has been largely ignored. The role of the consumer has been viewed as separate from, and independent of, the harms resulting from the neoliberal capitalist market, insofar as there is little acknowledgment of the complicity of those who reap the rewards of violence, harm and inequality that allows for their market consumption. Nor is there much recognition of their complicity in the perpetuation of the harms that allow their consumption to persist (i.e. the aforementioned Black Friday sales). Here, drawing on a number of theoretical concepts from Gramsci (1971), Bourdieu (2000), Bauman (1988), Veblen (1973) and Baudrillard (1998), we examine the role of consumption as it relates to the violence and inequality that pervades the economic competitiveness of the global market.

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Theoretical frame While recognizing the inherent complexities of our global neoliberal capitalist system, the entrenchment of profit-making as the ‘imaginary social order’ reinforced through consumerism is our focus here. It has been well established that metrics for success in modern society are commonly defined within capitalist parameters (Merton, 1938; Messner & Rosenfeld, 1994; Wacquant, 2009). Consider that, in the United States and many other countries across the globe, ‘success’ is often measured by the acquisition of material wealth, such as houses, cars, job security (often a career), as well as other goods that are symbolic of having ‘made it’. Essential to this metric is consumption; material and nonmaterial. As argued by Veblen (1973), The motive that lies at the root of ownership is emulation … The possession of wealth confers honor; it is an invidious distinction. Nothing equally cogent can be said for the consumptions of goods, nor for any other conceivable incentive to acquisition, and especially not for any incentive to the accumulation of wealth. (p. 17) Central to neoliberal ideology is individualism (that people are responsible for their own fate). The individual, not the state, is responsible for their own sustenance and survival, independent of the hostility of the economic market (see Chapter 3 for a more in-depth discussion on the logic of individualization under neoliberalism). Opting out, or failing to consume, carries the consequence of social exclusion (Bauman, 1988). Framed as a freedom of choice—to purchase, borrow, trade or consume, economic competitiveness and material consumption become an essential component of social life. Although human agency plays its part in the pursuit of the accumulation of wealth—or goods that signify belonging to a particular class of wealth—these ideals of status acquisition do not develop in a vacuum. Cultural hegemony refers to “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 12). Given that hegemony is tied directly to capital accumulation—“the profit-seeking process at the heart of the world economy” and our “advanced consumer capitalism as a way of life”—consent is thus organized around consumption and consumerism (Caroll & Greeno, 2013, pp. 122–124). Furthermore, hegemonic discourse represents the dominant ideology (neoliberalism, consumerism), justifying the social, political and economic status quo, while masking the violence of the system and the powerful. The discourse is “intended to sustain the pre-existing modes of hegemonic dominance” (Pearce & Tombs, 2006, p. 1). According to Bourdieu (2000) social agents deeply internalize the schemes of perceptions (in this case the dominant ideology of neoliberalism and consumerism),

Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market  15

so much so that it creates a misrecognition. It therefore, becomes difficult to distinguish between false and true consciousness. “Truth” then becomes unattainable, impossible even to differentiate from the aforementioned schemes of perception, as “incorporated cognitive structures” are so “attuned to the objective structures” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 178). Bourdieu (2000) argues that the schemes of perception in place are “a fundamental point of view on the world which creates its own object and finds in itself the principle of understanding and explanation appropriate to that object” (p. 99). This not only structures property but also guarantees that policies, relations and practices of domination are viewed and experienced as “taken for granted” and “self-evident” (Cronin, 1996). This provides the reasons behind the “misrecognition” that means economic facts and neoliberal values, including those of consumption, become “common sense”, or what Durkheim would term a “common spirit”—one that is “abstracted from social, cultural and historical conditions of their production” (Masquelier, 2017, p. 124). Yet, while such schematic perceptions or ideologies become universalized, this ‘misrecognition’ is not passively experienced. Rather, it is actively consumed, reifying its social construction, unref lexively supporting unequal power structures that value some groups over others. In this sense, we use the term reification as conceptualized by Luk ács (1967): “the structural process whereby the commodity form permeates life in capitalist society” (Zuidervaart, 1991, p. 76). The consumer acts willingly, disconnected from the reality of their consumption as well as disconnected from the permeation of commodity into all of their everyday life. This is a form of “magical thinking” (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 31)—a form of seduction: “the paramount tool of integration (of the reproduction of domination) in a consumer society” (Baudrillard, 1998, pp. 221–222). This is especially the case when the consumption of goods (both tangible and non-tangible—as in the case of media and other cultural products) carries an “invisible imprint of violence” (Renner, 2002, p. 53). Consumption, therefore, becomes pathological, driven by fantasies that are disconnected from reality, where “consumerism may go so far as consum[m]ation, pure and simple destruction” (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 43).

The human cost of neoliberal market consumerism As we noted in the introductory chapter of this book, Young (1976), in his Foreword to Frank’s Pearce’s book Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance argues that it is “the system itself that must be investigated” (p. 11). The focus, therefore, needs to be on the inherent complexities of our global neoliberal capitalist system and the entrenchment of profit-making as the ‘imaginary social order’ as it is reinforced through consumerism. To illustrate the importance of this focus, we draw on a few examples to demonstrate how advanced consumer capitalism is so ingrained in society that it is seen as a ‘natural’ normality of everyday life.

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As mentioned above, the metrics for success in modern society are commonly defined within capitalist parameters (Merton, 1938; Messner & Rosenfeld, 1994; Wacquant, 2009)—i.e. that of capital accumulation and materialism. The acquisition of material wealth that symbolizes “success” (i.e. the aforementioned cars, job security, house, etc.) is divorced from the harms and violence suffered by those producing such symbols of success. The violence and harm that persists are viewed as separate not only from the end product, but any acknowledgment of the practices of neoliberalism, such as privatization, self-responsibilization and corporatization that facilitate the acquisition of these symbols of success. For example, informal and unstructured labor markets dominate many different areas of production that include unwaged workers—such as domestic service, agriculture, electronics, textiles, the garment industry, tourism and construction (El Saadi, 2016). This leaves workers particularly vulnerable as the work is irregular, pays an untenable wage, and more often than not consigns the worker and their family to a life of poverty (Unni, 2001). In addition, the jobs themselves fall outside the umbrella of state protection that regulate the labor market (i.e. limited hours, health and safety protection and additional benefits) (Heintz & Pollin, 2003). One such example is the United States’ apparel market, the largest in the world, which exceeds approximately 15 billion USD on average per month with the peak of holiday sales culminating in 23.3 billion USD in December 2017 (Statista, 2018). However, little attention is paid to the indentured servitude of those trapped in factories and sweatshops in Bangladesh, where 3.5 million workers in approximately 4,825 factories produce garments largely for export to the United States and Europe. The conditions in the factories are terrible, with the average working day lasting 14–16 hours, with people working in hazardous and cramped conditions whereby the risk for injury and fire is elevated (War On Want, 2018). In addition, the majority of the garment workers earn a wage of 3,000 taka a month (approximately 32 USD), far less than the living wage (5,000 taka). Furthermore, as the majority of garment workers are women, they are subject to sexual and physical harassment as well as violence, including being denied maternity leave. This is all to ensure the price of clothing production remains low, perpetuating a false consciousness about the origins of the goods that are selected for purchase and the violence used to produce them in their mass quantities. Similarly, Apple reported that, in the first quarter of 2018, their total revenue was 88.3 billion USD and they had a net quarterly profit of 20.1 billion USD. This was a company record, according to the company’s CEO, who said: “We’re thrilled to report the biggest quarter in Apple’s history, with broad-based growth that included the highest revenue ever from a new iPhone lineup” (Cook, as cited in Rossignol, 2018). However, while Apple’s success is celebrated, or even taken for granted by the larger public, there has been less attention to the massive amounts of tax fraud the company has committed in Europe, where Ireland has been permitted by European antitrust regulators to collect 13 billion euros from

Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market  17

Apple for tax avoidance over the last ten years (Couturier, 2016). There is also relatively little consumer concern about the worker conditions at the Pegatron factories in Shanghai, where Apple was found to be violating regulations on worker hours, dormitory standards, ID cards, juvenile workers and work meetings. The awful conditions were highlighted by the suicides of 14 workers at Foxconn, Apple’s biggest supplier in 2010 (Bilton, 2014). It seems such human rights violations and systemic violence have had little or no impact on Apple’s profits or our consumption of their products and services. Apple serves as one example of the demand for, and consequential supply of, commodities to the global market that contributes to and in some instances directly causes death, injury, inhumane living conditions and psychological damage not only to human beings, but also to animals and the environment more broadly. Here we can see that Apple and their economic success fit within the cultural hegemony of capitalist acquisition: “the profit-seeking process at the heart of the world economy” and our “advanced consumer capitalism as a way of life” (Caroll & Greeno, 2013, pp. 122–124). With the continued purchasing of Apple products, the masses have given ‘spontaneous’ consent “to the general direction imposed on social life” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 12). A consent that supports the schemes of perception that underpins the current neoliberal social and economic structure. This then becomes the ‘common sense’ understanding of social life; it is self-evident. The maintenance of informal labor markets is dependent on the lack of alternatives available to workers who find themselves at the mercy of large corporations and depressed wages. This informalization process creates a downward cycle of oppression whereby workers, due to their lack of alternatives, lose any real bargaining power when it comes to wages, working conditions and social conditions. As a result, markets that were once formal become increasingly depressed— becoming informal over time. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has also brought attention to the vulnerabilities of child workers in informal markets. For example, Human Rights Watch (2018a) found that the global tobacco industry uses child labor to supply some of the biggest multinational tobacco companies. In the United States, weak labor regulations and weak labor laws result in children as young as 12 years old working long hours (sometimes 12-hour days) on tobacco farms harvesting the plants in extreme heat. Many of the children told Human Rights Watch that they experienced vomiting, nausea, dizziness and headaches, all of which are symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning. This is not isolated to the tobacco industry in the United States but occurs in tobacco farms around the world, such as those in Indonesia and Zimbabwe. In the case of the tobacco industry1 the consumer is willing (or compelled due to addiction) to live the myth, disconnected from the reality of their consumption (that of child labor) and continues to be disconnected from the harms that persist. The exploitation of children is not restricted to tobacco, children are also exploited in the mining of gold and diamonds (Human Rights Watch, 2018b), the production of minerals such as coltan (used for electronics ranging from

18  Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market

phones and tablets to electric cars) and the farming of palm oil, as well as in many more industries that produce goods that are readily consumed as ‘common sense’ purchases to maintain the profit-making of the ‘imaginary social order’. The entrenchment and normalization of consumer behavior, which is divorced from the harms it perpetuates, are evident in the prominent companies that are household names who, reportedly, still use child labor despite considerable media and legal sanctioning. These companies include Nestle, H & M, Walmart, Victoria’s Secret. Gap, Disney, Forever 21 and Hershey’s (Lamarque, 2016). Yet consumers continue to purchase the goods and services sold by these companies, and, in some cases, celebrate their consumption (i.e. Disney). What becomes strikingly apparent is that the consumer operates with ignorance, disconnected from the origins of the goods selected for purchase and the violence used to produce them in their mass quantities. There exists a gross irony whereby the consumer, through their willful disavowal, purchases material goods for the status identity that they convey, while remaining ignorant to the pain, abuses and hardships suffered by others in their production. They are giving their consent to violence that has become banal, disavowed, depoliticized and normalized through cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse. They have accepted the common-sense ideology that has been “negotiated by unequal forces in a complex process through which the subordination and resistance of the worker is created and recreated” (Simon, 1982, p. 64). This is most obvious in examples of ‘luxury’ materialism, e.g. luxury cars, designer apparel and other goods that symbolize identity—of having made it in a capitalist society. Often these are tangible goods bought for frivolity as opposed to need, however this ignores the pervasiveness and banality of the neoliberal project, where even the simplest of consumer behaviors carry with them a human or environmental cost. For example, in 2018 the European Union emphasized the need for further laws to address deforestation and child labor use in the production of coffee and chocolate (i.e. cocoa) (Echikson & Ionova, 2018). In addition, consider the harms associated with the consumption of seafood. There are “labor abuses in the fishing industry, stretching from Southeast Asia to America’s own waters”, where fishermen are confined to boats for years at a time, where they are often abused and live in poor conditions, catching valued swordfish and ahi tuna. As reported by the Associated Press (2016) “Their catch ends up at restaurants and premium seafood counters across the country, from Whole Foods to Costco, and is touted by celebrity chefs such as Roy Yamaguchi and Masaharu Morimoto” (p. 2). Such harms even touch necessary services that become viewed as normal. Consider, for example, the neoliberalization of medical care and public health, something that scholars of public health have argued has led to increased mortality rates and higher morbidity (Rowden, 2009; Thomas & Weber, 2004). It has been argued that increased public indebtedness and the drive for privatization has led many countries to seek out or consider neoliberal adjustment plans. For example, the economic crisis that has swept Europe has led to many countries

Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market  19

yielding economic and political power to supranational organizations, such as the International Financial Institutions, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. The supranational organizations have then strongly urged governments to foster free markets, something that is framed as a means of ensuring greater productivity and efficiency. This neoliberal transition has led to the restructuring of public health systems through the process of deregulation, which has then provided private companies the opportunity to offer healthcare services, often with negative consequences (Williams & Maruthappu, 2013). For example, in the 1980s, Chile went through a process of liberalization leading to a decline in funding for public healthcare. Wealthier citizens opted for private healthcare leaving the public scheme to those with lesser incomes (Mesa-Lago, 1997). The public scheme then suffered because of a significant drop in contributions from high-income groups. A similar pattern can be seen in Greece, where the more recent economic crisis and resulting policies of austerity have led to economic restructuring under the advisement and guidance of the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund has identified the country’s public healthcare system as being a contributing cause to the “massive deterioration in the underlying fiscal position over the last decade” (International Monetary Fund Greece, 2012). The economic restructuring has led to a significant reduction in the country’s healthcare budget (a cut of 50 percent since 2007), and plans have been instituted by the International Monetary Fund to reduce the number of doctors by 25 percent and administrators by 50 percent. Furthermore, restrictions have been implemented on the maximum price for patented drugs that private companies can charge. The consequences of these reforms have led to significant drug shortages (Karamanoli, 2012), withdrawals of insulin supplies because of government nonpayment (Watson, 2010) and a spike in diseases such as HIV (Paraskevis, Nikolopoulos, Tsiara et al., 2011) and malaria (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2012). While austerity policies alone cannot be identified as the cause of such consequences, they have definitely contributed to the current problems with public health systems. Problems with public health systems are not isolated to the above examples of Chile and Greece—rather similar patterns emerged in Latin America in the 1980s, Russia in the 1990s and present-day Portugal. Rapid reform, often linked to economic crises, has led to the adoption and normalization of neoliberal capitalist policies that privatize healthcare. Often framed as being more efficient and productive because of their adherence to the ‘free market’, the ideology of neoliberalism is accepted. As with tangible goods, in the case of healthcare, the patient is the consumer, one that deeply internalizes the schemes of perceptions, that of neoliberalism and consumerism, so much so that it creates a misrecognition. The notion that access to adequate healthcare is a basic human right is lost, whereby the consumer can no longer distinguish between the hegemonic discourse of the neoliberal state and their loss of basic human healthcare. The consumer focuses on their individualized healthcare needs and the quality of

20  Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market

care they can afford to access, not the negative consequences caused to public healthcare systems that lose the wealthy to private insurance premiums. The ‘truth’ about healthcare becomes unattainable, impossible even, to differentiate from the aforementioned schemes of perception (i.e. private payer systems being preferable to struggling and failing public systems). As mentioned above, this then becomes the “fundamental point of view of the world which creates its own object and finds in itself the principle of understanding and explanation appropriate to that object” (Bourdieu, 2000, p. 99). Despite the harm and differential access to health, the neoliberal approach to privatized healthcare becomes normalized, taken for granted, self-evident. The consumer is then complicit in the harms that result and the collapse of public healthcare systems that could have broader social benefits than the private systems, which benefit only a few—those with the means to access them.

Conclusion In this chapter we have examined the role of consumption as it relates to the pervasive policies of neoliberalism permeating the global market. Focusing on status identity and ‘misrecognition’, the consumer purchases goods but remains disconnected from the processes of their production and all the harms and inequalities that such processes entail. From the conf lict violence in Colombia’s coffee region (Rettberg, 2010), to the aforementioned suicides in Foxconn’s factory village (Merchant, 2017), to the human and environmental harm caused by the exporting of massive amounts of e-waste (Bisschop & Vande Walle, 2013), there exists a gross irony when the consumer purchases material goods to participate in the normalized and universalized capitalist way of life, while remaining ignorant of or disavowing the pain, abuses and hardships suffered that are framed as being necessary for their production. Beyond the more obvious examples of tangible goods, the process of consumption in a neoliberal global market includes more necessary products and services that are not wrapped up in frivolity or status identity. Using the example of public healthcare, the dominance of neoliberalism as a scheme of perception can be seen to permeate all aspects of social life, even those products and services that are necessary or fill a need. However, the structures of neoliberalism distance the consumer both from the harms of the system and from their own complicity—i.e. the harms to others with lesser means, and the social consequences of deregulation and defunding, such as less access to necessary drugs and an increase in communicable diseases. The consumer is socialized and conditioned into the hyper-individualized mentality of the neoliberal capitalist system. This is achieved through the privatization of healthcare and the interference (framed as assistance) of global economic organizations, such as the international financial institutions and state-run public health systems. These such institutions then emphasize the efficiency of privatization and free markets at the cost of social welfare.

Neoliberalism, consumerism and the global market  21

Note 1 Here we recognize the addictive nature of tobacco that makes the continued consumption of tobacco less of a willing act and more of a necessity. Our choice to use it as an example does not negate this, rather it shows the priority of global capital over public health.

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3 SELF-DEFENSE OR NEOCAPITALIST RHETORIC?

Media headlines are rife with stories of crime, victimization, violence and harm. From murders, robberies, theft and fraud, to environmental harm, the threat of civil unrest, and faulty products, as citizens and consumers, we are bombarded with threats to our everyday lives. Coupled with these threats come suggestions on how to eliminate, navigate and mitigate these risks to our personal welfare. To avoid criminal violence, for example, some of the suggestions include that we change our behavior, such as not going out at night, parking our vehicles in well-lit areas or to travel with a friend—i.e. ‘the buddy system’. To prevent environmental harm, we are told to be careful about our environmental footprint as well as what we put in our bodies (i.e. recycle, filter our water, buy organic, use paper straws, etc.), and, in the event of a national emergency, whether manmade or caused by the environment, such as a weather event, we are told to have a survival plan—which might include a backup generator, insurance, a store of nonperishable food products—as well as having an emergency escape route planned. Instrumental to employing these tactics, is having the financial means necessary to purchase risk-mitigating products that are marketed for their ability to assist in reducing or even negating these risks to our person. Therefore, there emerges a dominant narrative of self-protection as a means of navigating the threats contained in the social and physical world around us. In a society characterized by neoliberal capitalism, social life is reorganized through processes that impact social relations and perceptions in order to support the underlying goals of the economic market. Protection from violence, harm and crime is no different. These goals are institutionally enforced and impose qualities that ref lect the domination and entrenchment of market forces onto the individual, so much so that responsibilities and protections of state are readily privatized and individualized. This is contrary to the understanding of a

26  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

social contract (e.g. Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau) where the state owes its citizenry a “duty of care” to protect them from unnecessary harm (Kauzlarich, Mullins & Matthews, 2003). Although there are many examples spanning from privatized health care (see Chapter 2 for a prior discussion on public health), to water filtration systems, to commercial and residential alarm systems, our focus here is the culmination of these practices in what has been conceptualized as the private security industry. From personal alarms, weapons, self-defense classes, to insurance from theft and vandalism, to home security systems, to surveillance companies, the state mitigates its responsibility (or duty of care) to protect through the normalization of a narrative of self-protection followed by a “blameworthiness” of those that do not participate and are victimized. Through the processes of individualization, privatization and responsibilization (Masquelier, 2017) the individual, both consciously and subconsciously, internalizes the responsibility to protect themselves from future harm—a form of risk management. This serves to reshape understandings of risk and protection from harm as being the responsibility of the individual, as opposed to being part of the state’s duty of care to protect. It is the individual who navigates their social conditions in a manner that minimizes the harm that will come to them. This is achieved through an engagement with the market, a market that requires financial expenditure— ensuring capital accumulation and profit-making, while little is done to change the status quo—the material conditions that contribute to the risks for harm (whether real or perceived). In this chapter, a deeper examination of the logic of the security industry is made, paying particular attention to narratives of self-protection, self-defense and individual responsibility at the micro, organizational and institutional levels of analyses. We argue that, at the very minimum, the citizen, and not the state, is made to feel at least partially responsible for their own self-protection against violence and harm. It is this carceral narrative that has been propagated as the common sense on the subject. It minimizes state responsibility in the matter and allows those with lesser means to acquire self-protection, and to bear a greater burden if/when they are victimized. In addition, while we argue that this does little to change the status quo, we also highlight the irony of this discourse when compared with state-perpetrated violence, where citizens utilize the same selfprotection against the state when it directs violence against them, as is the case in police violence.

Self-defense: the state, violence and the responsibility of the individual Although there are variations across different countries, the commodification of security from harm through the purchasing of material goods is undergirded by a familiar discourse that focuses on fear and insecurity. For example, a brief google search for personal alarms brings up 85,400,000 results, with products ranging from keychain alarms, alarms that are presented as jewelry (e.g. necklaces,

Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?  27

watches or bracelets), those contained in shoes, shaped as cell phones or stuffed toys, to mention but a few. Not only do they range in size, color and design, different alarms are marketed to different demographics—e.g. the elderly, women and children. Accompanying these products are sales pitches and product descriptors like “Fight back with [product name]” and “Emergency self-defense for women, kids and the elderly” and YOUR FAMILY’S SAFETY IS OUR TOP PRIORITY—jogging early in the morning or late at night, having your teenager out at a party late or just talking [sic] a late night stroll are all situations where safety is a major concern. With SLFORCE siren song alarm, you can rest assured knowing that your loved ones are protected. A great choice for kids, teenagers, woman [sic], elderly, students, joggers, etc. (SLFORCE, 2018) The irony here, and something that has been long recognized by criminologists and security scholars, is that despite these alarms addressing threats of random or stranger-perpetrated violence, the actual risks of physical violence are related to the proximity of the relationship between offender and victim, where the closer the relationship, the greater the risk. Furthermore, as noted by Hoyle and Zedner (2007), despite statistics indicating that young men are at most risk of assault, they are reported as being fearless of attack. Conversely, women and the elderly are at the least risk of assault yet they are reported as being the most fearful. This does not minimize the reality that violence is perpetrated against this latter group, however it emphasizes that the risk of harm very often is not correlated with the perceptions of threats to security. It is this perception of harm that is capitalized on by the state and corporations alike for consumption. Bauman (1987) argues that “men and women are integrated into society as, above all, consumers” (p. 166). This extends beyond market logic to aspects of everyday life. As a consequence “every item of culture becomes a commodity [and] … all perceptions and expectations … are trained and moulded inside the new ‘foundational’ institution—that of the market” (Bauman, 1987, p. 166). Bauman is also careful to emphasize that consumerism extends beyond the material to include the symbolic, something that constructs self, identity and relationships with others. Like the examples of violence that happens in everyday life, security and self-defense are also commodified and sold to the consumer in a neoliberal capitalist society. The consumer is targeted where states of insecurities (people and places) are a vehicle for social control. This pattern of consumption is not restricted to personal alarms, as individuals are marketed all kinds of protection devices, services and products that protect against threats to the person and property, as well as being targeted for other potential threats including apocalypse survival security. Another overt example of corporate capitalization on perceptions of risk is the proliferation of guns in the United States, where there are 393 million

28  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

civilian-owned firearms. This is twice the ownership rate than the next-highest country (Yemen) and six times the rate of other similarly economically positioned countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Small Arms Survey, 2018). The prevalence of firearms, and the ability of civilians to readily acquire them, has been characterized as a public health problem because of the large amount of gun violence perpetrated in the United States. At the time of writing, there had been a total of 54,231 incidents of gun violence resulting in 13,890 deaths and 26,838 injuries during 2018 (Gun Violence Archive, 2018). Also, despite there being some disagreement on how mass shootings are defined,1 from schools (Ahmed & Walker, 2018) to workplaces (Sanchez, 2018), places of worship (Sterling, 2018), movie theaters ( Jacobo, 2017), nightclubs (Ellis, Fantz, Karimi & McLaughlin, 2016), yoga studios (Zaveri, Jacobs & Mervosh, 2016) and bars (Stranglin & Curley, 2018), the number of incidents where firearms are used to kill or injure multiple victims in the United States far exceeds that of any other country (Fox, 2018). Reports for 2017 indicated there were 307 mass shootings in the United States (Robinson, Gould & Lee, 2018), yet there has been little change with regard to policy or the law concerning gun safety. Despite public outcry, victim testimony to Congress and social justice groups taking up the cause, it is interesting to note that research has indicated that immediately following a mass shooting event gun sales increase. Consider that, in the six months immediately following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the number of background checks for gun purchases spiked to 455,000. This is despite the obvious ineffectiveness of a handgun as a means of defense against an attack on a building with an airplane. Likewise, with recent school shootings, many school districts are promoting and pushing for administrators and teachers to carry weapons to protect themselves and students. Additionally, research has consistently found that the presence of a firearm in the home increases the chance of violence being perpetrated against a family member. This reinforces the carceral logic of self-responsibility for one’s safety and fuels the mass gun-culture ideology (Medlock, 2005). Despite these statistics, the lack of regulation in the United States persists and can largely be associated with corporate and lobbying interests of the National Rif le Association. The National Rif le Association is a powerful lobby group that opposes gun control legislation despite indications that the public often favor greater regulations. However, there are several tropes that have been propagated in the media, many predicated on the necessity of gun ownership as an essential means to defend oneself from an attack (Hemenway, 2017). Not only are these narratives propagated through traditional media outlets, but the National Rif le Association has its own media publications, including a cable channel and monthly written publications. Contained within these publications are civilian success stories, where people have utilized their firearms to avert a crime/harm being committed against them (Medlock, 2005). This is despite scholarly research showing that gun use for the purpose of self-defense is quite rare and, when it is employed

Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?  29

as a defense, the likelihood of injury is not reduced (Hemenway & Solnick, 2015). This irrationality is predicated on the idea of control, that owning a gun reduces the potential risk for violence. As indicated by author and National Rif le Association supporter Tom Clancy (1994), “Owning a gun [throughout American history] meant that a person could protect his or her family when the state was unable to do so, a lamentable condition that persists to this day even in areas that have large, organized police agencies” (p. xiii). By emphasizing the inability of the state (i.e. the police) to protect citizens, the National Rif le Association promotes the need for citizens to protect themselves—they can capitalize on insecurity and fear for the purposes of profit-making. As argued by Pavarini (1997) subjective feelings of insecurity, regardless of whether this sense of insecurity is or is not well founded and the results of an objective state of diminished security. This growing demand for security manifests itself as a protest against the institutional and public offerings of social defense. Institutional and public efforts to provide safeguards against criminality are perceived as being unable to meet the social demand for security. (p. 79) Beyond the broader tactics of the National Rif le Association, the use of selfdefense as a marketing ploy can be directed to specific demographics. As indicated in the above examples of personal alarms, there exists a large industry of personal protection and self-defense products marketed toward women, especially as they relate to the ever-present specter of stranger-perpetrated rape and sexual assault. Alarms come in colors traditionally associated with femininity such as light pinks and purples, and they are advertised as rape protection devices. There are websites solely dedicated to women’s security such as ‘Damsel in Defense’, ‘Women on Guard’ and ‘Defense Divas’. These websites sell stun guns, pepper spray, striking tools (some masked as pens), knives, guns (often pink in color) and even T-shirts that have slogans such as “coffee, Jesus, and pepper spray” and “not today stalker” (Damsel in Defense, 2018). There are also more inventive products, ranging from nail polish that changes color when exposed to date-rape drugs (LaVito, 2018), pantyhose that, when worn, gives the appearance of the wearer having hairy legs for the purposes of deterring street harassment (called anti-pervert tights) (Manders, 2013) and even underpants that claim to be “rape-proof ” (Simister, 2013). There is also an abundance of selfdefense classes marketed to women for the purposes of thwarting an attacker (Hollander, 2009). These classes range in focus from learning different fighting styles and techniques to more traditional classes that focus on avoidance techniques (Cunningham, 2016). In the United States in the 1990s there was a cultural shift in how women’s self-defense was not only portrayed but consumed. This coincided with the rise in attention to women’s rights and the dangers of sexual and intimate partner

30  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

violence. Prior to the 1990s the predominant representation of sex and violence in the media eroticizes and romanticizes a women’s inability to defend herself against a sexual attack (something that in no way has been eradicated). This serves to not only normalize sexual violence but promotes the idea that women enjoy forced sex. Beginning in the 1990s however, film and television offered several examples of strong women who were able to defend themselves including characters in the movies Thelma and Louise, Aliens, La Femme Nikita and Blue Steel to mention but a few (McCaughey, 1997). Other more recent examples include the television show Jessica Jones and the films Wonder Woman, Kill Bill and Atomic Blonde, where women successfully defend themselves from violence perpetrated by men. Although research has indicated that self-defense not only empowers women but increases self-esteem (Hollander, 2009), self-defense reduces the responsibility from harm to that of the individual and the selling of ‘women’s self-defense’ is just that, a marketing ploy. This is especially so, considering that self-defense moves are the same independent of gender. Encouraged by media portrayals of women defending themselves against threats to their person, as well as targeted marketing campaigns, women enroll in classes where they pay to learn strategies to take on individual responsibility for past or potential violence perpetrated against them. What must be recognized is that the narrative of self-defense, especially as it is marketed to women, follows socially recognized scripts that reinforce social structural problems—such as heteronormative patriarchy as it manifests itself as violence against women—as being problems for the individual, specifically a woman. In addition, the targeting of gender-specific self-defense classes normalizes and reinforces gendered understandings of victim-blaming (i.e. who and in what circumstances someone is deserving of the status of ‘victim’ and therefore the resources associated with that status). It also negates any structural or state responsibility in the promotion of a larger culture that normalizes, minimizes and promotes violence against women (i.e. rape culture). As argued by Smart (1999) “[t]raditional views of agency are based on notions of individual choice and responsibility, individual will and action—perceptions of atomized individuals, acting alone unconstrained by social forces, unmediated by social structures and systemic hardship” (p. 34). This process of ‘responsibilization’ is a neoliberal strategy that we discussed in the introduction to this book. It is a “project of privatization that deviates away from recognizing public responsibility for social problems … [and] endorses a radically decontextualized, degendered focus on ‘problematic’ individuals” (Smart, 1999, p. 37). This process fundamentally obscures the relationship between the state and its subjects. More broadly, individual responsibility can be conceptualized as creating a facade where goods and services are presented to individuals who are making “ref lexive” decisions in efforts to realize their selves (Masquelier, 2017). They become what Foucault (2008) would term entrepreneurs of their own selves (p. 226). But, as argued by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002), this “ref lexive” decision-making is driven by risk. In a neoliberal society,

Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?  31

the individual exists in a state of risk characterized as a “state of permanent (partly overt, partly concealed) endangerment” (p. 3). Through accepting the risk, the individual then internalizes, and often accepts, the consequences and responsibility associated with them. Returning to our example of women-focused self-defense commodities, the insecurity and prevalence of narratives of stranger-perpetrated sexual assault are utilized to profit on the sale of gender-specific goods and services. Women purchase these products and services, taking on the responsibility associated with the ‘risk’ of an attack. This does nothing to address the broader systemic and structural issues of patriarchy, heteronormativity and cultural normalization of violence against women. Further, it negates the well-established fact that sexual violence is more likely to be perpetrated by someone known to the victim, not a stranger (Belknap, 2007). Another example of the capitalization on women’s vulnerability to sexual assault is the National Rif le Association’s common usage of the slogan “rapists love gun control”, suggesting the chances of sexual assault increase for women when they are not armed (Kopel, 2000). The fear and insecurity associated with an attack are propagated as a marketing tool for the purposes of capital accumulation, and provide a supposed solution to the problem of sexual violence. Yet this solution is devoid of cultural and structural context, placing the burden of mitigating, preventing or averting an attempted sexual assault on the individual—i.e. the victim not the perpetrator, a result of neoliberalism. Security and defense as an industry are not restricted to the marketing and selling of personal protection, as they pervade all aspects of social life. From home and commercial business insurances, to private security firms that police large recreational complexes such as malls, office complexes and industrial sites—these have increasingly become privately owned with access controlled by private security firms (Shearing & Stenning, 1981; Zedner, 2009). Take, for example, the rise of the gated community in both the United States and South Africa. These communities are fortified enclosures that are sometimes patrolled by private security companies against outside threats (Low, 2003). As noted by Jones and Newburn (1998) “people are more likely to be living, working, shopping, and spending leisure time in places that are protected by private security rather than public police” (p. 105). Security is reconfigured in a consumer society to be a commodity. Yet, the gated community or the expensive home alarm are less about the fear of burglary as they become a “positive selling point signaling a certain quality of life and, quite literally, exclusiveness” (Zedner, 2009, p. 97). Residential developers make calculations and decisions based on the understanding that a gated community (often a middle-class phenomenon) ref lects wealth, whereby the property owners are demonstrating they have the resources to protect their property. As noted by Currie (1997), in a market society the dominant organizing principle of economic and social life is the pursuit of private gain. Neoliberalism,

32  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

then, emphasizes the need for personal responsibility and individual self-reliance in efforts to mitigate or control risk. As noted by Neocleous (2007) ‘insecurity’ comes to be used as an ideological strategy for encouraging investment in private health care schemes, private pensions, and the commodities that are said to make us more secure, turning us into consumers of the products of finance capital and the security industry; (in)security is nothing if not big business. (p. 37) Corporations consume security to the benefit of the insurers, private security firms and the capitalist economic market. Driven by insurance costs, internal auditing and the need to secure inner business districts, entertainment and shopping centers are designed for the purposes of providing a secure environment for their patrons (Ericson & Doyle, 2004; Newburn, 2001; Power, 2004). However, as with personal security practices, the cost of security does not ref lect the reality of the risk. Consider the example of maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden. Following the rise of international political and media coverage of piracy attacks off the coast of Somalia, the commercial shipping industry suffered a hike in insurance premiums for ships traversing those waters (Chalk, 2008; Hawkes, 2001; LoboGuerrero, 2008). This is despite the reality of the costs associated with piracy. For example, a report by the Civil-Military Fusion Centre indicated that only 2 percent of the total cost of piracy in 2011 went to the payment of ransoms (Rinehard, 2012). Additionally, as noted by Collins (2012), reports from the International Maritime Bureau indicate that the number of seafarers killed by Somali pirates has remained relatively stable since 1991, averaging less than two people per year until 2008, when it increased to four people, and then to eight people in 2011 (International Maritime Bureau, 2011). This reality is emphasized by statistics on accident-related deaths on merchant and fishing vessels. For example, the 2005 International Maritime Organization report on deaths attributed to accidents and complications with operating the vessels belonging to seven different countries2 resulted in 55,585 reports of casualties that included 60 confirmed mariner deaths (International Maritime Organization, 2011). Furthermore, the number of fatalities that occurred in 2010 on commercial vessels in United States waters alone totaled 43 (Chambers, 2010), with 58 more deaths on average each year resulting from the commercial fishing industry (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). The cost of insurance is further compounded not only by shipping companies having to insure against kidnap and ransom, but also because regions associated with piracy have been classified as war zones. The two major types of insurance specific to piracy are war-risk and kidnap. War-risk insurance is required in specific areas that have been identified by the Lloyd’s Market Association Joint War Committee in London. During the height of the international political and media coverage of the issue of piracy in the Gulf of Aden (2011), it was designated as a war-risk zone (Oceans Beyond Piracy, 2011). Kidnapping and ransom insurance protect crews,

Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?  33

but the hull or the vessel requires separate insurance. This type of insurance is often used in addition to war-risk insurance, as it covers “fees for public relations, negotiators, medical and psychological treatment, ransom delivery costs, and travel costs for hostages’ families” (Oceans Beyond Piracy, 2011, p. 14). Insurance against piracy in recent years has been said to be among the “fastest growing business” (Lowe, 2011), and the senior executive for Lloyd’s Market Association, Neil Roberts, estimates that insurance against piracy has cost the industry an additional 160 million USD in premiums (Bockmann, 2011). The rise of defense and private security has often been connected in the literature, somewhat speculatively, to a lack of public confidence in the state’s ability to protect. Pavarini (1997) argues that this demand for security is a manifestation of larger anxieties that are symptomatic of a crisis within the social state. However, while Pavarini (1997) views this crisis as a failure of the state to provide for its citizens, we agree with Bauman (1998) when he suggests that the state and corporate interests purposefully propagandize and capitalize on these social anxieties. Within a neoliberal capitalist society, fear and anxiety increase political and economic capital and drive a consumer market. To shop for ‘security’ means that a consumer exercises a choice to buy the products and protection they want, yet, as argued by Loader (1999), the consumption of security has “a powerful in-built capacity to disenchant” (p. 381). The industry sells products that communicate risk, the risks they are constructed to counter, yet as they are often disassociated from the reality of those risks, they inevitably disappoint—i.e. when they fail to protect or mitigate these harms.The security and defense market, therefore, thrives on its own self-perpetuation, as it effectively creates its own demand (Davis, 1990). Through increased consumption of private security and self-defense commodities individuals are opting out of the protection afforded by public security as provided by the state. The role of the neoliberal capitalist state in the rise of private security is not one of total eclipse, rather they engage in partnerships with commercial interests to provide a public service to the state’s citizenry. Although research has indicated that private security as an industry has significantly increased over the last fifty years ( Jones & Newburn, 1995; Loader, 1997; Newburn, 2001), due to the lack of regulatory oversight, there is no true way to establish the size of the security industry with any degree of certainty. However, the increases in technological citizenry surveillance, investigation services, process services, security consultancy businesses, as well as alarm companies and security technologies, are indicative of it being a growing sector. This creates a complex relationship between public and private, whereby the governance methods of state have been reconfigured (Hirst, 1994; Lash & Urry, 1987; Rose, 1996). One example of this reconfiguration, which has received considerable academic attention, is that of policing. Loader (1999), in reference to the United Kingdom, argues that policing has changed due to the gradual adoption of three different processes: (1) managerialism—taking up business-like practices; (2) consumerism—the reframing of ‘policing’ as a service to be provided to the public; and (3) promotionalism—that situates policing as a product. This results

34  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

in an increase in privatization of formerly public sector responsibilities; and the police, as a central organization of state ref lecting the state’s monopoly on violence, is no longer accurate. Rather, policing “now ref lects the processes of pluralism, disaggregation and fragmentation which have been seen as a hallmark of postmodernism” (Reiner, 1992, p. 779). Shearing (1996) argues that “what is being reborn is a system of rule that uncouples the ‘steering’ and ‘rowing’ of policing and locates the responsibility for ‘steering’ with the state and for ‘rowing’ with the citizens” (p. 85). Garland (1996) relates this back to the aforementioned process of “responsibilization” when he argues, The recurring message of this approach is that the state alone is not, and cannot effectively be, responsible for preventing and controlling crime. Property owners, residents, retailers, manufacturers, town planners, school authorities, transport managers, employers, parents and individual citizens—all of these must be made to recognize that they too have a responsibility in this regard and must be persuaded to change their practices in order to reduce criminal opportunities and increase informal controls. (p. 453) Neoliberal ideologies give rise to government policies that prioritize the marketing of policing as another commodity driven by profit-making and characterized by increased privatization. Citizens are encouraged to participate in efforts to self-protect or self-police, where they are encouraged to engage in their own risk management. Interestingly, despite the transference of risk and the individualization of responsibility within an era of privatized capitalist consumption, when citizens self-protect against the state—opposed to in lieu of the state—there are often harsh ramifications. Very often such tactics are minimized, or even ridiculed, as they undermine official discourses that are propagated for the purposes of promoting the priorities of the state and corporate interests. Consider again the earlier example of the National Rif le Association. Immediately following the shooting of Botham Jean, a black man who was shot in his own apartment by an off-duty police officer in Dallas, Texas, the National Rif le Association spokesperson Dana Loesch stated that “this could have been very different if Botham Jean had been, say he was a law abiding gun owner and he saw somebody coming into his apartment” (Loesch, as cited in Serwer, 2018). In addition to being highly offensive, Loesch’s statement blatantly ref lects the National Rif le Association’s bottom line—that of the sale of weapons at all costs. Furthermore, in blaming Jean for his own victimization, Loesch highlights that, independent of circumstances, there seems to be no situation in which the murder of an unarmed black person cannot be blamed on the victim—sometimes termed the ‘Rice rule’ (2014).3 This is a pattern of the National Rif le Association, who made similar statements about the victims of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting of nine parishioners by Dylan Roofe, as well as faulting victims of several

Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?  35

mass shootings such as those from the 2017 Fresno Shooting and the Capital Gazette shooting in Maryland. However, what is telling is that the National Rif le Association is silent following police shootings of legally armed black men such as Philando Castile, Jason Washington, Alton Sterling and, most recently (in 2018) Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr., in a shopping mall in Alabama. That the National Rif le Association neglects to speak on the gun rights of black men in the United States highlights a glaring hypocrisy. In fact, Loesch did speak on the murder of Philando Castile, but it was in defense of the police; and, in the murder of Washington, she said she was “never going to keyboard quarterback what police are doing” (Loesch, as cited in Serwer, 2018).4 This illustrates not only the primacy of capital and profit-making over the basic principles of humanity and equality, but the role of corporations in maintaining state legitimacy (and vice versa) when they engage in violence against certain groups. The National Rif le Association funnels millions of dollars to its affiliates and supporting organizations every year and part of that includes the marketing of violent fantasies to their target demographic. Part of their marketing has been the demonization of democrats and liberals, something that increased during Obama’s presidency, a rhetoric that was situated in the need for revolutionary violence against tyrannical governments. With the end of Obama’s term as president, the National Rif le Association switched its focus to cultural issues as being threatening to their members, and from characterizing Syrian refugees as members of ISIS to blatant racist propaganda blaming minorities for crime. Viewers of the National Rif le Association’s television channels are repeatedly told they are under attack from black people, liberals and undocumented immigrants. Not only do these fears ensure the continued sale of firearms, but they reinforce the legitimacy of the state—albeit one that is steeped in systemic racism.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have provided several examples of how neoliberal ideologies of individualization, responsibilization and privatization serve to mitigate the duty of care of the state to its citizens by including them as consumers of their own risk management. This is part and parcel of the logic of neoliberalism, where, as we discuss more fully elsewhere, emphasis is on self-blameworthiness and self-responsibility to fix the woes of state and neoliberalism. From individual-level practices such as personal alarms, self-defense classes and the purchase of weapons, to corporate and commercial practices such as insurance, private security, surveillance technologies and the commodification of historically public sector services, the state and neoliberal market engage in continued capital accumulation. This is done in a way that promotes logic that normalizes the focus on potential risks against future threats despite the reality (i.e. the statistics) of the harms. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the example of maritime piracy, the security industry is self-perpetuating, whereby the marketing rhetoric

36  Self-defense or neocapitalist rhetoric?

capitalizes on fear and insecurity to sell products that do little to manage or prevent actual harm and violence, effectively creating its own demand. The more security products that a consumer purchases, the greater the reliance on these products for feelings of safety, and therefore, the greater the distrust in people and the environment around them. As summarized by Ericson (1994) “[s]ecurity is marketed within a system seen as having a limitless potential and this system therefore augments insecurity. As with all forms of commodification, the more one experiences security products the more they become objects of desire and insatiable appetite” (p. 171). In addition, we have brief ly highlighted that self-defense and the consumption of security products are not equally available to all people in society, rather they replicate larger structural inequalities based on race and gender. From the large personal security market that targets women and capitalizes on the fear of sexual violence and the highly propagated trope of the stranger-rapist, to the racist marketing tools of the National Rif le Association, like state protection the private sector does not protect everyone equally (i.e. there are lesser protections afforded to women and people of color). Through such partnerships the state maintains its legitimacy as having the monopoly on violence, yet does nothing to address the structural issues of inequality and injustice that are the direct result of capitalism and, even more so, of neoliberalism.

Notes 1 There is general agreement that a mass shooting is defined as a single incident where four or more people, not including the shooter, are shot and/or killed at the same location and time (Gun Violence Archive, 2018). 2 The countries include Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Vanuata. 3 The Rice rule refers to the murder of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy who was shot by a white police officer while playing with a toy-gun in a park in Cleveland, Ohio. 4 A keyboard quarterback is a colloquial or slang term used to describe people that review, critique and write about American football plays post-game.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2010). Commercial Fishing Deaths: United States 2000–2009. Washington, DC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chalk, P. (2008). Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy and Challenges for the United States. Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation. Chambers, M. (2010). Transportation Safety by the Numbers. Washington, DC: United States Department of Transportation. Clancy, T. (1994). Introduction. In LaPierre, W. (Ed), Guns, Crime, and Freedom (pp. xiii–xv). Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. Collins, V. E. (2012). Dangerous seas: Moral panic and the Somali pirate. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 45(1), 106–132. Cunningham, C. (2016, November 7). We’ve been teaching women to defend themselves all wrong. Washingtonian. Retrieved from www.w​a shin​g toni​a n.co​m /201​6/11/​07/ fe​m inis​t-sel​f-def​ense-​teach​i ng-w​omen-​how-t​o -def​end-t​hemse​lves-​a ll-w​rong/​ Currie, E. (1997). Market, crime and community: Towards a mid-range theory of postindustrial violence. Theoretical Criminology, 1(2), 147–172. Damsel in Defense. (2018). Damsel in DEFENSE. Retrieved from www.m​ydams​elpro​ .net/​CORPO​R ATE/​shop/​CATAL​OG.as​px?di​splay​Categ​ory=0 ​09 Davis, M. (1990). City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles. London, UK: Pimlico. Ellis, R., Fantz, A., Karimi, F. & McLaughlin, E. C. (2016, June 13). Orlando shooting: 49 killed, shooter pledged ISIS allegiance. CNN. Retrieved from www.c​n n.co​m /201​6/ 06/​12/us​/orla​ndo-n ​ightc​lub-s​hooti​ng/in​dex.h​t ml Ericson, R. (1994). The division of expert knowledge in policing and security. British Journal of Sociology, 45(2), 149–175. Ericson, R. & Doyle, A. (2004). Uncertain Business: Risk, Insurance and the Limits of Knowledge. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978–1979. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Fox, K. (2018, March 9). How US gun culture compares with the world in five charts. CNN. Retrieved from www.c​n n.co​m /201​7/10/​03/am​erica​s/us-​g un-s​t atis​t ics/​i ndex​ .html​ Garland, D. (1996). The limits of the sovereign state: Strategies of crime control in contemporary society. British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471. Gun Violence Archive. (2018). Gun violence archive 2019. Gun Violence Archive. Retrieved from www.gunviolencearchive.org/ Hawkes, K. G. (2001). Don’t give up the ship. Security Management, 45(9), 81. Hemenway, D. (2017). Private Guns, Public Health. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hemenway, D. & Solnick, S. J. (2015). The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007–2011. Preventive Medicine, 79(October), 22–27. Hirst, P. (1994). Associative Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Hollander, J. A. (2009). The roots of resistance to women’s self-defense. Violence Against Women, 15(5), 574–594. Hoyle, C. & Zedner, L. (2007). Victims, victimization and criminal justice. In Maguire, M., Morgan, R. & Reiner, R. (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology (pp. 461– 495). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. International Maritime Bureau. (2011). Annual report on piracy and armed robbery against ships. International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Commercial Crime Services. Retrieved from www.iccwbo.org

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International Maritime Organization. (2011). Casualties of Fishing Vessels and Fishermen: Annual Statistics for the Years 2000 to 2010. London, UK: International Maritime Organization. Jacobo, J. (2017, July 20). A look back at the Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting 5 years later. AbcNews. Retrieved from https​://ab​cnews​.go.c​om/US​/ back​-auro​ra-co​ lorad​o -mov ​ie-th​eater​- shoo​t ing-​years​/stor ​y?id=​48730 ​066 Jones, T. & Newburn, T. (1998). Private Security and Public Policing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Kauzlarich, D., Mullins, C. W. & Matthews, R. A. (2003). A complicity continuum of state crime. Contemporary Justice Review, 6(3), 241–254. Kopel, D. (2000, April 14). Rapists like gun control. National Review. Retrieved from http:​//dav​ekope​l.org​/NRO/​2000/​R apis​t s-Li​ke-Gu​n-Con​t rol.​htm Lash, S. & Urry, J. (1987). The End of Organized Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. LaVito, A. (2018, September 6). Date rape drug test allows women to discreetly check for spiked drinks with a few drops. CNBC. Retrieved from www.c​nbc.c​om/20​18/09​ /05/d​ate-r​ape-d​r ug-t​est-a​l lows​-wome​n-to-​d iscr​eetly​- chec​k-for​- spik​ed-dr ​i nks.​html Loader, I. (1997). Private security and the demand for protection in contemporary Britain. Police and Society, 7(3), 143–162. Loader, I. (1999). Consumer culture and the commodification of policing and security. Sociology, 33(2), 373–392. Lobo-Guerrero, L. (2008). ‘Pirates’, stewards, and the securitization of global circulation. International Political Sociology, 2(3), 219–235. Low, S. (2003). Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America. New York, NY: Routledge. Lowe, M. (2011, April 2). Fast growing business. Maritime Security Review. Retrieved from www.m​a rsec​revie​w.com​/2011​/04/f​a st-g ​rowin​g -bus​i ness​/ Manders, H. (2013, June 19). Apparently leg-hair stockings are the new pepper spray. Refinery29. Retrieved from www.r​efine​r y29.​com/e​n-us/​2013/​06/48​701/h​a iry-​legs​tocki​ngs Masquelier, C. (2017). Critique and Resistance in a Neoliberal Age: Towards a Narrative of Emancipation. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. McCaughey, M. (1997). Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense. New York, NY: New York University Press. Medlock, S. (2005). NRA = no rational argument? How the national rif le association exploits public irrationality. Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, 11(1), 39–60. Neocleous, M. (2007). Theoretical foundations of the ‘new police science’. In Dubber,M. D. & Valverde, M. (Eds), The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Newburn, T. (2001). The commodification of policing: Security networks in the late modern city. Urban Studies, 38(5–6), 829–848. Oceans Beyond Piracy. (2011). The economic cost of Somali piracy 2011. Oceans Beyond Piracy. Retrieved from http:​//oce​a nsbe​yondp​i racy​.org/​sites​/defa​u lt/f ​i les/​econo​m ic_ c​ost_o​f _pir​acy_2​011.p​d f Pavarini, M. (1997). Controlling social panic: Questions and answers about security in Italy at the end of the millennium. In Bergalli, R. & Sumner, C. (Eds), Social Control and Political Order: European Perspectives at the End of the Century (pp. 75–95). London, UK: Sage. Power, M. (2004). The Risk Management of Everything. London, UK: Demos. Reiner, R. (1992). Policing a postmodern society. Modern Law Review, 55, 761–781.

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Rinehard, B. (2012). Horn of Africa: Land and sea. Civil-Military Fusion Centre. Northwood, UK: North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Robinson, M., Gould, S. & Lee, S. (2018, November 8). There have been 307 mass shootings in the US so far in the 2018—here’s the full list. Business Insider. Retrieved from www.b​usine​ssins​ider.​com/h​ow-ma​ny-ma ​ss-sh​ootin​g s-in​-amer ​ica-t​h is-y​ear2​018-2​ Rose, N. (1996). The death of the social: Reconfiguring the territory of government. Economy and Society, 25, 327–356. Sanchez, R. (2018, September 22). In a 24-hour span three ordinary places of business became danger zones. CNN. Retrieved from www.c​n n.co​m /201​8/09/​22/us​/thre​e wor​kplac​e -sho​oting ​s-24-​hours​/inde​x.htm ​l Serwer, A. (2018, September 13). The NRA’s catch-22 for black men shot by police. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.t​heatl​a ntic​.com/​ideas​/arch ​ive/2​018/0​9/the​-nras​- catc​h22-​for-b​lack-​men-s​hot-b​y-pol ​ice/5​70124​/ Shearing, C. (1996). Public and private policing. In Saulsbury, W., Mott, J. & Newburn, T. (Eds), Themes in Contemporary Policing (pp. 83–95). London, UK: Police Foundation/ Policy Studies Institute. Shearing, C. & Stenning, P. (1981). Modern private security: It’s growth and implication. In Tonry, M. & Morris, N. (Eds), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research (pp. 193–245). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Simister, V. (2013, November 11). The problem with anti-rape underwear. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​l ifea​ndsty​le/wo​mens-​blog/​2013/​nov/1​1/ pro​blem-​a nti-​rape-​u nder ​wear-​chast ​ity-b​elt SLFORCE (2018). Personal alarm siren song—130dB Safesound personal alarm keychain with LED light, emergency self-defense for women, kids & elderly. Security safe sound rape whistle safety siren alarms. Amazon.com. Retrieved from www.a​m azon​ .com/​Perso​n al-A ​l arm-​Siren​- Song​- Safe​sound​/dp/B​07BV7​BRGT/​ref=s​r_1_4​?ie=U​ TF8&qid=1544981461&sr=8-4&keywords=personal+safety+alarm Small Arms Survey. (2018, June). Annual report 2017. Retrieved from www.s​m alla​r mssu​ rvey.​org/f ​i lead ​m in/d​ocs/M​-file​s/SAS ​-Annu​a l-Re​port-​2017.​pdf Smart, C. (1999). Feminism and the Power of Law. London, UK: Routledge. Sterling, J. (2018, October 27). Just 3 months ago, the Pittsburgh synagogue’s rabbi lamented gun violence and failure to tackle it. CNN. Retrieved from www.c​n n.co​m / 201​8/10/​27/us​/syna​gogue​-rabb​i-gun​-viol​ence-​blog-​post-​t rnd/​i ndex​.html​ Stranglin, D. & Curley, J. (2018, November 8). ‘Horrific scene’: 12 dead in Thousand Oaks, California, bar shooting; shooter identified as Ian David Long. USA Today. Retrieved from www.u​satod​ay.co​m /sto​r y/ne​ws/20​18/11​/08/m​a ss-s​hooti​ng-bo​rderl​ ine-b​a r-gr​i ll-t​housa​nd-oa​k s-so​uther​n-cal​i forn​ia/19​27840​0 02/ Zaveri, M., Jacobs, J. & Mervosh, S. (2016, November 3). Gunman in yoga studio shooting recorded misogynistic videos and faced battery charges. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2018​/11/0​3/us/​yoga-​studi​o -sho​oting​-f lor ​ida. h​t ml Zedner, L. (2009). Security. New York, NY: Routledge.

4 THE COMMODITIZED SPECTACLE Sports, violence and entertainment

As we are writing this mid-summer 2018, the World Cup is well underway. Videos of fans turn viral on social media, as celebrations or commiserations in the streets of Russia and home towns of other teams often spiral out of control into acts of mischief and, in some cases, physical violence. Fans destroy local property including cars, homes and businesses, and engage in interpersonal violence. Stories f lood the media of related troubles, such as spikes in human trafficking (Dean, 2018), doping (Pitt-Brooke, 2018) and police corruption (Reuters, 2018). This is not unique to the World Cup, rather it is common to many organized sporting events from the Olympics to the Superbowl. The sporting spectacle, therefore, carries with it tremendous social costs that are often justified by others based on an economic analysis that weighs costs against profit. For example, it is well established that the Olympic host country invests millions of dollars in infrastructure, building stadiums, public transportation and security to accommodate a two-week-long sporting event. In 2016, it is estimated that Brazil spent 2.8 billion USD. This included the building of new stadium facilities, a new subway line, a doping laboratory, pollution cleanup for Guanabara Bay and renovation for a port (The Associated Press, 2017). The large amount of monies spent on such an event have come under intense scrutiny in a country where there is extreme poverty and inequality. As indicated by the Associated Press (2017), the months following the Games saw the country sink into one of its worst economic depressions since the 1930s, with teachers and hospital workers being paid their salaries months later, and similar delays being experienced by those receiving pensions. The total cost of the Games is still unknown, but estimates put it grossly over budget at 13.1 billion USD (Watson, 2017), with some characterizing it as a “financial disaster” (Davis, 2017). The situation in Brazil is not unusual, with similar stories from other countries post-international sporting events (e.g. the 2010 FIFA World Cup held in South Africa).

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In addition to harms that are associated with national and global sporting events, there is little concern from consumers and society more broadly for the costs to athletes’ bodies, who often sacrifice in many ways for the entertainment of others. While many of these athletes are rewarded handsomely by a capitalist system that celebrates athletic prowess, the system of reward is situated in structures of gender, race and class that replicate and reinforce social inequalities and patterns of exploitation (i.e. gender inequalities in pay, venues and media coverage) (Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014; Ratna & Samie, 2018). For example, consider the glaring wage disparity between men and women’s professional sporting teams, as well as the lesser media coverage and public interest afforded women’s sports more generally (Groombridge, 2017; Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014), or the over-sexualization of the female athlete’s body in promotional photographs (Coad, 2008; Willis, 1982), or the Western tendency to bifurcate gender into dualistic categories of male and female, restricting conversations of gender and sport to the inclusion of women—a narrow understanding that ignores complex experiences and the changing nature of gender as a category that far extends beyond the gender binary. Like previous chapters, we focus on a particular social phenomenon and its commodification through the lens of neoliberal capitalist consumption. Yet, unlike previous chapters, we examine sport as a spectacle, a carnival of celebration that simultaneously acknowledges its inherent inequalities yet, in many cases, celebrates them as being natural products of a market-driven economy. Furthermore, through this examination, we note the role of sport, its commodification and consumption of the body, as something that is sexualized and commercialized, bombarding the consumer with culturally promoted ideals of sexuality, beauty and fitness. It is these images that become a normal part of our everyday lives with little thought given to the cost of their production. First, we consider the brief literature that addresses consumption in the sporting realm before moving to some more specific examples to better expand on our argument.

Sports and consumption Sport1 and sporting events have been of considerable interest to scholars since the formation of modern sport in the mid-nineteenth century (Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014). There is an abundance of research that has explored the consumerist nature of sport as an institution. Broadly, the literature comes from multiple different disciplines, ranging from medicine, to public health, to sociology, to childhood nutrition. Some examples include research that examines patterns of media consumption for fans and the changing nature of media platforms (Chan-Olmstead, 2017; Coakley, 1994; Giulianotti, 2002), spectators’ behavior, including debates surrounding the terminology of ‘consumer’ as applied to sporting fans ( Jenkins, 1992; Mehus, 2005; Wann, Grieve, Zapalac & Pease, 2008; Wann, Melnick, Russell & Pease, 2001), sports engagement as consumption and

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its relationship to health and fitness (Wheaton, 2004; Zhang & Wang, 2012), as well as economic investment and public interest in some sports over others (Fink, 2015). More specific to this chapter is critical sports scholarship situated in sociological and cultural analyses that examine the replication of social inequalities as they manifest themselves in sporting activities, access to certain sports and sport as a white, masculinist institution (Birrel, 1990; Douglas, 2002; Hargreaves, 2000; Ratna & Samie, 2018; Scraton, 2001). There exist numerous ethnographies, too many to adequately address here, that address differing sports and leisure activities (Bunsell, 2013; Vaccaro & Swauger, 2016; Weinberg, 2016; Woodward, 2007) and the athletes that traverse them. Taking varying theoretical approaches many of these studies examine intersections of culture, social structure, race, class and gender in navigating different sporting spaces, venues and competitions. Inherent to these studies is the acknowledgment of the complexity of sport as an institution and as a site for sociological inquiry, especially as it relates to issues of power and community. Although this literature provides considerable scholarly insight, our focus here is on the intersection of sport with neoliberalist capitalist consumption and the harms that persist for the purposes of sporting entertainment. We start by examining the sporting event as spectacle.

Sport, hyper-commodification and the spectacle Sport as entertainment is not new, however, it has been argued that there has been a marked increase in the commercialization and “hyper-commodification” of sport since the 1980s (Giulianotti, 2002). As argued by Coakley (1994) “throughout history sport has always been used as a form of entertainment. However, sports have never been so heavily packaged, promoted and presented, and played as commercial products as they are today” (p. 303). Often framed as a by-product of global capitalism, sponsorship and broadcasting deals have turned athletes and sporting teams into vehicles for financial gain. For example, in 2012, Hambrecht, Hambrecht, Morrissey and Black estimated the total market value of four of the major sporting leagues—The National Football League (NFL), The National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Hockey League (NHL)—to be 67 billion USD, with more recent reports showing a marked increase in value over the last 16 years (Sports Facility Reports, 2017). As argued by Giulianotti (2002) in reference to association football (soccer), the commercialization of sport and its hyper-commodification [h]as been driven by the extraordinary and different volumes of capital that have entered the game from entirely new sources: satellite and pay-perview television networks, Internet and telecommunications corporations, transnational sports equipment manufacturers, public relations companies, and the major stock markets through the sale of club equity. (p. 29)

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This, Giulianotti (2002) argues, ref lects the changing nature of late capitalist society, although sport is not exclusively a product of modern society, as it has been consumed in varying forms throughout history. We are however, focusing on the period where consumerism and consumption have become increasingly important, with the inf lux of big business, mass media and globalization (Crawford, 2004). However, we note that, while economics and material consumption feature strongly in our argument, the commodification of sport is not exclusive to financial profit, as it also includes person-to-person relationships where the actions/behaviors/performances of some are consumed by others (Holt, 1995). Take, for example, mega sporting events such as the World Cup. The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has recently received considerable international media attention because of several investigations into widespread corruption at the highest level, which have led to several indictments and convictions (BBC News, 2015). In 2015, the United States Department of Justice arrested 14 FIFA officials for a range of crimes including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies. These were all offenses that contributed to schemes that revolved around personal profit in exchange for sponsorship contracts, the host country selection process and the FIFA presidential elections. The charges spanned a time period of 14 years (The United States Department of Justice, 2015). Subsequent investigations were launched by five different countries (BBC Sport, 2015; Fortina, 2015; Foulkes, 2015; Rosenberg, 2015; TCRN Staff, 2015). Beyond the cases of corruption against the individuals working for FIFA, the organization has historically caused significant harm in the planning and organization of the actual games. Leading up to the World Cup in Brazil (2014), there were reports of protests, riots and police violence and suppression. Much of this was related to the significant infrastructure required for the games where new stadiums, public transit systems and roadways were needed to accommodate the mega event. A Swiss-based nongovernmental organization reported that approximately 170,000 people lost their homes to accommodate these projects, with many families forcibly resettled to houses without running water or electricity—which have been described as “basic huts” (Wilson, 2014). Furthermore, the monies necessary to fund the infrastructure project came from public funds. In the case of Brazil, where there is acute inequality, estimates of the amount spent equals that spent in one year on the country’s welfare program, a program that supports approximately 50 million people. In addition, the haste and financial burden of the building projects led to nine reported deaths (Beydoun, 2014), fewer than the eleven who died in the run-up to the Olympics (Salles, 2016), but a relatively small number compared to the 1,200 reported deaths of migrant workers in Qatar in anticipation of the 2022 World Cup (Foster, 2017). Here we see state governments of host countries making cuts that disproportionately impact the poor and the working classes.

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Compounding these inequalities are the restrictions enforced by FIFA on the local vendors who sell food, drinks, souvenirs and other trinkets outside the events. FIFA requires that the host country ensures that only products from FIFA’s own sponsors, which they themselves have licensed, be sold in and around the stadiums (Wilson, 2014). Complicit in these harms are the multinational corporations such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony and Visa, who, through financial sponsorship, have bought rights from FIFA to be the exclusive brands for the World Cup. For example, in a demonstration of the power of FIFA as an organization, Budweiser was designated to be the official beer of the 2014 games. Yet Brazil had criminalized the sale and consumption of alcohol in football (soccer) stadiums in efforts to curtail and prevent the incidents of hooliganism and violence. However, FIFA pressured Brazil into rescinding this law and lifting the ban on alcohol in stadiums in anticipation of the games (BBC News, 2012). The behaviors and harms caused by FIFA are not new, nor are they exclusive to the World Cup. Consider, for example, the spike in human trafficking that surrounds sporting events. In preparation for the Winter Olympics in 2014, it was reported that Russia spent approximately 51 billion USD revamping and improving the coastal town of Sochi and the surrounding mountains to accommodate the event. The massive building project relied on tens of thousands of workers, 16,000 of whom were migrant workers from surrounding countries, such as Serbia, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Many of these workers received little compensation for their labor, working for between 1.80 and 2.60 USD per hour, while others still were shortchanged their wages or not paid anything at all. Although Russia acknowledged that they owed workers 8.34 million USD in unpaid wages, hundreds of workers with claims for payment were detained under allegations of violating regulations relating to their employment or terms of their migrant status, and then later deported (Hepburn, 2017). Not only are people trafficked in to help with the labor necessary to complete infrastructure projects, but claims have been made that there is also an increased demand surrounding these events for commercial sex (Shelley, 2010). With hundreds of thousands of tourists and fans f locking to events like the Superbowl, reports indicate that the number of sex-trafficking incidents triple (O’Day, 2018), however little corroborating data has been found to substantiate this claim (Hayes, 2010). The focus here is not substantiating this claim, rather that sporting events create spaces where states, corporations and individuals commit significant harm, all in the name of the ‘carnival’ and its relationship to neoliberalism. Here we have noted several social, physical and economic harms that result from a mega sporting event. A sporting event is an imposing public display, a spectacle that ref lects the dominant cultural logic of the present day and cannot be “separated from noncoercive strategies of power and persuasion” (Caray, 2005, p. 355). It is there for the entertainment, consumption and pacification of the masses, but at a great cost, as the power and persuasion in its current form

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is that of profit-making, capitalist consumption and market-driven economic competitiveness that benefit some at the expense of the most vulnerable. There exists a veneer whereby the fan can engage and consume while still remaining distant from the ‘necessary’ harms that allow for their consumption. This is further compounded by corporate sponsorships that expand the visibility of the sport and provide increased opportunities for the global trade of sporting goods (Hasting, Cable & Zahran, 2005). Multinational corporations manufacture goods at low costs in less industrialized countries and then market them at a high level of profit to more aff luent consumers—the sports fan—who can consume whether directly (by attending a mega-event) or indirectly by watching through pay-per-view television packages, supporting their teams by purchasing ‘official’ team goods that further the commercialization and commodification of the sport in question. The fan can then ‘live’ the sporting experience through their purchasing power; through their consumerism. As argued by Debord (1995) in discussing spectacle, “All that once was directly lived has become mere representation” (p. 12). The world has become ‘spectacular’, a society of the spectacle whereby, [T]he spectacle is both the outcome and the goal of the dominant mode of production. It is nothing added to the real world—not a decorative element, so to speak. On the contrary, it is the very heart of society’s real unreality. In all its specific manifestations—news or propaganda, advertising or the actual consumption of entertainment—the spectacle epitomizes the prevailing model of social life. (Debord, 1995, p. 13) In the case of the sports fan, the spectator is alienated from their own life, watching their actions as if removed. Debord (1995) suggests that the more the spectator observes, the less actual engagement they have, losing understanding of their own wants, wishes and sense of self. They are manipulated and, through this lens, deprived of their own judgment. As argued by Møller and Genz (2014), through this lens the spectator or consumer can be viewed as a victim, where something has been done to him/her. We agree with their assertion that “the spectator does make a choice … [yet it is] unfair to underestimate spectators by describing them as uncritical sleepers” (Møller & Genz, 2014, p. 262). In the case of sporting events, the consumer makes a choice to attend and watch, and to ignore, whether purposefully or through disavowal, the harms and costs to others that has allowed for their consumption. They are not victims of the spectacle, rather they are accomplices in the carnivals of violence and harm that pervade them. This can also be demonstrated through a brief examination of United States collegiate sports. There is considerable scholarship on the exploitation of college athletes (Beumon, 2008; Bowen & Levin, 2003; Byers & Hammer, 1995; Clotf leter,

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2011; Fort & Quirk, 1999), specifically black college athletes, as well as a large number of editorials, op-eds, exposés and testimonies that bring to the forefront the commodification of young women and men solely for their athletic talent (Becker, 1987; Branch, 2011). Dating back to the coining of the term ‘student-athlete’ in the 1950s (Sperber, 1999), there is considerable attention to the commercialization of young people’s athletic capabilities at the expense of their academic performance (Edwards, 1985; Van Rheneen, 2015). This is especially problematic in high-revenue-producing sports such as United States football and basketball. This is largely related to the economic benefit that the university institutions receive for top-performing athletes. For example, if a college athlete is drafted into the NBA or NFL, estimates are that they will earn an annual revenue for their college team ranging from 500,000 to 1,000,000 USD (Brown, 1993; Fish, 2009; Zimbalist, 2001). Arising from this potential income, universities recruit using a promissory note—a National Letter of Intent—signed by the student-athlete confirming their commitment to a particular institution; and, in return, their tuition, books, room and board, as well as a nominal stipend, is paid for by the university. However, most student-athletes are not recruited to professional sports teams and leagues, consequently they do not provide any revenue for the university (Van Rheenen, 2015). The power imbalance between the institutions and the athletes has been of considerable concern, particularly in relation to the profits gained from the hard work of these young people (Sailes, 1998), and how this impacts the college athlete—i.e. feeling powerless (Coakley, 2009). As argued by former student football player James Duderstadt (2000) “Some universities take advantage of their student-athletes, exploiting their athletic talents for financial gain and public visibility, and tolerating low graduation rates and meaningless degrees in majors like general studies or recreational life” (pp. 5–6). Others have highlighted the overrepresentation of African American students, especially in United States football and basketball, where similarities have been drawn between collegiate sports and the antebellum South and plantation slavery (Deford, 2011; Eitzen, 2000; Hawkins, 2010; Mahiri & Van Rheenen, 2010; Rhoden, 2006). Beyond the financial inequity and charges of institutional racism against universities, there has also been considerable criticism at the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for the billions of USD they receive in broadcasting rights, of which the students do not receive any (with the exception of their scholarship package) (Silverman, 2017), because of the amateurism rule that prevents them from receiving payment for their sporting skills (NCAA, 2018). Despite this the salaries for coaches continue to rise, and they now are among the highest-paid public employees in their respective states (Gibson, 2017). Additionally, there have been several high-profile media stories of student-athletes who have spoken out about not having enough food to eat (Fowler, 2014; Ganim, 2014). In 2014, Shabazz Napier, University of Connecticut’s star basketball player, spoke out in an interview following the team’s win in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship, saying “he sometimes went

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to bed hungry” (Fulton, 2014). Similar concerns were voiced by University of Mississippi’s Bo Wallace who stated, A lot of guys go to bed hungry at night. That's real … We have our breakfast and lunch. Our cafe is open, so you can go and swipe your card, but dinner you have to pay for it … We need more compensation for that just to be able to survive. If I didn't have my parents I don't know what I would do. A lot of these kids don't have the same things that I have. I know that their struggle is something terrible. The cost of attendance, if they could just give us that, I think everybody would be OK. (Wallace, as cited in Fowler, 2014) As many students who are on athletic scholarships come from low-income families and are prevented from getting a job due to the terms of their scholarship, it is likely that they often find themselves without the necessary essentials (Fulton, 2014). In response, the NCAA passed a rule saying they would provide their athletes with unlimited meals and snacks (NCAA, 2018). However, the provision of food and snacks does not negate other potential expenses that result directly from the sport, such as medical expenses, or possible long-term brain injuries associated with the physicality of some sports (i.e. concussions in American football). Despite the well-documented and mediated exploitation of college athletes, fans continue to support their teams, attending games, purchasing team apparel and supporting the surrounding culture of the sport in question. For example, the NCAA reported that approximately 31 million people attended a college sporting event in 2017, generating 820 million USD in marketing and television rights fees. They also reported that, in spring 2017, 51.82 million people watched a college basketball game (Statista, 2018). Here we can see that sport, like all social relations, is commodified. As argued by Adorno (1991), culture itself has been commodified, and through the manufacturers, media, market agencies and advertisers, sport is no exception. Sport, as an institution, produces, packages, retools and repackages products, including those of the sporting spectacles and the athletes that make them possible, selling them to a public who, in their efforts to make their lives better and perhaps more complete, consume these goods (Austin, Gagne & Orend, 2010).This is despite known and emerging harms suffered by those actually engaged in the sport: collegiate, professional and amateur athletes. The physical nature of many celebrated sports, namely those that draw large audiences, often result in a substantial number of injuries and long-term stressors to the athlete’s body (Bachynski & Goldberg, 2014; Chalmers, 2002; Kerr et al., 2015). Many of these studies focus on risks of concussion, defined as a “trauma-induced alteration in mental status that may or may not involve loss of consciousness” (Baugh, Kroshus, Daneshvar & Stern, 2014, p. 314). Over the last 20 years there has been a significant increase in both attention and knowledge paid to the issue of “sports related concussions” and there has been a marked increase in athletes seeking medical treatment when experiencing concussive

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head injuries (Guay, Lebretore, Main, DeFrangesco, Taylor & Amedoro, 2016). The increase in attention to the issue of concussion and traumatic brain injury is often attributed to the 2008 death of a high school running back in Greenville, North Carolina. The cause of death was attributed to second impact syndrome (SIS) (McCrory, Davis & Makdissi, 2012), described as a “condition that can occur when a second head injury is sustained during the acute phase of a previous concussive injury and results in catastrophic brain swelling” (Guay et al., 2016, p. 875). Furthermore, there have been some high-profile cases of professional athlete suicides, such as that of Dave Duerson who played for the NFL (Fecke, 2013). Other concerns revolve around the impact of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive brain trauma (McKee et al., 2013). As a result, many professional sporting bodies have adopted rules that are designed to decrease the risk for harm, yet, because of the variability in symptoms that are largely dependent on self-reporting by the athletes themselves, many of these are neglected or missed (Hampshire, Macdonald & Owen, 2013; Marchi et al., 2013). Beyond concussions, sports-related injuries are prevalent at all levels of engagement. Unlike non-sports-related injuries, athletes actively put themselves at risk of injuries, often experiencing them during their careers, and yet still choosing to return to their sport having experienced an injury (whether compelled for financial or other reasons) (Savage, Collins & Cruickshank, 2017; Wadey, Evans, Hanton & Neil, 2012). Athletes, of course, make these choices, however this cannot be divorced from the large amounts of money associated with career success. This is celebrated and emulated by the sporting fans and society more broadly. Whether through passion for their team or the purchasing of team apparel, tickets and sports-endorsed products, there is an emulation of wealth through the process of consumption no different than the overall cultural ethos of global society and its definition of ‘success’. This leads to the broader public consenting to the cultural hegemony that promotes the capitalist markets that surround sports, and can be observed in the public’s fixation with sporting celebrities. An individual gains sports celebrity status for having an exceptional skill or talent, however, their ‘success’ in a capitalist system also garners them public praise and recognition. Success, then, is predominantly associated with wealth— whether real or perceived, as opposed to having other forms of capital: emotional, political, social, cultural, spiritual or familial. Yet, sporting celebrities represent exceptionalism, a status that cannot be readily achieved by the average citizen. However, aspects of the sporting experience can be emulated through consumerism—e.g. by possessing the same commodities, goods (such as the team jersey with a favorite player’s number on it) or even participation in amateur sporting events. Nonetheless, this comes with little recognition of the risks and harms associated with being a career/college or professional athlete, or the massive amount of corporate profit-making that is embedded in the industry. Furthermore, while the consumer is alienated from the harms associated with the sporting spectacle, the industry itself continues to replicate structural

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inequalities, none of which are more apparent than those of gender inequalities and sexism. Sport, despite the considerable gains of women, has been and remains a maledominated institution, especially as men not only organize and participate at a greater rate than women, but heteronormative masculinity is closely linked to physical power, success and sanctioned aggression (McKay, Messner & Sabo, 2000; Messner & Sabo, 1990; Theberge, 1993, 1994; Trujillo, 2000). Women’s admittance into sport has generally been at the periphery and relegated to those activities classified as feminine (e.g. figure skating and gymnastics). These sports are often deemed to be socially acceptable for women, as they support socially accepted assumptions about femininity—that women are smaller, weaker and slower than men. However, over the last two decades there has been an increased admittance and acceptance of women in sports, as well as a considerable focus on issues of gender and sexuality in studies of varying sports (Cooky & Messner, 2018; Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014; Ratna & Samie, 2018). Despite this, there still remain glaring gender inequities when it comes to access to sporting careers for women, such as the wages of women as compared to men, media coverage of sporting events of women’s teams and endorsement deals for women athletes, as well as heightened inequalities for women athletes who also occupy other minority statuses—e.g. race, class, ethnicity, LGBTQIA, or differently abled (Cooky & Messner, 2018; Hargreaves & Anderson, 2014; Sparkes, Brighton & Inckle, 2014). For example, consider sports that have historically been considered ‘only for men’ (Oates, 1987), such as boxing. Although women have made tremendous advances, stark inequalities remain. Consider that it was not until the 2012 London Olympics that women were able to compete in boxing (Puri, 2012). In 2017, Claressa Shields became the first female boxer to have a main event televised as the featured fight on cable television in the United States (Schirmer, 2017). Despite this recent accomplishment, one of the most famous mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters, Ronda Rousey receives pay that is considerably less than that of her male counterparts. Consider that, in Rousey’s 2014 fight against Alexis Davis (Ultimate Fighting Championship [UFC], 175), Rousey earned 120,000 USD, of which 60,000 USD was her bonus for winning. This may seem like a lot of money but, when compared with Chris Weidman’s earnings of 450,000 USD, who shared the main card with Rousey that night, it is considerably less. In fact, Lyoto Machida earned more than Rousey when he lost against Weidman—his payout was 200,000 USD (Yang, 2015). Similar patterns of gender inequality can be seen in vast gaps in earnings across most sports. In the 2015 World Cup, the United States women’s team earned 2 million USD for their win, yet the winners of the men’s tournament received 35 million USD. The highest-paid player in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) earns approximately one-fifth of the earnings of the lowest-paid player in the NBA. Furthermore, in 2017, in the Forbes top 100 highest-paid athletes, only one female athlete is featured, Serena Williams, and she is number 51. There have been efforts made to make prize money neutral,

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however, this does not account for endorsement deals that make up a large percentage of professional athletes’ incomes (Perasso, 2017). As argued by Beatrice Frey, who is the sports manager partner at UN Women, “I cannot think of any other industry that has such a wage gap, really. Depending on the country context and sport, a man can be a billionaire and a woman [in the same sport] cannot even get minimum salary” (Frey, as cited in Perasso, 2017). The gender gap in sports begins early, where young girls are dissuaded from pursuing sports that contradict socially accepted gender norms—i.e. violate heteronormative understandings of femininity and masculinity. According to UN Women, by the time girls reach puberty, 49 percent of them drop out of sports, having a knock-on effect for women’s training for professional sports. This is compounded by public consumption of women’s sports, whereby the media covered only 4 percent of women’s sporting events. When women’s sports do receive coverage, the athletes are more likely to be sexualized (Fink, 2015; Kane, LaVoi & Fink, 2013). While acknowledging that ‘women’ is not a monolithic, homogenous category the power structures of patriarchy are reproduced and reinforced through the sporting spectacle. As they are in society more broadly, women are marginalized and subordinated to occupy spaces that are of lesser importance than those of men in sport (less media coverage, fewer endorsements and a large wage gap). Like the harms caused by the mega-event, little attention is paid to how gender inequality is allowed to persist, as the focus is on capital accumulation and an industry of carnival. This allows the athletic gains of women to be readily dismissed under the guise of ‘being less profitable’, without acknowledging the structural biases that have not only shaped sport as a sexist and patriarchal institution but also situated any attempt to change the structure within a narrow economic framework of cost-versus-profit. The official discourse is removed from issues of inequality and becomes about fiscal success—i.e. women’s sport makes less money, attracts less public support and viewership and therefore is deserving of fewer endorsement deals and media rights, leading to lower wages.

Conclusion This chapter has broadly examined the topic of sport in society as a cultural product that is consumed and legitimated through the commodification and consumption of itself. From the excitement of the mega-event, to college athletics, to the pervasive issue of gender inequality, we have provided many examples of how sport is another illustration of commodification and consumption in an age of neoliberalism. As demonstrated in other chapters, the sporting spectacle is reliant on corporate and state economic interests that are manufactured to create an image divorced from the realities of the violence and harms that allow for its success. These harms include the exploitation of migrant labor, trafficking, exploitation of college athletes, institutionalized policies of racial inequality as well as gender inequalities that are so pervasive they have garnered condemnation from the United Nations. Interestingly, and unlike harms addressed in other

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chapters, sport as an institution makes little effort to hide these transgressions, whether it be the social and economic devastation that follows a mega-event, or the personal trauma suffered by repeated head injuries, the harms of the industry have been subsumed into the broader neoliberal capitalist system as normal consequences of the sporting spectacle. The fan, or consumer, therefore, enjoys their sport divorced from the reality of the harms that allow for their fandom, as the glaring harms and inequalities are allowed to persist. Rather the focus is on the hyper-commodified experience that encourages a voyeuristic disavowal of the reality of their consumption.

Note 1 For the purpose of this chapter we are adopting Groombridge’s (2017) definition of sport as “organized, institutional activities, but sometimes games and leisure activities that share similarities” (p. 3).

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Ratna, A. & Samie, S. F. (Eds.) (2018). Race, Gender and Sport: The Politics of Ethnic ‘Other’ Girls and Women. New York, NY: Routledge. Reuters. (2018, June 15). Russian police ordered to withhold news of thefts, killings during the world cup. Reuters. Retrieved from www.e​spn.c​om/so​ccer/​f ifa-​world​ -cup/​s tory​/3526​5 69/r ​u ssia​n -pol ​ice-o​r dere​d -to-​w ithh​old-n​e ws-o​f-the​f ts-a​nd-ki​ lling​s-dur​i ng-w​orld-​cup Rhoden, W. C. (2006). Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. New York, NY: Crown Publishers. Rosenberg, M. (2015, December 30). U.S. prosecutors trumped by Uruguay in FIFA corruption case. Reuters. Retrieved from www.r​euter​s.com​/arti​cle/s​occer​-fifa​-urug​ uay-i​dUSL1​N14H1​93201​51230​ Sailes, G. (Ed.) (1998). African Americans in Sport. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Salles, J. M. (2016, August 5). Don’t forget the construction workers who died making the Rio Olympics happen. Think Progress. Retrieved from https​://th​i nkpr​ogres​s.org​ /dont​-forg​et-th​e -con ​struc​t ion-​worke​r s-wh​o -die​d -mak ​i ng-t ​he-ri​o -oly ​mpics​-happ​ en-ba​c6bd3​ee43/​ Savage, J., Collins, D. & Cruickshank, A. (2017). Exploring traumas in the development of talent: What are they, what do they do, and what do they require? Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 29, 101–117. Schirmer, E. (2017, March 10). Fighting for the lights: Claressa Shields’ big night for women fighters. ESPN. Retrieved from www.e​spn.c​om/es​pnw/v​oices​/arti​cle/ 1​88720​47/fi​g htin​g -lig​hts-c​lares​sa-sh​ields​-big-​n ight​-wome​n-fig​hters​ Scraton, S. J. (2001). Reconceptualizing race, gender and sport: The contribution of black feminism. In Carrington, B. & McDonald, I. (Eds.), Race, Sport and British Society (pp. 170–187). London, UK: Routledge. Shelley, L. (2010). Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Silverman, R. (2017, September 26). Forget bribes, the real NCAA crime is exploiting athletes. Daily Beast. Retrieved from www.t​hedai​lybea​st.co​m /for​get-b​r ibes​-the-​real-​ ncaa- ​crime​-is-e​x ploi​t ing-​athle​tes Sparkes, A. C., Brighton, J. & Inckle, K. (2014). Disabled sporting bodies as sexual beings: Ref lections and challenges. In Hargreaves, J. & Anderson, E. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexuality (pp. 179–188). New York, NY: Routledge. Sperber, M. (1999, January 8). In praise of ‘student-athletes’: The NCAA is haunted by its past. Chronicle of Higher Education, A76. Retrieved from https​://ww​w.chr​onicl​e.com​/ arti​cle/I​n-Pra​ise-o​f /237​53 Statista. (2018). College sports (NCAA)—statistics & facts. Statista: The Statistical Portal. Retrieved from www.s​t atis​t a.co​m /top​ics/1​436/c​olleg​e -spo​r ts-n​caa/ TCRN Staff. (2015, May 28). Costa Rica prosecutors open investigation into arrest of FIFA official Eduardo Li. The Costa Rica News. Retrieved from https​://we​b.arc​h ive.​ org/w​e b/20​15052​9 0749​52/ht ​t p://​t heco ​s tari​c anew ​s .com ​/cost ​a -ric ​a -pro ​s ecut ​orso​pen-i​nvest​igati​on-in​to-fi​f a-ar ​rest-​of-of ​f icia​l-edu​a rdo-​l i The Associated Press. (2017, June 14). AP analysis: Rio de Janeiro Olympics cost $13.1 billion. USA Today. Retrieved from www.u​satod​ay.co​m /sto​r y/sp​orts/​olymp​ics/ 2​017/0​6/14/​ap-an​a lysi​s-rio​- de-j​a neir​o -oly​mpics​- cost​-13-1​-bill​ion/1​02860​310/ Theberge, N. (1993). The construction of gender in sport: Women, coaching, and the naturalization of difference. Social Problems, 40(3), 301–313. Theberge, N. (1994). Toward a feminist alternative to sport as a male preserve. In Birrell, S. & Cole, C. (Eds.), Women, Sport, and Culture (pp. 181–192). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

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The United States Department of Justice. (2015, May 27). Nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives indicted for racketeering conspiracy and corruption. Justice News. Retrieved from www.j​ustic​e.gov​/opa/​pr/ni​ne-fi​f a-of ​f icia ​l s-an​d-fiv​e -cor ​porat​e -exe​ cutiv​es-in​d icte​d-rac​ketee​r ing-​consp​i racy​-and Trujillo, N. (2000). Hegemonic masculinity on the mound: Media representations of Nolan Ryan and American sports culture. In Birrell, S. & McDonald, M. (Eds.), Reading Sport: Critical Essays on Power and Representation (pp. 14–39). Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Vaccaro, C. A. & Swauger, M. L. (2016). Unleashing Manhood in the Cage: Masculinity and Mixed Martial Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Van Rheneen, D. (2015). Exploitation in college sports: Race, revenue, educational reward. International Review for Sociology of Sport, 48(5), 550–571. Wadey, R., Evans, L., Hanton, S. & Neil, R. (2012). An examination of hardiness throughout the sport injury process. British Journal of Health Psychology, 17(4), 103–128. Wann, D. L., Grieve, F. G., Zapalac, R. K. & Pease, D. G. (2008). Motivational profiles of sport fans of different sports. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 17, 16–19. Wann, D. L., Melnick, M. J., Russell, G. W. & Pease, D. G. (2001). Sport Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators. New York, NY: Routledge. Watson, R. T. (2017, June 14). The Olympics cost Rio at least $13.1 billion and probably more. Bloomberg. Retrieved from www.b​loomb​erg.c​om/ne​ws/ar​ticle​s/201​7-06-​14/th​eoly​mpics​- cost​-rio-​at-le​a st-1​3 -1-b​i llio​n-and​-prob​ably-​more Weinberg, J. D. (2016). Consensual Violence: Sex, Sports and the Politics of Injury. Oakland, VA: University of California Press. Wheaton, B. (Ed.) (2004). Understanding Lifestyle Sports: Consumption, Identity and Difference. New York, NY: Routledge. Willis, P. (1982). Women in sport in ideology. In Hargreaves J.(Ed.), Sport, Culture, and Ideology (pp. 117–135). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wilson, B. (2014, September 8). Fifa world cup ‘hits the poorest hardest’. BBC News. Retrieved from www.bbc.com/news/business-28881952 Woodward, K. (2007). Boxing, Masculinity and Identity: The ‘I’ of the Tiger. New York, NY: Routledge. Yang, M. (2015, August 3). The money Rhonda Rousey makes falls short compared to men’s earnings, & that’s a problem UFC needs to address. Bustle. Retrieved from www.b​u stle​.com/​a rtic​les/1​01567​-the-​money​-rond ​a-rou ​sey-m ​a kes-​f alls​- shor ​t-com​ pared​-to-m​ens-e​a rnin​g s-th​ats-a​-prob​lem-u​fc Zhang, Y. & Wang, L. (2012). The research on the sports consumption and the development of physical fitness industry. In Jin, D. & Lin, S. (Eds.), Advances in Electronic Commerce, Web Application and Communication: Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing, Volume 148 (pp. 7–11). Berlin, Germany: Springer. Zimbalist, A. (2001). Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

5 THE CYCLE OF OPPRESSION AND INEQUALITY

Oppression and inequality are pervasive throughout the globe. Consider the vast economic inequality where more than 70 percent of the world’s adults own under 10,000 USD in wealth (Inequality.org, 2016). That means 70 percent of the global population has 3 percent of the global wealth. On the other hand, the wealthiest, less than 8 percent of the overall population own 86 percent of the global wealth. While economic inequality has always accompanied capitalism,1 since the neoliberal project was put in place in the early 1980s, the economic divide has been magnified. Today, the 10 richest billionaires own 505 billion USD in combined wealth (Inequality.org, 2016). In the United States the economic inequality has significantly altered to where, today, the wealthiest 1 percent of United States’ households own 40 percent of all the country's wealth (Ingraham, 2017). However, “about 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty” (Semega, Fontenot & Kollar, 2017). In addition, the United States has “the highest rate of income inequality among Western countries. The 1.5 trillion USD in tax cuts in December 2017 overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality” (UNU-WIDER, 2017). Partly as a result of economic inequality along with the policies of neoliberalism, are extreme poverty, homelessness, immigration and the plight of refugees, both in the United States and across the globe. One need only access a news source to see ongoing coverage of the crisis of these issues. However, the political and media focus is hegemonic carceral discourse on individuals and specific crises, not how the neoliberal carceral state is the architect and enforcer of these inequalities and oppression as well as the hegemonic discourse used to define them. Prior to delving into some of these issues (specifically refugees, the homeless and immigrants) and the perpetuation of oppression and inequality, the following section provides a theoretical framework that guides our thoughts.

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Theoretical framework We suggest that the homeless, immigrants and refugees have been reduced within societies, in particular the United States, to what Simmel (1950) calls the condition of the stranger, in which “general attributes, felt to be specifically and purely human, are disallowed to the other. But ‘stranger’, here, has no positive meaning; the relation to him is a non-relation; he is not what is relevant here” (p. 3). In this sense, refugees, immigrants and the homeless are disallowed the general attributes of being purely human, and their position in society is one of a non-relation to the rest of the societal group. The stranger is fixed within a specific spatial group, yet his/her position is determined and contains a tension within communities as they are ‘not common’. As Simmel notes (1950) As a group member, rather, he is near and far at the same time, as is characteristic of relations founded only on generally human commonness. But between nearness and distance, there arises a specific tension when the consciousness that only the quite general is common, stresses that which is not common. (p. 1) In this sense, being a refugee, immigrant or homeless is not common in relation to the ‘normality’ of participating in the neoliberal capitalistic society. Additionally, the carceral state brands the strangers who walk among us as socially dead (Cacho, 2012). After all, the stranger, “is by nature no ‘owner of soil’—soil not only in the physical, but also in the figurative sense of a life—a substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least in an ideal point of the social environment” (Simmel, 1950, p. 1). This marks the beginning of the demarcation between the ‘worthy’ and the ‘unworthy’, reducing the multitude of intersecting social conditions that can cause people to become homeless, refugees and immigrants to a set of individual character f laws, someone else’s problem and the unwanted: socially dead. The carceral state exercises “the power to decide the point at which life ceases to be politically relevant … In modern biopolitics, sovereign is he who decides on the value or the nonvalue of life as such” (Agamben, 1998, p. 142). Biopolitics is about governing bodies, living or dead. Biopower includes the managing of death and reproduction of a population. Biopower functions by dividing people into those who should live and those who must die. According to Foucault (1977), the sovereign right to kill (droit de glaive) and the mechanisms of biopower are inscribed in the way all states function and are constitutive elements of modern state power. Mbembe’s (2003) conception of ‘necropower’, “the capacity to define who matters and who does not, who is disposable and who is not” (p. 27) complements Agamben and Foucault’s concepts of biopower. In this sense, necropower denotes the “new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of

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the living dead” (Debord, 1988, p. 40). This is accompanied by the hegemonic discourse of carceral states that “isolates all it shows from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequences” (Debord, 1988, p. 28). This includes discourse surrounding refugees, immigrants and the homeless and the policies dealing with these populations of ‘the stranger’. Approaching this from a Foucauldian perspective, this discourse is spectacle’s ‘truth’ and ‘regime of truth’. According to Foucault (1980), discourse includes a definition of how an issue is defined and the rules guiding the ways it is discussed. These then, determine the authoritative truth. They come to be the dominant and hegemonic way of thinking, serving to “valorize the status quo while enforcing an exclusionary politics that denies or subjugates alternative ways of knowing” (Wall & Monahan, 2011, p. 243). The truth and discourse react to the social consequences or behavioral manifestations without acknowledging the nature or social roots much less the tie to neoliberalism. Yet, the state’s truth, or hegemonic discourse, operates within neoliberalism and in accordance with the interests of those who most benefit from it. Instead, this truth and hegemonic discourse dissolve the homeless, immigrants and refugees into behavioral fragments rather than unitary human lives. The discourse ignores the role of the state and neoliberalism where there is the defensive and offensive pact concluded between these two powers, the economy and the State, has assured them of the greatest common advantages in every field: each may be said to own the other … This union has also proved to be extremely favorable to the development of spectacular domination, which, precisely, from its formation, hasn’t been anything else. (Debord, 1988, p. 5) The neoliberal carceral state and its violence require and include the consent of those colonized: the process of social death involves violence and the consent of many, including the general population (Neocleous, 2014). After all, state power should be viewed in terms of violence and consent as “the manufacturing of consent goes hand in hand with the exercise of violence” (Neocleous, 2014, p. 3). This consent extends throughout society to include social service and nonprofit organizations that address the stranger populations (see also Chapter 10), local community leaders and the general public. The manufacturing of consent to the neoliberal carceral state’s policies and violence toward these populations takes place through effective promotion of the ideology of neoliberalism along with expected nationalism. In this sense, the violence of the policies addressing these populations becomes legitimate violence “exercised against those dispossessed and ‘socially dead’” (Linnemann, Wall & Green, 2014, p. 3). This violence then becomes disavowed and normalized (Neocleous, 2008). In other words, the strangers in our society are not seen as having value; rather, they are an unwanted ‘burden’, the socially dead stranger among us.

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‘The’ refugee The number of refugees has surpassed 18.5 million globally for the first time in recorded history (UNHCR, 2017, pp. 5–7). For example, refugees are estimated to be: Syria, 6 million; Afghanistan, 2.6 million; South Sudan, 2 million; and the Americas, roughly 705,000. The global stateless population is estimated to be roughly 10 million individuals—the epitome of the stranger. According to the United Nations Human Rights Council (2018), four of the ‘least developed’ countries are among the top ten refugee-hosting states taking in over 11.5 million refugees (61 percent of all refugees), while the Global North has been reluctant to take in significant numbers of refugees. Consider that 4.8 million Syrian refugees have been accepted into three Middle Eastern countries, while the United States has accepted only 18,000 since the war broke out in Syria. Ironically, while not wanting the refugees, the United States has been and remains an external political force fanning the f lames of conf lict in the Syrian war, supporting anti-Assad groups. Likewise, the number of Afghanistan refugees is part of 17 years of United States’ carceral military actions and war against the Taliban, then ISIS, in Afghanistan. As we discuss below with the immigrants and the homeless, refugees are met with social, political and economic toxic carceral exclusionary logic—the epitome of the stranger. As noted in the New York Times, “the issue is as toxic as ever and the politics have become a prime neuralgic danger to the [European] bloc, bringing populists to power most recently in Italy and Austria” (Erlanger, 2018). Refugees are the socially dead. Carceral discourse has been used to further demonize and exclude refugees while laws of protection are weakened and borders are tightened. They are portrayed as animals that are uncivilized and, in some cases, as terroristic threats to national security and the economic wellbeing of the country of focus. Populist countries and the United States are at the center of using disparaging fear-mongering discourse to ensure refugees remain the stranger. For example, Donald Trump said that “Eight Syrians were just caught on the southern border trying to get into the US. ISIS maybe? I told you so. We need a big and beautiful wall!” (Sanders, 2018). He has also stated, “I’m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. Don’t want them here … We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country and love deeply our people” (Stephenson & Knecht, 2017). Republican Representative Steve King (Iowa), told the press he does not want “Somali Muslims”, who were accepted as refugees in the United States, working in his district’s meat-packing plants and that “Sweden has capitulated to halal”, when they removed pork from a soccer tournament (Ehrlich, 2018). Trying to appeal to United States citizens’ concerns about safety, Donald Trump has continuously referred to refugees and migrants as criminals: “crime rate in Germany is ‘way up’ … ‘big mistake’ to allow an inf lux of immigrants that ‘strongly and violently changed their culture’” (Valverde, 2018). The origin country is portrayed as uncivilized—referring to refugees and

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migrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries, Trump stated, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”. Nearly all of his tweets highlight discourses of exclusion and the demonization of refugees. As CBS News reporter Haley Ott (2018) noted “in a number of tweets earlier this week, US President Donald Trump claimed Europe was an example of how immigrants represent a danger to Western society” (p. 1). Through this lens, they are a threat as they are unable to participate in the neoliberal economic order, as they are not coming to a country with a mass of financial wealth and status. Policies of exclusion and the tightening of borders in the European Union and United States abound in efforts to ensure refugee status is that of unwanted, socially dead strangers. Algeria has abandoned roughly 13,000 expelled migrants since March 2018 in the Sahara desert where temperatures are roughly 188 degrees. They are left with no food or water. Expelling these migrants in this manner is Algeria’s solution to the pressure exerted by the European Union “to head off migrants going north to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea or the barrier fences with Spain” (Moussa & Abarchi, 2018). This type of policy is yet another example of how migrants and refugees are the socially dead among us through the exercise of biopolitics and biopower of the global carceral players. As populist regimes are elected, the worse the plight of refugees and migrants. The Italian interior minister, Matteo Salvini, “has hit the ground running in the worst possible direction. The head of the anti-immigrant party, Salvini upped the inf lammatory rhetoric and doubled-down on the League’s worst campaign promises” (Buzzanca, 2018) stating to the public he was reducing the budget for asylum seekers and was sending all ‘irregular migrants’ back to their countries of origin. Upon visiting a Sicilian port, in early June 2018, where rescued migrants and refugees were being disembarked from ships, he stated “the good times are over” for migrants and insinuated non-profit bodies involved in rescuing them at sea were complicit with human smugglers (Sunderland, 2018). Likewise, Hungary has outlawed assisting migrants in any fashion, while treating those in the country as animals (Chicago Tribune, 2018). Since the election of Trump, the United States has also weakened its domestic refugee law, to include the separation of families seeking asylum at any border point of entry, as well as the state’s political asylum program process. The administration has taken the position that all individuals who cross the borders without prior authorization will be criminally charged, regardless of claims of asylum (Refugees International, 2018). Furthermore, in June 2018 the Trump administration created a new task force of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service for the purposes of investigating ‘bad’ cases of naturalization. The task force will “find US citizens they say should not have been naturalized, to revoke their citizenship, and eventually deport them” (The Takeaway, from WNYC and Public Radio International, as cited in Helm, 2018). The administration has also discreetly started discharging non-citizens from the military, though they were signed up under a program that provides citizenship at the completion of their service.

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Beyond the discourse and policies of exclusion, to us there is no better way to illustrate how refugees are treated as socially dead strangers than by examining the conditions within the vast number of refugee camps/cities globally. Across the world, refugees have endured war, corruption and social oppression, however, refugee camps provide little safety or sanctuary. Not only are large numbers of people excluded from neoliberal society, they are tightly packed into makeshift shelters where they are subject to further harm and violence. For example, in 2017 the Durnik refugee camp in northern France was riddled with rape and violence (Townsend, 2017). The same is occurring in refugee camps in Italy, which are at best squalid with unfit living conditions (Neslen, 2017). Likewise, the same animalistic treatment was occurring in Australia (Amnesty International, 2016). In addition to being vulnerable to violence from fellow refugees, soldiers and other political groups, many refugees report receiving poor treatment from the very organizations claiming to be there for their security. According to a report by the United Nations Population Fund, “women in refugee camps in Syria have been forced to offer sexual favours in return for aid from the United Nations” (Ensor, 2018). Those that seek out a refugee shelter and do not make it out of their origin country fare just as badly as internally displaced persons who report similar experiences of poor sanitation, violence and harm. The hegemonic carceral logics and discourse promoting fear of ‘the other’, the stranger, abound for the populations and groups deemed unworthy. These policies and hegemonic discourses continue the cycle of oppression and inequality. The following section addresses this in relation to the homeless in the United States.

‘The’ homeless We believe the following quote by Hogeveen and Freistadt (2013) nicely portrays the overall imagery of the carceral state’s treatment of the official figure of 564,708 homeless in the United States alone (the number significantly underestimates the actual numbers). In geographies where the beacons of the neoliberal economy spend and earn the homeless are unwelcome. Marginalized populations who are set apart by their economic destitution and inability to participate fully in the capitalist order are excluded and slotted into debauched and dissolute spaces. Blots on the otherwise serene and tranquil city, they are shooed and shunted into spaces few elites would dare travel or, for that matter, call home. They are often treated like pestilence by local residents and are commonly seen as teetering on the precipice of criminality. Governments, for their part, discursively constitute this other as gorging themselves on the public coffers. Disdain and contempt greet the other … who dares traverses the imaginary but all-too-real inner city border. (p. 41)

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Hegemonic discourse of the neoliberal carceral state approaches the homeless as an appropriate target for austerity measures, based on a hegemonic discourse of societal (taxpayer) burden that relies heavily on existing stereotypes and images of the dirty, lazy, crazy, worthless, parasitic homeless person, perceived as an ‘individual’ problem. The June/July 2018 Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in the United States, noted this use of degrading discourse: In thinking about poverty, it is striking how much weight is given to caricatured narratives about the purported innate differences between rich and poor that are consistently peddled by some politicians and media. The rich are industrious, entrepreneurial, patriotic and the drivers of economic success. The poor are wasters, losers and scammers. As a result, money spent on welfare is money down the drain. If the poor really want to make it in the United States, they can easily do so: they really can achieve the American dream if only they work hard enough. The reality, however, is very different. (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2018, p. 6) The choice of language used to describe the homeless or the poor such as— ‘bum’, ‘bag lady’, ‘tramp’, ‘trash’, ‘hobo’, ‘gutter punk’, ‘skint’ or ‘on stamps’— readily illustrates this. Such language is used publicly and casually to dissuade others from treating a homeless person humanely. The disparaging terms used to refer to the homeless support the ongoing carceral logics, where the problem of homelessness is framed as one of personal responsibility, and have resulted in the use of punitive measures to restore order and ‘public civility’. This truth—and the regime of truth it creates—is disassociated from the realities of homelessness and is centered on maintaining the status quo and creating a socially dead population. This truth or political rhetoric has systematically been invoked to erode state welfare programs. As Wacquant (2009) has argued, beginning in the 1970s, welfare was remade into ‘workfare’: “the price to pay to achieve efficiency and success in the pitiless capitalist competition that now spans the globe” (p. 78). As the right to free capital from all constraints took precedence over all things, any right to social assistance was abolished and replaced both discursively and in reality with workfare, a ‘social handout’ in return for obligatory unskilled and poorly paid labor. After all, and pulling directly from our theoretical framework, the homeless are “by nature no ‘owner of soil’—soil not only in the physical, but also in the figurative sense of a life—a substance which is fixed, if not in a point in space, at least in an ideal point of the social environment” (Simmel, 1950, p. 1). This marks the beginning of the demarcation between the ‘worthy’ and the ‘unworthy’, reducing the multitude of intersecting social conditions that can cause homelessness to a set of individual character f laws. The primacy of workfare as the solution to homelessness is so pervasive that it is even absorbed and reified by some homeless people themselves, as demonstrated in the signs made

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and held up by those asking for help—‘will work for food’—or employing patriotism and duty with signs like ‘Vet need work’. Put more simply, to be worthy of food, and therefore of life, individuals must prove that they are deserving by reengaging with capitalism. By reducing the cause of homelessness to individual moral character f laws, the possibility of a public understanding of how the homeless condition came to be is buried, making the integrated spectacle’s truth easily consumed. This ignores the fragility of life in a capitalist economic system, where very banal and normal happenings can lead to the rapid loss of everything necessary to function in society (employment, access to housing, healthcare, etc.). The harsh realities of capitalist labor systems that lead to homelessness are ignored, suppressed under a loud and dominant narrative, the regime of truth that constructs those who are poor, on welfare or homeless as burdensome, lazy and of poor moral character, and that leaves no room for a secondary truth. This reinforces their status as socially dead, or as the living dead (Mbembe, 2003). The Special Rapporteur stated in their report, the homeless, [a]re effectively criminalized for the situation in which they find themselves. Sleeping rough, sitting in public places, panhandling, public urination and myriad other offences have been devised to attack the ‘blight’ of homelessness. The criminalization of homeless individuals in cities that provide almost zero public toilets seems particularly callous. In June 2017, it was reported that the approximately 1,800 homeless individuals on Skid Row in Los Angeles had access to only nine public toilets. Los Angeles failed to meet even the minimum standards the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sets for refugee camps in the Syrian Arab Republic and other emergency situations. (United Nations Human Rights Council, 2018, p. 12) Homelessness of the magnitude within the United States is not inevitable, it ref lects political choices framed within the carceral logics to see the solution as law enforcement. The homeless are forced to become part of a dark underbelly of society, silenced and removed from the visual experience of the rest of us, who gratefully pretend that homelessness does not exist. Nowhere is the spatial exclusion of homeless bodies more prominent than in the urban landscape of the city. As representatives of poverty, the homeless are a visible reminder of the failings of capitalism, social inequality and the ‘socially dead’ processes that subject them to harsh regulatory controls directly commissioned by an increasingly carceral state. Abundant examples exist, from the criminalization of New York City ‘squeegee’ operators in the era of law and order policing (Parenti, 2008), to park exclusion laws, off-limits orders, increased application of trespassing, loitering and vagrancy laws, as well as architectural designs that restrict access to certain spaces (Carr & Hunter, 2008). Often framed as efforts to preserve public space and/or restructure urban landscapes (DeVerteuil, May & von Mahs, 2009), such initiatives serve to undermine

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the humanity of those who are targeted, in a further exercise of biopolitics and biopower. As Simmel (1950) notes, “this phenomenon too, however, reveals that spatial relations are only the condition, on the one hand, and the symbol, on the other, of human relations” (p. 1). For example, consider the recent installation of spikes and metal balls in doorways and under overpasses, and the wiring found under bypasses and bridges. In language that reinforces the subjugation, disdain and contempt for the homeless stranger, termed ‘bum free’ architecture (Hohenadel, 2014), these devices are installed in places that could provide shelter from the elements. They are found where the homeless are not wanted, in submission to the neoliberal agenda of capital attraction, the primary concern of the neoliberal state. Other initiatives include benches that are designed to prevent a person from sleeping or reclining on them. Signs abound across cities alerting the public to the needed exclusion of the stranger, while simultaneously reassuring the rest of us our privileged positions. “The visual, spatial and bodily ‘encounter’ with homelessness in public space [is] steeped in the politics of the stigmatized Other” (Gerrard & Farrugia, 2014, p. 2220). The contestation over and reconstruction of public space in terms of the visibility of the homeless is not new (e.g. Mitchell, 1997). For decades, federal, state and local politicians and agents of social control have evacuated and displaced the homeless from cities through laws. However, recent policy and implementations offer an approach that is more insidious. The reordering of public space enhances and extends the segregation effects of architectural modes of exclusion. Cities engage in what Gibson (2003) refers to as “projects of reassurance”, with sanitized phantasmagorias of an urban consumer utopia (Becket & Herbert, 2008). This serves to further solidify the consumption of the ‘truth’, legitimating policies and the role of the integrated spectacle in the cyclic nature of state violence. In addition, state, county and local programs are rife with conditional requirements that create substantial barriers to those seeking assistance. Services are uncoordinated and involve a broad array of agencies that require a person seeking help to expend valuable resources to access their services (Brubaker et al., 2013; Hamilton et al., 2012; Huey, Fthenos & Hryniewicz, 2013). In addition, meeting the admission criteria to obtain services often depends on the completion of multiple forms that require considerable reading and writing skills (Brubaker et al., 2013). Available services are often targeted less to the needs of the person than to correcting undesirable or deviant behaviors and forcing that person into underpaid work. Services are “merely recycled remedies issued straight out of the country’s colonial era even as they amply demonstrated their ineffectiveness in the past” (Wacquant, 2009, p. 79). Further, the abundance of red tape and geographical and resource-driven barriers to accessing assistance are hidden from the public discourse on homelessness, representing a clear disconnection between the discourse and policy on homelessness and the reality of being homeless, and reinforcing the status of the homeless as the socially dead stranger. As Del Casino and Jocoy (2008) state “homeless policy is thus creating new governmentality effects that spatially (re)organize homeless bodies with even

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‘tighter regulatory controls’” (p. 194). However, homelessness is a symptom, not the problem, of the sadomasochistic relationship between the state and its subjects. Without this recognition and rejection of the carceral logics, we remain complicit in the reproduction of inequalities. The following section addresses immigrants where we make a distinction between the treatment of migrants from Central, South and Latin America versus the previously discussed global migrant/refugee carceral logics.

‘The’ immigrant—aka the illegal immigrant Given that the United States has an institutionalization of racism, classism and sexism, the everyday banal discourse that is repeated in much of the population ref lects this history, however, the discourse is generated from the carceral logics of politicians to legitimate carceral policies. Immigrants crossing the border into the United States are instantly labeled and treated as criminals. They are labeled in discourse and through treatment as less than, the other, worthless, criminal, animals, an economic and social drain on society—similar language to that used for the homeless. Consider some of the Trump administration’s rhetoric to frame these migrants as unwanted strangers: “These aren’t people. These are animals” (Korte & Gomez, 2018); “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists” (Newsday.com, 2016): I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad. You have people coming in, and I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country; (Ortiz, 2016) and “We’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are” (Sharman, 2018). Attorney General Jeff Sessions, another hard-liner and neoconservative, stated If you cross the border unlawfully, even a first offence, we’re going to prosecute you … If you’re smuggling a child, we’re going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law. If you don’t want your child to be separated, then don’t bring them across the border illegally. (Sharman, 2018) We are puzzled as we try to figure out how, if parents left children behind, they would not be separated. This type of discourse is regretfully now commonplace

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in much of the political sphere, selling the carceral hegemonic logics to a vast portion of the population to ensure legitimacy of policies that dehumanize and create socially dead populations. There are numbers of the population that not only believe this, but also the hegemonic rhetoric that these immigrants are taking the population’s jobs. Consider Trump’s statement that people living in the United States illegally “take jobs from hardworking African-Americans and Hispanic citizens” (Associated Press, 2016). These political tirades are devoid of the conditions so many crossing the border are attempting to f lee from, and removes the glimmer of hope they have for a safe life. They serve to continue a cycle of oppression and inequality. In an effort to appease Trump’s political base and to enact his own moral code at the expense of thousands of migrants reaching out to the United States, the administration has increased the Immigration Customs Enforcement crackdowns, arresting thousands across the United States while simultaneously going after employers that have hired ‘illegal’ workers in what are called roundups. Migrants can then spend months or years in detention facilities before decisions are made. In addition, the Trump administration “is for the first time in decades seeking to sharply restrict legal immigration, particularly the entry of people with few job skills, saying they compete with American-born workers and drive down wages” (Miroff, 2018). Those attempting and/or successfully making entry to the United States face harsh treatment. The Trump administration has separated families, including infants, as parents are taken to detention centers and children wait in military complexes, non-profit shelters or, the latest, a tent city in Texas.2 In many of his statements, Trump refers to his administration’s devastating immigration policies as the fault of liberals, stating how “undocumented immigrants pose a public safety threat” (Clark, 2018); he has also suggested that the Democrats are constructing “phony stories of sadness and grief ” (Fabian, 2018) on the border, and he has called for members of the Republican Party to delay attempting to fix the nation’s immigration laws until after the midterms. In addition, the United States military has been asked to prepare to house up to a total of 20,000 immigrant children. This is the carceral state’s attempt to not only ensure exclusion from the general population’s view, but also to ensure a constant everyday-life reminder of carceral logics, while simultaneously ensuring the additional pouring of budget funds into projects of control. The administration has now shifted its stance and claims families will be housed together. The policy change to house families together plays well into the goals of the neoliberal carceral state. The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has been an economic boom to the corporations that manage detention centers. The Dow has taken notice as “Prison shares rise as US eyes more migrant family detention space” (Carew & Joyner, 2018). In addition, with the detaining of separated families, together or not, the violence of neoliberalism results are economic, a multibillion USD business. For example, Congress’s 2018 omnibus bill provides for 1.3 billion USD for the unaccompanied children program. Private and non-profits gain from this, as

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well as the carceral military. Consider that, “Nonprofit Southwest Key Programs is expected to be paid more than $458 million in 2018” with the Chief Executive receiving a salary and compensation topping 1.5 million USD (Stewart, 2018). To return to hegemonic ‘truth’, in the process of enforcing the hegemonic socially dead, evil stranger, Trump chose the day ( June 22, 2018) Congress was working on yet another immigration bill, to use families that are mourning the loss of a loved one, allegedly resulting from violence perpetrated by an illegal immigrant, in an effort to ensure the outcry among his base, and to continue the pattern of otherizing and fear-mongering of the stranger amongst us (Clark, 2018). Trump stated: “You know you hear the other side, you never hear this side. You don’t know what's going on”. Trump also said. “These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The word permanently being the word that you have to think about. Permanently … They’re not separated for a day or two days, they are permanently separated. Because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens” (Clark, 2018).  Just as with the homeless, the unwanted populations in the United States and across the globe pay a heavy price under the neoliberal logics of the carceral state. They are not only the stranger among us, they are the socially dead. Moreover, the horrific policies and practices in turn facilitate the status quo and enhance the neoliberal economic sphere through carceral policies. We see this as a distressing example of the violence of neoliberalism.

Summary thoughts We view the current state of refugees, homeless, and immigrant policies and discourse as an outcome of neoliberalism, the increased control of punitive carceral states, expansion of carceral logics and the inequalities associated with the capitalist global order, capital and privatization expansion, the abandonment of labor laws, the free play of capital and the erosion of collective protections, including social welfare. This neoliberal project eradicates all aspects of humanity from those it targets, reducing them to the status of the socially dead stranger. Through populist rhetoric, the language of hate, fear and otherizing, the most vulnerable in society become disenfranchised, afforded lesser rights and are targeted for violence (i.e. subject to sexual violence and inhumane living conditions in refugee camps) with little concern for their well-being beyond the capitalist value assigned by corporations who seek to make profit from their plight. While sections of state populations look on, or even speak up against the formalization of policies that normalize and legalize such carceral practices (i.e. the aforementioned border separation policy of the Trump administration), there still remains a significant number of the citizenry who see nothing wrong with denying society’s unwanted their basic human rights. They are seemingly comfortable with such suffering, elucidated as a failure of individual responsibility opposed to broader structural forces, ones they blindly rationalize could not possibly touch them. Ironically, the structural forces that lead to the massive and varying forms

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of inequality are initiated, and often forcefully perpetrated, by external interventionist policies that create the fragility of life that the carceral policies of state are instituted to address. It is here, we argue, that attention needs to be paid, if we are ever to address the systemic and profound violence of neoliberalism perpetrated, in this case, against the most vulnerable of us—the socially dead strangers.

Notes 1 We would be amiss if we did not note that a significant portion of global inequality is due to colonialism and capitalism and now neocolonialism and neoliberalism. For example, more than 70 percent of millionaires live in Europe or North America, and, as expected, 43 percent of these millionaires are United States citizens (Inequality. org, 2016). 2 It is important that we note the United States has a long history of separating families through carceral policies and the criminal justice system, such as the historical separation of Native American children.

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www.w​a shin ​g tonp​o st.c​o m/ne​w s/wo​n k/wp​/2017​/12/0 ​6/the ​- rich​e st-1​- perc​e ntn​ow-ow​n s-mo​re-of​-the-​count​r ys-w​ealth​-than​- at-a​ny-ti​me-in​-the-​past-​50-ye​a rs/?​ utm_t​erm=.​ee971​1063c​8c Korte, G. & Gomez, A. (2018, May 16). Trump ramps up rhetoric on undocumented immigrants: ‘These aren’t people. These are animals’. USA Today. Retrieved from www.u ​s atod ​a y.co​m /sto ​r y/ne ​w s/po​l itic ​s /201​8/05/​16/tr ​u mp-i ​m migr ​a nts- ​a nima​ ls-me​x ico-​democ​rats-​sanct​uary-​citie​s/617​25200​2/ Linnemann, T., Wall, T. & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4), 506–527. Mbembe, J. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40. Miroff, N. (2018, March 4). Trump says American workers are hurt by immigration. But after ICE raided this Texas town, they never showed up. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.w​a shin​g tonp​ost.c​om/wo​rld/n​ation​a l-se​curit ​y/tru​mp-sa​ys-am​ erica​n-wor​kers-​a re-h​u rt-b​y-imm​igrat​ion-b​ut-af​ter-i​ce-ra​ided-​this-​texas​-town​-they​ -neve​r -sho​wed-u​p/201​8/03/​0 4/8c​e1636​2 -1d6​5 -11e​8 -ae5​a -16e​6 0e46​0 5f3_​s tory​ .html​?utm_​term=​.1366​3146f ​8f2 Mitchell, D. (1997). The annihilation of space by law: The roots and implications of antihomeless laws in the United States. Antipode, 29(3), 303–335. Moussa, A. & Abarchi, T. (2018). Walk or die: Algeria abandons 13,000 migrants in the Sahara. Aljazeera. Retrieved from www.a​ljaze​era.c​om/ne​ws/20​18/06​/walk​- die-​ alger​ia-ab​a ndon​s-130​0 0-re​f ugee​s-sah​a ra-1​80625​06404​3040.​html Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M. (2014, October 6). A taste for the secret: Interview with Mark Neocleous. Critical Legal Thinking, Law and the Political. Retrieved from http://criticallegalt​h inki​ ng.co​m /201​4/10/​06/ta​ste-s​ecret​-inte​r view​-mark​-neoc​leous​/ Neslen, A. (2017, April 24). ‘Horrific’ levels of child abuse in unsafe refugee camps, warns EU. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​g loba​l-dev​elopm​ ent/2​017/a​pr/24​/eu-u​r gent​-prot​ectio​n-230 ​0 0-un​accom​panie​d -chi ​ld-re​f ugee​s -squ​ alid-​camps​-gree​ce-it​a ly Newsday.com. (2016, November 9). Donald Trump speech, debates and campaign quotes. Newsday.com. Retrieved from www.n​ewsda​y.com ​/news​/nati​on/do​nald-​ trump​- spee​ch-de​bates​-and-​campa​ign-q​uotes​-1.11​20653​2 Ortiz, G. (2016, May 5). Donald Trump’s immigration quotes are totally unrecognizable from past Republican Presidents. America’s Voice. Retrieved from https​://am​erica​svoic​e. org ​/ blog ​/dona ​l d-tr ​u mps-​i mmig ​r atio​n -quo​t es-a ​r e-to​t ally​- unre​c ogni ​z able ​- from​ -past​-repu​blica​n-pre​siden​t s/ Ott, H. J. (2018, June 21). After Trump tweets, how is immigration really affecting Europe? CBS News. Retrieved from www.c​bsnew​s.com ​/news​/dona ​ld-tr ​u mpi​m migr​ation​-affe​cting​- euro​pe-mi​g rant​- cris​is-ge​r many​/ Parenti, C. (2008). Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. New York, NY: Verso. Refugees International. (2018, June 20). Report card: The Trump Administration’s performance on refugee and humanitarian protection. Refugees International. Retrieved www.r​e fuge​e sint​ernat​ional​.org/​repor​t s/20​18/6/​19/re​port-​c ard-​on-th​e -tru​m p-ad​ minis​t rati​ons-p​erfor​m ance​- on-r​efuge​e -and​-huma​n itar​i an-p​rotec​t ion?​g clid​=EAIa​ IQobC​h MIxc​_ _o6j​o2wIV​A r7AC​h 2sVg​CkEAM​YAiAA​EgLX-​vD_Bw​E Sanders, L. IV (2018). What US President Donald Trump thinks about Germany. Deutsche Welle. Retrieved from www.d​w.com​/en/w​hat-u​s-pre​siden​t-don​a ld-t​r ump-​ think​s-abo​ut-ge​r many​/a-38​99969​4

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Semega, J. L., Fontenot, K. R. & Kollar, M. A. (2017). Income and poverty in the United States: 2016—Current population reports. United States, Census Bureau. Retrieved from www.c​ensus​.gov/​conte​nt/da ​m /Cen​sus/l ​ibrar ​y/pub​l icat ​ions/​2017/​demo/​P602​59.pd​f Sharman, J. (2018, May 17). Trump says illegal migrants are ‘animals, not people’ in halfminute rant about gangs. The Independent. Retrieved from www.i​ndepe​ndent​.co.u​k / new​s/wor​ld/am​erica ​s/us-​polit ​ics/d​onald​-trum​p -mig ​r ants​- anim ​a ls-c​a lifo​r nia-​m s-13​ -sanc​t uary​- citi​es-oa​k land​-a835​5536.​html Simmel, G. (1950). The Sociology of Georg Simmel. (Trans.) Kurt Wolff. New York, NY: New York Free Press. Sunderland, J. (2018, June 11). Italy’s dangerous direction on migration. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from www.h​r w.or​g/new​s/201​8/06/​11/it​a lys-​d ange​rous-​d irec​ tion-​m igra​t ion Stephenson, E. & Knecht, E. (2017, January 27). Trump bars door to refugees, visitors from seven mainly Muslim nations. Reuters. Retrieved from www.r​euter​s.com​/arti​ cle/u​s-usa​-trum​p -ref​ugees​-idUS​K BN15​B2HL Stewart, E. (2018, June 25). The multibillion-dollar business of sheltering migrant children, explained. Vox. Retrieved from www.m​sn.co​m/en-​us/mo​ney/m​arket​s/the​-mult​ibill​ ion-d​ollar​-busi​ness-​of-sh​elter​ing-m​igran​t-chi​ldren​-expl​ained​/ar-A​Az2Ve​3 Townsend, M. (2017, February 11). Women and children ‘endure rape, beatings and abuse’ inside Dunkirk’s refugee camp. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​ rdian​.com/​world​/2017​/feb/​12/du​n kirk​- chil​d-ref ​ugees​-risk​- sexu​a l-vi​olenc​e United Nations Human Rights Council. (2018). UN Special Rapporteur’s report on extreme poverty and human rights. United Nations. Human Rights Council Thirty-eighth session 18 June–6 July 2018 Agenda item 3: Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development. UNHCR. (2017). Mid-Year Trends 2017 (pp. 1–44, Rep.). The UN Refugee Agency. Retrieved from https://www.unhcr.org/5aaa4fd27.pdf UNU-WIDER. (2017). World income inequality database – WIID3.4(Rep.). UNUWIDER. Retrieved from www.w ​ider.​u nu.e​du/da​t abas​e/wor​ld-in​come-​i nequ​a lity​ -data​base-​w iid3​4 Valverde, M. (2018, January 12). Donald Trump’s ‘s— hole countries’ remark and its policy history. Politifact. Retrieved from www.p​oliti​f act.​com/t​r uth-​o -met​er/ar​t icle​ /2018​/jan/​12/do​nald-​t rump​s-s-h​ole-c​ountr​ies-r​emark​s-and​-its-​pol/ Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wall, T. & Monahan, T. (2011). Surveillance and violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes. Theoretical Criminology, 15(3), 239–254.

6 NEOLIBERALISM AS A TOOL AND TOOLMAKER IN DEFINING THE VALUE OF THE DEAD

It is easy to recall the marathon-like media coverage of recently deceased celebrities such Tom Petty, Hugh Hefner, Mary Tyler Moore, David Cassidy, Monty Hall, Chuck Berry, Don Rickles, Charlie Murphy, Erin Moran, Gregg Allman, Glen Campbell, Fats Domino and Jerry Lewis—all of whom received extensive media coverage of their lives and deaths during 2017. Given we are now in 2019, we can add to the list of ‘those famous people we lost’ and include Penny Marshall, Nancy Wilson, Ken Berry, George H. W. Bush, Roy Clark, Stan Lee, the ‘philanthropist’ Paul Allen, Burt Reynolds, John McCain, Aretha Franklin, Anthony Bourdain, Barbara Bush and Stephen Hawking to name a few. The same type of tribute is given to the extremely wealthy dead, such as David Rockefeller, where the importance of their life is portrayed as both admirable and charitable, noting their largesse in life and the beneficiaries of their death. As an example, the coverage of the homicides of Honey and Barry Sherman describes the location of their bodies as the “lowest level of their $7 million home” while continuing to note how they made billions of dollars in the pharmaceutical industry, and that Barry was one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of 3.2 billion USD. Jon Huntsman’s death coverage reads similarly, noting he was a billionaire and philanthropist. As with other extremely wealthy people, coverage notes they were “known for their largesse, doling out tens of millions of dollars to universities, hospitals and the United Jewish Appeal” (Gray & Friesen, 2017, p. 1).We are even told how much these dead celebrities continue to be paid post-death. For example, Forbes published that, for 2018, Michael Jackson was the highest paid dead celebrity, followed by Elvis Presley. Individuals obsess with the ‘famous’, alive and in death, more than anything political. They, after all, give us some form of escape from our everyday lives, they give us a form of infotainment. However, during this same time in 2018 when celebrities’ deaths were ‘carnivalized’ for our consumption, more than two million other people in the United

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States died, uncelebrated and ignored, save by family and friends. This discrepancy of the societal response illustrates the manner in which the problematic and distorted definitions of ‘success’ and ‘worth’ through which neoliberalism assigns value to living humans’ lives is extended to assigning value to dead ones as well. If one dies without family/friends, or without the consumerist trappings of success, one’s death is invisible. If a person is believed to be homeless, coverage is scant, if any, noting perhaps the time they were found and emphasizing their ‘non-value’, as their name is omitted and substituted with ‘homeless man/woman’. This is an obvious manifestation of the inequality and valuing of human life based on neoliberalism’s discourse of value (as discussed further in Chapter 5). As discussed in Chapter 5, disposable populations, or what Simmel (1950) calls the condition of the stranger, are evident in life and in being dead. In this sense, the homeless are not common in relation to the ‘normality’ of participating in the neoliberal capitalistic society and, as such, the value of their death and being dead is not only abnormal, but invisible. The United States’ ‘disposable’ or ‘stranger’ population frequently does not merit so much as a localized obituary, regardless of the cause of death, but they may receive a mere mention in local infotainment news outlets. The routinized devaluation of the dead is evident at the forefront of local news coverage of those deemed the surplus population or the stranger, unworthy of their death and being dead being acknowledged or the value of their life in their death. As New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein (2016) details, more than a million New Yorkers classified as unidentified corpses since 1869 have been buried with no fanfare at “Hart Island, a desolate, inaccessible strip of land in the Long Island Sound” (p. 1). Others receive even less dignified treatment. For example, New York City’s “medical examiner’s office ‘lent’ an unclaimed body to the Albert Einstein School of Medicine for use as a cadaver. Three years later the body was stranded in cold storage at the school” (p. 2).Those not deemed worthy of the grandiose celebration of their life, in death are “the literal embodiment of those dispossessed and socially dead others borne of late-capitalism” (Linnemann, Wall & Green, 2014, p. 14). As Lomnitz (2005) suggests, death relates to deep issues of power, but also to politics and capitalism. The discrepancy in the value of the dead is the result of the links between power, politics and hegemonic discourse grounded in broader ideologies and structures of neoliberalism. After all, capitalism has led to the appropriation of oppressed groups, their experiences and narratives, the treatment of the dead and the continuation of inequalities associated with our current neoliberal capitalistic system. Capitalism is pervasive in life, in death and in being dead.We recognize that the value of ‘the select’ of societies have long been afforded a ‘spectacularization’ of death, from the old days of emperors or kings and queens, etc., however, we believe the unequal valuing of life and the dead should be depoliticized and openly addressed. Today’s hyper-commodification of all of social life masks us from seeing the role of neoliberalism in reinforcing the inequality of life and death. Some of the most obvious examples of the commodification of death, all grounded in the death care industry, include funerals, burials/cremations, f lower arrangements, memorial jewelry, virtual memorials and dedicated

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headstones—all of which mirror the inequality of life. Consider that the average cost for a funeral is between 7,000 USD and 10,000 USD. The average cost of cremation with no memorial services is between $1,600 and $3,000 USD. The disparity of costs is resulting in families choosing the economic option of cremation as the national cremation rate surpassed 50 percent of all the dead in the United States. Overall, the United States death industry “accounts for about $20 billion in annual economic activity, with around 130,000 employees that make a living on the 1.5 million people that go to rest each year” (Boring, 2014, p. 1). Likewise, spectacular death has been commodified and trivialized, sometimes thinly veiled as ‘shocking, tragic news’, more frequently as pandering visceral infotainment, especially so when it involves the death of the valued: the ‘fallen’ officer or war ‘hero’, or the extremely wealthy or a celebrity. This death infotainment of particular dead people generates profit for the corporate media outlets, thus contributing to the capitalistic system. This infotainment also helps shape a cultural narrative about who matters in life and consequently in death. The corporately owned news media’s seemingly contradictory, yet effectively complementary, messages of perpetually metamorphosing threats and ameliorative consumer distraction embody the neoliberal aesthetics of fear, including that of death. The mediation of fear, humiliation, pain and loathing fuse in the audience’s rapt fascination. That news organizations do not ‘report’ the news but rather ‘determine’ the news is a well-established maxim of critical scholarship (Cohen, 1972; Cohen & Young, 1973; Fishman, 1978; Glasgow Media Working Group, 1978; Hall et al., 1978). News reports of death manufacture a heinous spectacle, which converts the end of a human life (or lives) into infotainment (see Barak, 1994). So, too, the corpses of celebrities (a surreal cultural hodgepodge of professional athletes and entertainers, politicians, reality-TV stars, social media personalities and the super-rich, among others) are no longer solely relegated to grocery store tabloids, trashy talk shows and celebrity infotainment websites but now constitute newsworthy stories and images to be published, broadcast and posted by ‘serious’ news outlets. Death infotainment is perhaps no better illustrated than by the legion visuals of celebrity and the wealthy’s death (see also Rothe & Muzzatti, 2018). The paparazzi-ation of ordinary citizens via smartphone technology and social media transforms tragic misadventure and the darkest human despair into a death spectacle that is no doubt the envy of Hollywood scriptwriters and reality-TV producers and readily consumed by the public. For a culture industry bereft of imagination, but rife with cynicism and tasteless frivolity, fast-living, young, good-looking corpses are among the most lucrative of its illicit products. The fascination with dead celebrities under late modernity is much more than a ‘reasonable’ extension of our culture’s obsession with the lives of celebrities. However, if it was solely, or even primarily about celebrity, the aforementioned visuals would not exist, let alone be as widely promulgated and easily available as they are. Images of the ruined celebrity are not simply an addendum to the menu for a culture ever-ravenous for celebrity, but their presence is indicative of

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a far wider range of neoliberalism’s social pathologies. There remains a constant neoliberal message: these are the successful, what you too should strive for, while the inundation of celebrity death becomes suffocating in its banality. Neoliberalism plays an insidious role in being dead.

Defining the value of life and the dead As argued in Chapter 2 of this book, it has been well established that the metrics for success in modern society are commonly defined within capitalist parameters (Merton, 1938; Messner & Rosenfeld, 1994; Wacquant, 2009). Consider that, in the United States and many other countries across the globe, ‘success’ is often demonstrated through the acquisition of material wealth, such as houses, cars, job security (often a career), as well as other goods that are symbolic of having ‘made it’. Hegemonic discourse propagates ideals of success that have been interwoven into the constructions of status identity in life and death.1 Therefore, there exists a hegemonic discourse that aptly crafts and defines ‘success’ and, by proxy, individual worth and value within structured parameters that emphasize wealth acquisition above all else (Collins & Rothe, 2017). Success evokes a certain iconography, a pre-scripted visual imagery that enforces and then reenforces the cultural hegemony of value. As such, the death of a celebrity or an elite becomes a part of infotainment and celebration of their life invoking the political and cultural hegemonic discourse of value within this neoliberal system. In a similar manner, those who die in a barbaric, brutal or particularly violent way are also afforded minor celebrity in death, albeit for the purposes of spectacle (e.g. JonBenét Ramsey), or as in the case of documentary series such as Cold Justice, The First 48, Forensic Files, Deadly Women, Cold Case Files, The FBI Files, Dr. G. Medical Examiner, Crime 360, to mention but a few.These shows invite the audience to view the carnage of death as a cautionary tale in the name of entertainment. For 45 minutes to an hour the life of the victim, specifically their last movements, are dissected, analyzed and judged in minute detail for clues as to how their demise came about. Interestingly, these procedurals emphasize the importance of investigative techniques as well as forensic technologies to unearth the ‘truth’ about the person’s death and the person that caused it. Importantly, however, through the emphasis placed on these approaches, the person is reduced to a body, a sight for evidence collection and a source for knowledge about not only the crime committed, but the person responsible. So much so, that recreations of their still, naked and lifeless form are featured in the storytelling.The body becomes an object, reduced to another source for scientific testing, nothing more than a plot device that moves the show forward. Furthermore, the focus becomes less on the person, and more on the success and reliability of the scientific testing and investigative method, techniques utilized by the state. These shows not only glorify the spectacle of violent death but legitimate the state through the reification of the normalcy of its power and its methods as the appropriate approach, solution and method to be employed when death occurs by violence. This becomes apparent when the focus of the show, those

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that are celebrated, are not those who have been victimized, but those that solve the crime—the agent of the state (e.g. the medical examiner, police officer, coroner, crime scene technicians, etc.) The value of the victim is narrowed to a morbid curiosity of the larger public at the horrors of the violence they suffered, but also to their utility in demonstrating the authority of state as the protector of the people. Likewise, the dead that have served as agents of the state are granted, though with less fanfare, a similar discourse to that of celebrities: they are heroes and, as such, have value in their life due to their death. What is not acknowledged in the discourse of their death and deadness is how these ‘heroes’ reproduce state authority and its violence. Rather a ‘fallen soldier’ is heroic for having participated in the nationalist patriotic ‘duty’ of warfare, giving death perhaps more value than life. The moment a military member dies in duty, or after being honorably discharged, the process of giving value to being dead begins. There is a “dignified transfer” of the body with utmost “care and respect for a person whose life was given for others” (Funeralwise.com, 2018). The funeral process itself is a spectacularization of nationalism, with the standard process of a casket draped with the national f lag, a six-man honor guard to carry the casket to the gravesite, followed by a seven-person firing of guns and a bugler playing Taps. The power of the sovereign has convinced these members of society to give their lives in order to take down many of the common enemy: where citizens are willing to die in the name of the state for the sake of the larger picture (freedom)—justice for the rest of the state. Hence, the sacrifice of a life becomes a value to legitimate the violence of the state and to let ‘us’ continue to enjoy the benefits of our ‘freedom’. The same value to legitimate carceral politics is afforded to police. Police officers that have died, as agents of the carceral system of control, again reproducing state authority, power, control and violence, receive a similar narrative of value, regardless of the life once lived. Police who die while on duty receive the same death process as military members. To wit, as a force of carceral logics and maintenance of the system of inequality and legitimation, dead police officers have value that is not only grounded in a neoliberalism that values life and death based on the cultural hegemonic discourse of capital—but is wrapped in a costume of patriotism, giving one’s life for the safety of society. Juxtaposed to this, consider that garbage workers have “twice the fatality rates of police officers, and nearly seven times the fatality rates of firefighters” (Horn, 2013, p. 1). As a blogger recently wrote, “ask yourself this question; in the world of public service, aren’t garbage collectors, sanitation workers, debris haulers providing an equally important service to the whole idea of community? Is the commitment by the garbage collector any less affirmed than a police officer or a fireman?” (Leed, 2017, p. 2). Neoliberalism tells us no, they are a part and parcel of the disposable population that do not merit assigned value in being dead. The valuing of life and the dead of the ‘celebratory’ successful lives is juxtaposed when we consider that in a given year in the United States over 2,500,000 people die relatively unrecognized in their life and death (Center for Disease

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Control and Prevention, 2016). Those that labor and toil, the backbone of the spectacle of the sovereign, are merely worthy of familial recognition of the value of their loved ones. Most often represented through small obituaries in local newspapers, funeral home guest books or the newly emerged virtual memorial, with the all too familiar synopsis of where they worked, lived and who they left behind, with no other fanfare save the ritualized spectacle of a funeral. In cases where the families can afford a funeral procession, the spectacle of the police car serving as an escort is followed by family and friends proceeding to the burial site. Even this process is marred in neoliberalism’s politics of value as the more cars there are, it is perceived the more ‘successful’ that person must have been among those in the lower of stratums of life and value. Yet, no further recognition of the value of their life as a person is merited by the spectacle of neoliberalism, as their life was not defined as successful within the parameters of capital. It is merely the stratum within the sovereign capitalism that determines the value of life and one’s death. The socially dead and the surplus populations represent the mass of subjects of the spectacle that serve as a necessary aspect of neoliberalism’s discourse of value. The notion of success and value is continuously reified in the banality of everyday life, including the discourse and, to our point here, where being dead is the legitimation and exercise of the sovereign and neoliberalism as joined forces to tell us that those in the lower stratums who have not achieved ‘success’, how nonvaluable our dead loved ones are, as we/they have not successfully achieved the status consumption and commodification grants. Obituaries of the poor working class are done by families in an effort to remember and give some acknowledgment of their lives—to memorialize them. Generally, these obituaries note the surviving family members or those that died before them. In addition, most of these obituaries include where the dead person worked, as this is a symbol of status in the neoliberal order. This, in effect, reinforces the capitalistic neoliberalism definition of value—if you participate in the capitalistic system by allowing your exploitation, then there is some value to your life, though not as much as if you had been ‘successful’—able to consume and spend and exercise ‘choice’ to be ‘successful’. Consider also the death industry’s mistreatment of the grieving and the dead in the name of profit—giving no value to the lives of some individuals. During 2018, the remains of over 73 infants were found in two Detroit Michigan funeral homes, obscurely stored in trash bags, ceilings, boxes and/or unrefrigerated freezers, with possibly another 200 bodies that were held there in improper possession. On the other hand, the disposable population of the homeless continues to be targeted in life and ignored in death. In Los Angeles, California, crimes against the homeless increased 96 percent from the previous year (L.A.TACO, 2018) and more than 1,200 homeless died in 2018 alone. As the numbers of the homeless continue to increase under neoliberalism, so too will their uncelebrated deaths. When an even more marginalized person dies, their death is often reported in terms of their stigmatized status. For example, consider the reporting of the

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killing of Patrick Harmon by the police, where he is identified only as a black male with a criminal background (Mims & Noble, 2017). When it is a homeless person, there is even less said about them or their death, as they are considered a burden in the neoliberal capitalistic system. Coverage is brief and merely notes they were homeless, often without a name: “A homeless man was stabbed to death in the central valley early Sunday evening” (Apgar, 2018, p. 1). The September 29 edition of SFGate announces the death of another homeless man, described not in terms of how the structural violence of poverty produces human tragedy, but merely of a homeless man being shot: A 47-year-old homeless man was shot and killed on a Milpitas Street Thursday, police said. The man, whose name was not released, was found suffering from a gunshot wound on the 100 block of Dixon Road in the middle of the night … In the neighboring city of San Jose, eight homeless people have been killed this year. Most recently, 31-year-old transient Valentine Cortesosguera was found dead Tuesday in a field behind a San Jose apartment complex on the 800 block of Jeane Avenue. No arrests have been made in any of the cases. (Lyons, 2016, p. 1) Likewise, Channel WIFR 23 in Rockford, Illinois, reported the death of a homeless man, with the assumption that alcohol or drugs were in his system. Although the man appeared to have been ‘severely beaten’ he remained faceless and defined only by his homelessness and assumed drug and alcohol use. The harsh realities of capitalist labor systems that lead to homelessness are ignored and suppressed under a loud cultural hegemonic narrative that constructs those who are poor, receiving government assistance, or homeless as burdensome and without value in life and death. Among the more banal forms of devaluing life through death, the state’s responses to homeless deaths further devalues, as in the example of the mannequin used to substitute a homeless person. Consider the case of Shane Schindler, who was arrested March 4, 2017 for the deaths of two sleeping homeless men (ABC Eyewitness News, 2017), when the police caught him by using a mannequin as a stand-in for ‘the homeless’. By monitoring a mannequin rather than an actual homeless man—or even an undercover police officer acting as a decoy—a symbolic value is presented wherein both mannequin and the homeless victims are read as similarly empty bodies, devoid of humanity. There are also the constructed narratives of the dead that have allegedly violated a law that not only disavow their value but label them with further negative stigma, as was the case with the previously mentioned death of Patrick Harmon. Likewise, media accounts of the now well-known case of Freddie Gray,2 who died in police custody, reminded audiences of his low-value and criminal record, effectively constructing him as a non-player in the game of consumption and value: “Freddie Gray, who died a week after suffering injuries while in Baltimore

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police custody, had a lengthy criminal record, mainly for drug-related offenses, according to State court records. Police claim he was ‘involved in criminal activity’, prior to his arrest” (Cleary, 2017, p. 1). Others do not receive media attention, save for local ‘news’, where an ongoing image of a young black man is f lashed across the screen with a scripted devaluing, or a more drawn-out account of the dead person’s ‘criminal history’ and no mention of the value of any part of their life: West Jordan Police have identified the suspect in Wednesday's deadly officer involved shooting as 40 year-old Jesse Jay Taylor. Court records show Taylor had an extensive criminal history going back to 1994. According to court documents Taylor had plead guilty to possession and or use of drug paraphernalia and possession or use of a controlled substance in June of this year. In 2012, he plead guilty for disorderly conduct and in 2004 was charged with driving while under the inf luence and with an open container of alcohol. Other charges from 1994 through 2016 ranged from drug and alcohol charges and traffic violations. Wednesday, he would turn to robbery and get into a shoot out with police. (Vasquez, 2016, p. 2) As is typical in the local infotainment of crime and death, reports frequently make references to the dead person’s past offending before revealing their name. Where discourse of the dead make it comfortable and necessary to disavow the death, the discourse is “intended to sustain the pre-existing modes of hegemonic dominance” (Pearce & Tomb, 2006, p. 1). This not only reinforces the discourse on the value of life and the status quo game of neoliberalism, but also serves to remind us of the role the carceral state plays. Furthermore, not only does it devalue the dead, but it obscures the state’s banal exercise of power that creates the harsh conditions of their lives. While the audience continues to fetishize the infotainment of the ‘worthy’ dead, there is a disavowal of the more sinister structural conditions meant to reify the inequalities of life onto death and being dead.

Conclusion Something in the way can be seen too well. (Abe, 1977, p. 113) When a person dies and a family mourns, we may become aware of the contradiction of the value of the dead, even if for a f leeting moment, while simultaneously rendering these inequalities as real and innate. Though our experiences may be like those of a time mosaic—“moments that existed simultaneously, yet were impossible to experience simultaneously” (Abe, 1977, p. 73), perhaps more fittingly, this is what Slavoj Ži žek refers to as fetishist disavowal, where “I know that I know but I do not want to know” (Ži žek, 2008, p.53): where the disavowal

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“renders perfectly the functioning of the symbolic order, in which the symbolic mask-mandate matters more than the direct reality” (Ži žek, 2005, p. 2). As our opening quote to this section notes, something in the way can be seen to well. Perhaps it is the blindness of grief keeping us from protesting this inequality and hegemonic definition of the value of the dead, nonetheless, as our opening quote suggests, while grief or our fetishistic disavowal may be in the way, the neoliberal divisions of worth and value can be seen only too well through the celebrated recognition of the value of life and subsequent death of those deemed worthy by society—the successful, the wealthy, the icons of pop culture and those who serve the carceral mechanisms of the state. Yet, to us, death is death whether rich, famous, military, police officer, garbage collector, waitress, immigrant, refugee, single, married, man or woman. We are not saying death should not be grieved, nor are we suggesting that all deaths be celebrated like those of the wealthy or ignored like those of the disposable population. We are saying it is time to unobfuscate the relationships defining our value. After all, neoliberalism’s definition of value decides on the value or non-value of the dead. The politics of the dead is a symptom, not the problem, of our sadomasochistic relationship with neoliberalism. Our hope is that this chapter leads to further discussions of the obfuscated politics of death and the process of reification of inequality of life and being dead that is ensured. Furthermore, we suggest that, by forgetting the coercive power of neoliberalism and its fabricating of a distinct sort of social order, we fail to recognize the normalized and banal ways in which neoliberalism reproduces the inequality and harm in life into death and the dead in order to reproduce disparate social relations (Scott, 1998). Perhaps even more so, we are blinded and do not see that we need to see in order to escape the cycle and no longer be prisoners to the illusion of reality given to us by neoliberalism, to wit what we embrace and internalize as ‘normal’. After all, is not a life a life and a death a death?

Notes 1 We recognize that other structures and narratives shape our valuation of the dead including for people of color, LGBTQIA and women in particular. 2 We note that Freddie Gray’s value in life and death was shaped by his ‘place’ in the United States’ system of capitalism and his race which largely shaped the defining of the value of his life and death.

References ABC Eyewitness News, WABC, KTRK-TV. (2017). Police use mannequin to catch suspect killing homeless men. ABC Eyewitness News. Retrieved from http:​//abc​7ny. c​om/ne​ws/ma​n-arr​ested​-afte​r-att​ackin​g -hom​eless​-man-​decoy​/1785​026/ Abe, K. (1977). Secret Rendezvous. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Apgar, B. (2018, January 28). Homeless man stabbed to death in central Las Vegas. Law Vegas Review Journal. Retrieved from www.r​eview ​journ​a l.co​m /cri​me/ho​m icid​es/ho​ meles​s-man​- stab​bed-t​o -dea​th-in​- cent​ral-l​a s-ve​g as/

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Barak, G. (1994). Newsmaking criminology: Ref lections on the media, intellectuals, and crime. In Barak, G. (Ed.), Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime (pp. 237–264). New York, NY: Garland Publishing. Bernstein, N. (2016, October 28). For 22 unclaimed bodies in New York, a grim path from death to burial. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2016​ /10/2​8/nyr​egion​/for-​22-un​claim​ed-bo​d ies-​i n-ne​w-yor​k-a-g ​r im-p​ath-f ​rom-d​eath-​ to-bu​r ial.​html Boring, P. (2014). Death of the death care industry and eternal life online. Forbes. Retrieved from www.f​orbes​.com/​sites​/peri​a nneb​oring​/2014​/04/2​5/the​- deat​h-of-​ the-d​eath-​care-​i ndus​t ry-a​nd-et​ernal​-life​- onli​ne/#4​d7afe​161c1​a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Deaths and mortality [Data file]. Retrieved from www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Cleary, T. (2017, November 1). Freddie Gray arrest record, criminal history and rap sheet. Heavy.com. Retrieved from http:​//hea​v y.co​m /new​s/201​5/04/​f redd​ie-gr​ay-ar​ rest-​recor​d-cri​m inal​-hist​ory-r​ap-sh​eet-w​hy-wa​s-fre​ddie-​g ray-​a rres​ted/ Collins, V. E. & Rothe, D. L. (2017). The consumption of patriarchy: Commodification to facilitation and reification. Contemporary Justice Review, 20(2), 161–174. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. New York, NY: Routledge Classics. Cohen, S. & Young, J. (1973). The Manufacture of News: A Reader. New York, NY: Sage Publications. Fishman, P. (1978). Interaction: The work women do. Social Problems, 25(4), 397–406. Funeralwise.com. (2018). Military funeral rituals. Funeralwise. Retrieved from www. funeralwise.com/customs/military/ Glasgow Media Working Group. (1978). Bad News (Volume 1). London, UK: Routledge, Kegan Paul. Gray, J. & Friesen, J. (2017, December 15). Billionaire Apotex founder Barry Sherman and wife found dead in Toronto home. The Globe and the Mail. Retrieved from www. t​heglo​beand ​m ail.​com/n​ews/t​oront​o/two ​-foun​d-dea​d-at-​home- ​of-bi ​l lion​a ire-​apote​ x-fou​nder-​barry​- sher​m an/a​r ticl​e3734​8222/​ Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. & Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State, and Law and Order. London, UK: Macmillan. Horn, H. (2013). The Secret World of ‘Garbagemen’. An anthropologist joins the ranks of the underappreciated sanitation workers of New York City. The result? An eye-opening account of the mysterious and dangerous world of trash. The Atlantic. Retrieved from www.t​heatl​a ntic​.com/​natio​nal/a​rchiv​e/201​3/04/​the-s​ecret​-worl​dof-​g arba​gemen​/2745​36/ L.A. TACO. (2018, December 31). Another death on the streets – more than 1, 200 homeless people died in Los Angeles since 2017. L.A. TACO. Retrieved from https​ ://ww​w.lat​aco.c​om/an​other​- deat​h-on-​t he-s​t reet​s-mor​e -tha​n-120​0 -hom​eless​-peop​ le-di​ed-in​-los-​a ngel​es-in​-2018​/ Leed, D. (2017). The Garbage Man—Overlooked and Under Appreciated. Retrieved from https​://da​v idle​edavi​sblog​.word​press​.com/​2017/​06/28​/the-​g arba​ge-ma​n-ove​r look​ed-an​d-und​er-ap​preci​ated/​ Linnemann, T., Wall, T. & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4), 506–527. Lomnitz, C. (2005). Death and the Idea of Mexico. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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Lyons, J. (2016, September 29). Homeless man shot to death in Milpitas. SFGate. Retrieved from www.s​fgate​.com/​crime​/arti​cle/H​omele​ss-ma​n-sho​t-to-​death​-inM ​i lpit ​a s-94​72851​.php Merton, R. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Psychological Review, 3(5), 672–682. Messner, S. & Rosenfeld, R. (1994). Crime and the American Dream. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Mims, B. & Noble, M. (2017, August 14). Police shoot, kill suspect on bicycle after he allegedly brandished weapon. The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved from www.s​ltrib​.com/​ news/​2 017/​0 8/14​/poli​ce-sh​oot-k ​i ll-s​u spec​t-on-​bicyc​le-af ​ter-h​e -all​egedl​y-bra ​ndish​ ed-we​apon/​ Pearce, F. & Tombs, S. (2006). Hegemony, risk and governance: ‘Social regulation’ and the American chemical industry. Economy and Society, 25(3), 428–454. Rothe, D. L. & Muzzatti, S. 2018. Mortuuspolitics: Politicization of the dead, neoliberalism, and inequality. Contemporary Justice Review, 21(3), 327–337. Scott, J. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Binghamton, NY: Yale University Press. Simmel, G. (1950). The Sociology of Georg Simmel. (Trans). Kurt Wolff. New York, NY: New York Free Press. Vasquez, A. (2016). Officer involved shooting suspect had long criminal history. Good 4 Utah. Retrieved from www.a​bc4.c​om/ne​ws/lo​cal-n​ews/s​uspec​t-in-​offic​er-in​volve​dsho​oting​-had-​long-​crimi​nal-h​istor ​y/331​72270​1 Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ži žek, S. (2005). What’s wrong with fundamentalism?—Part I. Lacan. Retrieved from www.lacan.com/zizpassion.htm

7 NEOLIBERALISM, THE CARCERAL STATE AND VIOLENCE

Ironically, we began writing this chapter on July 4, 2018, as many United States citizens celebrated the day of independence. Yet, as vast numbers of Americans put on their red, white and blue and other ‘American’ patriotic attire, fire up their grills, display the United States f lag, travel to family and friends and make lastminute purchases of fireworks to be consumed, the underlying violence of the carceral state and its corporal and expansive inscriptions of carcerality into commodification, consumption and consent is obfuscated and disavowed. Scholars have analyzed the types of violence committed by the carceral state, including, but not limited to, atrocity crimes, carceral projects (including exclusion and containment at borders, urban areas and poor communities), police brutality, mass incarceration, the prison industrial complex and other punitive and racialized public policy, omissions to protect certain groups and a supportive culture of punishment, however little work has examined how citizens in their everyday lives come to participate in the (re)production of the carceral state. Our understanding of the carceral state is grounded in a Foucauldian framework of a carceral continuum or carceral network. In this sense the carceral state extends far beyond what is generally considered, usurping and incorporating its own subjects (us) through the consumption of its violence, its carceral logics and extension through neoliberalism. However, the consumption (figuratively and literally) within the confines of neoliberalism is disconnected from the actual course of the carceral state’s violence, facilitating its own pacification and giving consent to hegemonic control. After all, state power should be viewed in terms of violence and consent and how “the manufacturing of consent goes hand in hand with the exercise of violence” (Neocleous, 2014, p. 3). As noted by Ži žek (2008), carceral state violence is systemic violence, inherent in the social conditions of neoliberalism along with the subsequent symbolic violence that is embodied in language and its forms that in turn naturalize systemic violence. Bourdieu and

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Wacquant (1992) state that symbolic violence is “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (p. 167). They refer to this complicity as “‘misrecognition’: recognizing a violence which is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive it as such” (1992, pp. 167–168). The violence then becomes banal, disavowed, depoliticized and normalized (Neocleous, 2008). It becomes the abnormal normality or, as Neocleous (2012) calls it, a “training in resilience” (p. 189) that hardens the public to the exercise of power and violence. Given the population’s consumption of state violence, we suggest it becomes more than pacification and consent, but rather an active constituent in the production and reproduction of carceral logics, making it an accepted and banal violence of the carceral state. Consequently, our focus in this chapter is how the violent carceral state becomes benign, consumed and celebrated. Simply, the power of the carceral state, through hegemonic operations, is canalized among and through neoliberalism into projects of consumerism—manufacturing consumers’ complicity in the glorification of the carceral governmentality and its violence. Given the irony we mentioned in our opening line, we first turn our attention to the consumption of carceral logics through nationalism, patriotism and the arms of the carceral state military.

The carceral logics of neoliberalism through nationalism, patriotism and the military Consider that “Over 216 million Americans (87 percent) plan to observe Independence Day (2018) and are expected to spend 6.9 billion USD on food, according to NRF’s [National Retail Federation] annual survey” (National Retail Federation, 2018). Approximately 153 million planned a cookout or picnic, spending an average of 75.35 USD per person. Over 25 percent of United States citizens buy patriotic decorations for the day while over 51 percent purchase patriotic apparel (National Retail Federation, 2018) and it was estimated that commercial spending for that holiday in 2018 was 360 million USD. Citizens also spent more than 1 billion USD on fireworks alone (Shoot, 2018). Many local municipalities spent separately roughly 5,000 USD to 30,000 USD to host their own displays (Dickler, 2017). In addition to these commoditized products to celebrate nationalism and display patriotism, “[t]he Fourth of July is the country's top beer-drinking holiday with more than $1 billion spent on cold brews last year alone—more than the cost of burgers and hot dogs combined … Another $568 million was spent on wine” (Dickler, 2017). There are additional banal everyday activities that also promote nationalism, patriotism and the violence of the state beyond the annual carnival of Independence Day. Consider how state power and its associated violence are framed as benign, consumed and celebrated as being for the benefit of the citizenry, from celebrating anniversaries of military success, to the spectacle or carnival of military air shows, to memorials that are divorced from the context in which they occurred

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(e.g. 9/11 memorials that negate the subsequent harms and illegal wars committed by the Bush administration), to discourses that celebrate state power often situated in patriotism and nationalism. The true power of carceral state violence becomes coopted into projects of consumerism. Here the consumer is complicit in the glorification of state violence as they attend these ‘special’ events, buy commemorative apparel or propagate the hegemonic carceral narratives of state violence as being good by repeating overly simplistic tropes constructed by the state itself, as they forget or negate the real-life consequences of exercising state power (e.g. military violence, incarceration, police brutality, etc.). There are roughly 200 military bases and installations across the United States that routinely run exercises, training and special operations drills that are a part of the everyday lives of the communities that surround them. These exercises are focused on domestic and international threats to state interests; as such, they constitute more than the ‘expected’ or ‘normal’ training on military bases or property. Nationalism, national security and fear provide the conditions where military training exercises and expansionism of these exercises redirect populations into security-oriented consumption. This discourse serves to isolate the violence of the state and the everyday exposure to military training and expanded state control from its context, its past, its intentions and consequences. Hegemonic discourse is not new either, as nationalism has long undergirded the reification of the carceral state’s power. Nationalism is one step in the consent of state violence. As Neocleous (2000) suggests, a larger ideological frame that normalizes state violence and conceals the fundamental intentions is an active constituent in the fabrication and maintenance of state power. Likewise, as the famous quote by Hermann Goering (1938) during the Nuremberg Trials suggests: “the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger”. Fear has long been a tool of the state to ensure social control and placation of the population. Terrorism, and the war on terrorism, is a convenient and durable symbol that stirs middle-class social anxieties that are in many ways analogous to those brought on by the rising inequalities and precarity of late-capitalism projected as a constant state of risk—even when manufactured (see Cheliotis, 2013). Citizens become active constituents in the reproduction of state violence. The carceral state “isolates all it shows from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequences” (Debord, 1990, p. 28), manipulating individuals in the consumption and reproduction of state violence. This also occurs through the banality of acts such as the Pentagon paying for staged ‘patriotism’ events during the largest professional sports games, from the National Football League to Major League baseball. Spending more than 9 million USD between 2011 and 2015, the Pentagon paid for events that ranged from full-field displays of the United States f lag, to enlistment or re-enlistment ceremonies and emotional reunion events of service members returning, to the shock of family members who are attending the carnival of sports theatres. These paid patriotic events not

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only reach the hundreds of thousands that attend the professional games but millions of viewers that tune in for the sport season to watch their teams. As noted by Theobald (2015) “Unsuspecting audience members became the subjects of paid marketing campaigns rather than simply bearing witness to teams’ authentic, voluntary shows of support for the brave men and women who wear our nation’s uniform” (p. 1). The disconnection of state violence is further congealed through the number of air shows yearly where citizens can be ‘spectators’ and consumers of the carnival of ‘awe’, of state power and violence, while disavowing the underlying purpose and violence (International Council of Air Shows, 2018; Milavia, 2018; Spears, 2014). From our perspective these air shows represent one of the overt commodified forms of spectacle violence. “The increasingly popular air shows and festivals in the United States, including the EAA AirVenture recognized as the world’s largest and most significant annual aviation event, now showcase highly sophisticated and elaborate planes from past military airshows” that serve as entertainment and a commodity where the public become active participants in the consumption and reproduction of state violence (Top Events USA, 2018). The commodity of violence is beyond criticism (Debord, 1990). In addition to the annual military carnival air shows, the public can consume tours of bases that are proudly promoted and advertised. Consumers can purchase their tickets, ranging from 12 USD to 16 USD. These air shows and base tours are a ritualized carnival including consumption and consumerism that are depoliticized from the systematic violence (Giroux, 2015). For example, the large East Coast Oceana air show promises food and entertainment, including a quarterback challenge, a place where children can hold military rif les, sky messages in honor of the wounded warrior and Uncle Sam on stilts walking the runways, all infusing patriotism and consumption. Facebook pages are created by military bases highlighting the upcoming air show events, advertising the many forms of entertainment they will provide. “Come on out to the #oceanaairshow today and check out the interactive displays! … We’ve got lots of lunch options at the #oceanaairshow! (9/20/15) … Check out the Super Bowl trophy and do the quarterback challenge at the #USAA tent #oceanaairshow!” The Facebook sites include collections of photos taken during the event for the spectator to relive and post comments: “Our Family, had a GREAT Time at the Air show, and even the Beach Blast, and then went to Appomattox Court house the next day. GOD BLESS you all. Thank you all” (September 24, 2015). Other posts inquire where they can purchase commodities, from T-shirts to mugs. These events are embedded within the neoliberal selling of state violence, where tickets are sold to participate in these carnival attractions, ranging from 35 USD to 175 USD for the events, with VIP tickets costing much more (Sun n Fun, 2015). Active participants consume and support the overt displays of carnival entertainment and the neoliberal economic mantra of consumption. Hegemonic carceral logics and governmentality in the era of neoliberal capitalism where control, power and the exercise of state violence are sold as a commodified security

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that obscures and justifies state violence and killing. In addition, consumerism becomes a major aspect of the processes of consent and consumption—where neoliberalism is at the heart of the process of carcerality. To show our support of carceral violence, we can purchase products from major corporate endeavors through military Facebook pages or stores across the country. We can buy stickers of our military family as stick figures for our vehicles, displaying our nationalism and service to our country, bumper stickers, vehicle tire covers, coffee mugs, shirts, hats, bags, toys and a host of other products all displaying our consent, knowingly or not, and consumption, regardless of the point to which they represent particular messages for individuals. These products we see as the more banal forms of commodification and consumption of state violence. The commodification facilitates the inuring of the population to its violence as well as bringing the population fully into the integrated spectacle, including through products targeted to populations that endure extreme levels of noise in their everyday lives as military power is being exercised in training for its violence, as discussed previously. The collage of spectacular violence and commodification of carceral power serves to normalize the abnormal. There is a broad range of children’s toys that celebrate increased surveillance, military power and carceral violence, indoctrinating children from an early age. Likewise, there is a wide range of drones available for consumer purchase that includes plastic imitation versions for very young children and more sophisticated versions that are akin to remote control toys for older children and young adults, as well as more sophisticated versions that are for the adult consumer. These toys serve to reify consumption and the normalcy of state power while minimizing the purpose of these products. Of course, military toys are nothing new—generations have long played with guns, GI Joe soldiers and tanks, nor are the police figurines (less so the Fisher Price Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), a toy of an airport security checkpoint). The commodification of carceral logics also permeates popular media through film, television and video games. From shows such as 24 and Homeland, to films such as American Sniper, Zero Dark 30, 13 Hours and United 93, to video games such as Battlefield and Call of Duty, these popular depictions of military or covert state power amplify the threat of external violence to the state’s citizenry and reinforce the message that state violence is a necessary defense, reinforcing nationalism. The cultural narratives of these shows are overly simple, revolving around a basic morality of good versus evil with the use of state violence and military power deployed only for ‘good’. In the case of 24, the message to the audience is clear that torture is not only endorsed by the state but is justified when committed against ‘bad’ people (Bowes, 2013). By oversimplifying, the reality of state violence is repackaged and propagated as being a tool effectively and justifiably used against ‘bad’ people—those that pose a threat to United States citizens and the freedoms the state represents. Obviously, it is not limited to the militarized branch of the carceral state. Shows such as Law and Order, NCIS, NCIS Los Angeles, NCIS New Orleans, Law and Order Special Victims Unit

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and a host of other shows shown on Hulu and Netf lix, all simplify carceral logics and governmentality. The same argument is more acute with video games whereby ordinary citizens find themselves being able to engage in direct imitations of state violence for the purposes of entertainment. Consumers can deploy military grade weaponry such as drones, missiles and assault rif les, ride in tanks and military aircraft, deploy aerial and nuclear bombs as well as engage in drone warfare. Consider that in the video game, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, consumers take the role of a United States operative who faces down drones that he is unable to defeat due to the pure technological power of the drone weaponry. In order to defeat the enemy drones, the operatives have to deploy their own drone technology because of the power imbalance between soldier and machine (Anderson, 2014). The reality of the power differential between the state and the human soldier is most likely lost on the ordinary consumer of the video game, who from the safety of his/her living room continues to be entertained by the spectacle’s violence while simultaneously consuming and legitimating it. The training of resilience is perfected in the banal consumption of self as participant. Aside from their profitability as a commodity, war games are a powerful medium to elicit consent for the United States military and to “enable the expression of militaristic fantasies” by inviting individuals to participate in a “militarism of consumption and pleasure” (Power, 2007, p. 274). Consumers participate in benign versions of carceral “power that offer[s] a sense of security and trust in a state that seems increasingly distant, unresponsive and disconnected” (Power, 2007, p. 285). Representations of war and combat in games join consumerism to citizenship within a carceral ideology. As with television shows, videos that allow citizens to act as agents of the carceral state while disavowing the reality of its violence abound such as This Is the Police, Battlefield hardline, L.A. Noire, The Silver Case, Murdered: Soul Suspect, SWAT 4, Sleeping Dogs, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel. The consumption of commoditized products becomes the larger neoliberal ideological frame that normalizes state violence and conceals the fundamental inequalities of late capitalism (Linnemann et al., 2014). Products—beyond showcasing your consent, consumption and nationalism—are sold to be incorporated into our homes and our bodies, making state violence integrated spectacle violence, where the population becomes complicit through symbolic violence, thus reinforcing the systematic violence of the state. Moreover, these products we display every day have come to be seen as a “fact of life” that “nicely captures the dominant social meaning of banal goods” (Goold et al., 2013, p. 978). So much so, that their meaning in the popular consciousness is assigned a level of sanctity (i.e. to criticize the product is akin to criticizing the military personnel) and the product itself comes to represent national pride and patriotism. The products take on their own ideological meanings and hold value beyond the state itself, as they have become synonymous with military support, patriotism and freedom beyond the cultural production of the state—a production that originally introduced them into the public consciousness.

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Citizens fetishize products symbolizing and hailing state power and violence and, as such, being complicit. These products serve to further inure the population from the overarching meaning behind them or, as Ži žek phrased it, the fetishistic disavowal, a cultural-cognitive process that permits the public to say, “I know, but I don’t want to know that I know, so I don’t know” (Ži žek, 2008, p. 53). We do not suggest simple mystification or even willful ignorance, but rather a useful diversion that allows the public to avoid confronting the more difficult realities of the spectacle’s violence, or as misrecognition where violence is not perceived as such (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). As a consequence the state is no longer tasked with directly defending its own use of violence; rather it now can rely on consumers to come to its defense and, by proxy, its use of state violence and power, while consumers distance themselves and participate in fetishistic disavowal from the state’s violence.

Corporatized extension of the carceral state Beyond the inclusion of products previously discussed that extend carceral state logics, corporations, especially those involved in the technological sector, such as Google and Facebook, are active partners with the carceral state to further sell to, and involve you in, carceral governmentality. We are reminded of Dave Eggers’ (2013) novel, The Circle: No one needs the level of contact you’re purveying. It improves nothing. It’s not nourishing. It’s like snack food. You know how they engineer this food? They scientifically determine precisely how much salt and fat they need to include to keep you eating. You’re not hungry, you don’t need the food, it does nothing for you, but you keep eating these empty calories. This is what you’re pushing. Same thing. Endless empty calories, but the digital-social equivalent. And you calibrate it so it’s equally addictive. (p. 134) In May 2018, the White House met executives from Amazon, Google, Facebook and three dozen other major companies for a broad discussion on artificial intelligence (Konkel, 2018). The Trump administration promised these corporations a ‘hands-off regulatory approach’ for the development of artificial intelligence capabilities. Gamalon has received 7.7 million USD in contracts from the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program. Google also has a contract with the United States military to work on Project Maven, which expires in 2019. The company has stated that they will continue to work with the United States military in the development of artificial intelligence and other data-related projects (e.g. enhanced facial recognition) (Statt & Vincent, 2018). The state’s intelligence agency analyzes “millions of data points a day to solve crimes and proactively prevent them” including all mug shots, satellite imagery and other factors (Gross, 2018). The Central Intelligence

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Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) use artificial intelligence for data analysis process. For example, the CIA has another 137 artificial intelligence pilot projects and the FBI’s Next Generation Identification system includes the mug-shot repository called the Interstate Photo System, where local, state, tribal and carceral enforcement agencies can run automated facial recognition searches (Gross, 2017). “Future progress in artificial intelligence has the potential to be a transformative national security technology, on a par with nuclear weapons, aircraft, computers and biotech” (Allen & Chan, 2017, p. 1). While artificial intelligence may not seem significant as part of the carceral logics, one must consider the consequences of it given the increasingly heavyhanded carceral governmentality and the link between artificial intelligence and surveillance. We see this as a part of the logics of the carceral project. In addition, the data that Google, Facebook and other tech companies utilize come from us, our searches and our posts, our ‘anything internet involved’. As such, we are aiding in what most likely will become further oppression and invasion of privacy. Another way we all participate in the carceral network includes giving, knowingly or unknowingly, our newborn children’s DNA. Mandated testing is required by all 50 states for every newborn child and the data are stored in state biobanks. This is not new—the collection of infant DNA began in the 1960s, but became institutionalized in 1983 and, years later, every state was required to perform blood sample collections. These biobanks can and do sell the DNA for ‘research’ and could become a part of the broader totality of information stored on every person in the United States. As noted by CBS News (2018): In light of the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal and the use of unidentified DNA to catch the Golden State Killer suspect, there are new concerns about law enforcement access, and what private researchers could do with access to the DNA from every child born in the state. The medical industry, specifically hospitals, becomes an additional arm in carceral logics. Of course, other DNA is collected by states, though it varies, for certain individuals deemed ‘criminal’. By 1998 all states passed “laws requiring the collection of DNA samples from certain criminals for the purposes of establishing state DNA databanks” (Hibbert, 1999). These then are entered into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the federal government’s genetic information base. Again, it is not just states or hospitals providing genetic materials to the carceral project. Consider the millions of citizens that willingly pay for DNA analysis, sending it in the mail, for corporations such as Ancestry.com, Helix and 23andMe to see our ‘ancestry background’. This DNA can be used by police and become part of the larger carceral collection of our personal and private information. The companies that do this ‘service’ can also sell your genetic data to third parties. Consider the number of people who have willingly turned over their

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DNA to be analyzed, bearing in mind that the number of direct-to-consumer genetic genealogy tests now exceeds 12 million participants. The potential for abuse is significant given our societal system of carceral surveillance.

Surveillance is part of the carceral logics and governmentality ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN.  (Eggers, 2013) In June 2013, headlines across the globe carried stories that the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting millions of phone records from customers of Verizon, Apple, Google and other carriers to conduct surveillance in the name of ‘national security’. In 2018, it has been reported that the NSA is using AT&T facilities across the country as part of its mass surveillance program—Fairview (Angwin et al., 2015). They now have access to billions of data records, texts and phone calls of citizens across the United States. The NSA programs from project Prism, Tempora, XKeyscore, Dishfire, Tracfin, Polarbreeze and Snacks (Social Network Analysis Collaboration Knowledge Services) is a normality of the political administration of the carceral corporate-state. This data, along with a host of other data and imageries, can be analyzed using artificial intelligence. The United States has recently created the Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), funded by Science and Technology’s (S&T’s) Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency and managed by S&T’s Human Factors Behavior Sciences Division. “FAST is designed to allow the agency to capture biological and behavioral information … to monitor and collect data including video images, audio recordings, cardiovascular signals, pheromones, electrodermal activity, and respiratory measurements” (Electronic Privacy Information Center, 2019). The liaison with private companies continues (Isikoff, 2012).1 Data mining of citizens’ personal information has been occurring for decades. Four of the largest corporations today actively engaged with the government are Elsevier (formerly Choice Point), Epsilon, Experian and Axciom. Acxiom has “detailed entries for more than 190 million people and 126 million households in the US, and about 500 million active consumers worldwide. More than 23,000 servers … collect and analyze more than 50 trillion data ‘transactions’ a year” (The Week Staff, 2012). As Singer (2012) notes, Axciom peers deeper into American life than the FBI or the IRS, or those prying digital eyes at Facebook and Google. If you are an American adult, the odds are that it knows things like your age, race, sex, weight, height, marital status, education level, politics, buying habits, household health worries, vacation dreams—and on and on. (p. 1)

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There are many private data mining corporations that are actively enlisted in the fusion centers across the United States that collect data on health information, employment history, travel records, student records and spending and charge card records. These data are merged with other data to look for patterns and trends, including internet searches, cell phone calls, text messages and social media posts. Microsoft has long worked with the NSA and FBI to ensure new encryptions do not block the government’s ability to access user information on Skype, Hotmail, Yahoo and other Microsoft services (Greenwald, MacAskill, Poitras, Ackerman & Rushe, 2013). The same can be said for cooperation by Google, Cloud, Twitter, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T and other mainstream means of communication in their various forms. New features, such as geolocation, provide monitoring capabilities to providers like Google. Google has provided a new business model for mobile operators that embraces location-based services and advertising where every mobile operator (e.g. Sprint, Verizon, Boost, Straight Talk), using their location-based advertising service, would provide the exact location of their mobile customers to Google. There are also other private sectors that work diligently to provide new technologies for surveillance. This includes the recent development of unmanned vehicles (land and air), or drones, that are now routinely included in military affairs as well as local law enforcement. They provide what Wall and Monahan (2011) call the “the drone stare” (p. 239) for government agencies to monitor everyday interactions of citizens, preemptively searching for those deemed a threat or a potential criminal (see also Rothe & Linnemann, 2015). We want to be clear though, the ‘surveillance carceral logics and governmentality’ are not the only active participants in the accepted trajectory of state surveillance. State surveillance is also assisted through our complacency as citizens and our willing participation, facilitating the carceral state’s abilities and making surveillance banal. As noted by Goold et al. (2013), consumption products such as surveillance tools have come to be seen as ‘good’ and to describe “any good as banal is to highlight, its taken-for-grantedness, to observe that it is rarely subject to attention or concern, to note that it exists largely beyond public discourse or contestation. A banal good is mundane, commonplace, scarcely worthy of comment” (p. 978). After all, we are willing to undergo surveillance at public places in the name of our security. We embrace the propaganda that CCTV makes us safer and is a tool for law enforcement to ‘catch the bad guys’. We happily log into our Facebook, Twitter or Snapchat accounts and post our latest daily deed. We f lock to Twitter for a moment of fame or Google the latest consumption products available on the market. We purchase our spot in the ‘Cloud’, join OnStar, use our Google locator application or ‘friends hangout’ application. We use our car global positioning system (GPS) and embrace the fact that, as of 2105, all vehicles will carry a GPS locator devise. Parents rush out to purchase spyware and tracking devices for their children and teens that come in a range of forms from bracelets to teddy bears. We willingly join supermarket and grocery store loyalty

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card programs that trade our personal information and surveillance of shopping habits for a minimal discount on groceries. We carry our charge cards, using them to play in the land of consumerism. We jump on the bandwagon to use fingerprint identification or iris identification to shorten lines at airports or on our cell phones for ‘security’. We purchase Echo and other Alexa devices that let you instantly connect to Alexa to play music, along with similar products that supposedly make our lives more convenient while knowing they are storing private conversations, our voices, our patterns and our trends. We download applications from the Google store and other sources where we willingly, for the sake of getting our latest applications, give access to our e-mails, files, photographs and a host of other personal information that are also sold to the corporate carceral state. We purchase the smart refrigerator that connects our food consumption, conversations, patterns of eating and consuming to our mobile phones to notify us if we left a light on in the house or that our grocery stocks are low. We think nothing of the cameras in the store that monitor our every move—rather, we are outraged if a ‘crime’ occurs and the store cameras were not turned on. We run out to purchase our own ‘toy’ drones, legitimating their use, thus in return validating the government’s use of them for our own surveillance. We purchase home security systems that are wired into our cell phones to monitor any activities, regulate our heat or turn off the lights. And the list goes on for how we, as citizens, willingly accept surveillance in our lives and actively participate and facilitate technological advances that are believed to make our lives ‘better’ (Rothe & Linnemann, 2015). These products and ‘security’ features we endure every day have come to be seen, as we argued previously in this chapter, as a “fact of life” that “nicely captures the dominant social meaning of banal goods” (Goold et al., 2013, p. 978). We are not just being watched, we are voluntarily checking in with carceral authorities, providing them with our minuscule minutiae of our actions. As we consume, we willingly allow the state to consume our lives, exercising its power in the name of security. Here we refer back to one of our earlier quotes where not only must all be known, but seen. As the following quote from Dave Eggers’ (2013) novel, The Circle, Mae’s ex-boyfriend Mercer tells Mae, “If things continue this way, there will be two societies—or at least I hope there will be two— the one you’re helping create, and an alternative to it” (p. 367). He continues with “You and your ilk will live, willingly, joyfully, under constant surveillance, watching each other always, commenting on each other, voting and liking and disliking each other, smiling and frowning, and otherwise doing nothing much else” (Eggers, 2013, p. 367).

Conclusion We have attempted here to bring forth a discussion of the relationship between consumption and carceral violence and the neoliberal systems that serve not only to legitimate and reproduce the violence of the state but to normalize it, making

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it part of the banality of everyday life through our own consent. We have chosen to focus on the more overt displays of carceral logics and violence through commodities and consumption in order to highlight how state violence is turned into entertainment and products for consumption, while remaining sanitized and removed from the realities of its violence. Moreover, we suggest that, regardless of the function or meaning of the consumption of state violence, the fact that it is consumed grants a form of consent. We have attempted to depoliticize violence from the carceral state by showing how the spectacle of violence permeates all of life and, through consumption, consent is given, further legitimating the process, creating a cyclic pattern of violence, consent, consumption and back to violence—a theme throughout this volume. We do not suggest that there is a general failure to respond properly to carnival/carceral violence, as this would further mask the sadomasochist marriage of the state and its subjects (Cheliotis, 2013). Nor do we suggest that consumers support this process uncritically. However, we do suggest that the commodification, consent and consumption by the public is banal and ignores the realities of the carceral projects of violence and power that span domestically and globally, where oppression and violence is carried out and we are active constituents. By forgetting the coercive power of the state and its interest in fabricating a distinct sort of social order, critical scholarship has largely engaged in the fetishism of militarization or the ‘rising’ security state rather than providing a radical critique of the public’s disavowal of its complicity in more banal and normalized forms of carceral violence. We hope this chapter begins a much needed dialogue on the role of neoliberalism, consumption and reproduction of carceral logics, where critical scholars do not participate in the fetishistic disavowal of the carceral state’s violence and our own role. After all, without this recognition we are active in obscuring the relationship between the carceral state and its subjects.

Note 1 The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said that Homeland Security has spent up to 1.4 billion USD funding fusion centers (Isikoff, 2012).

References Allen, G. & Chan, T. (2017, July). Artificial Intelligence and National Security. Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for International Affairs. Retrieved from www.b​elfer​cente​r.org​/ site​s/def​ault/​f iles​/file​s/pub​l icat ​ion/A ​I%20N​atSec​%20-%​20fin​a l.pd ​f Anderson, C. (2014). Games and drones: The uneasy future of the soldier hero in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Surveillance and Society, 12(3), 360–376. Angwin, J., Savage, C., Larson, J., Moltke, H., Poitras, L. & Risen, J. (2015, August 15). AT&T helped U.S. spy on internet on a vast scale. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s .com​/2015​/08/1​6/us/​p olit​ics/a​t t-he​l ped-​n sa-s​p y-on​- an-a​r ray-​o fin​terne​t-tra​f fic.​html Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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Bowes, D. (2013, May 15). Why we don’t need more ‘24’: The torture-happy Jack Bauer should stay retired. Indie Wire. Retrieved from https​://ww​w.ind​iewir​e.com​/2013​/05/w​hy-we​ -dont​-need​-more​-24-t​he-to​r ture​-happ​y-jac​k-bau​er-sh​ould-​stay-​retir​ed-38​400/ CBS News. (2018, May 14). DNA of every baby born in California is stored. Who has access to it? CBS News. Retrieved from www.c​bsnew​s.com​/news​/cali​forni​a-bio​ bank-​d na-b​abies​-who-​has-a​ccess​/ Cheliotis, L. (2013). Neoliberal capitalism and middle-class punitiveness: Bringing Erich Fromm’s ‘materialistic psychoanalysis’ to penology. Punishment and Society, 15(3), 247–273. Debord, G. (1990). Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (Trans.) M. Imrie. London, UK: Verso. Dickler, J. (2017, July 4). Fourth of July spending by the numbers. CNBC. Retrieved from www.c​nbc.c​om/20​17/07​/04/f​ourth​- of-j​u ly-s​pendi​ng-by​-the-​numbe​r s.ht ​m l Eggers, D. (2013). The Circle. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Electronic Privacy Information Center. (2019). EPIC v. DHS – FAST program. Epic.org. Retrieved from https://epic.org/foia/dhs/fast/ Giroux, H. (2015, August 24). Neoliberalism, violence and resistance: A discussion on forthright radio. Truthout. Retrieved from https​://tr​uthou​t.org​/arti​cles/​neoli​beral​ ism-v​iolen​ce-an​d-res​istan​ce-a-​d iscu​ssion​- on-f​orthr​ight-​radio​/ Goering, H. (1938). Hermann Göring: ‘The Iron Knight’. Holocaust Education and Archive Research Team. Retrieved from www.h​oloca​ustre​searc​hproj​ect.o​rg/ho​lopre​lude/​goeri​ ng.ht ​m l Goold, B., Loader, I. & Thumala, A. (2013). The banality of security: The curious case of surveillance cameras. British Journal of Criminology, 53(6), 977–996. Greenwald, G., MacAskill, E., Poitras, L., Ackerman, S. & Rushe, D. (2013, July 12). Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages. The Guardian. Retrieved from www. t​hegua​rdian​.com/​world​/2013​/jul/​11/mi​croso​ft-ns​a-col​labor​ation​-user​-data​ Gross, E. L. (2018, February 1). How artificial intelligence is transforming the intelligence community. Dell Technologies. Retrieved from www.d​ellte​chnol​ogies​.com/​en-us​/pers​ pecti​ves/h​ow-ar ​t ific​ial-i​ntell ​igenc​e -is-​t rans​formi​ng-th​e -int​ellig​ence-​commu​n ity/​ Hibbert, M. (1999). State and federal DNA database laws examined. Frontline. (Excerpted from ‘DNA databanks: Law enforcement’s greatest surveillance tool? Wake Forrest Law Review, 34(Fall), 767–825.) Retrieved from www.p​bs.or​g/wgb​h/pag​es/fr​ontli​ne/sh​ ows/c​a se/r​evolu​t ion/​d atab​a ses.​html International Council of Air Shows. (2018). International Council of Air Shows: The air show authority. ICAS. Retrieved from www.airshows.aero/ Isikoff, M. (2012, October 2). Homeland security ‘fusion’ centers spy on citizens, produce ‘shoddy’ work, report says. NBC News. Retrieved from http:​//inv​estig​ation​s. nbc​news.​com/_ ​news/​2 012/​10/02​/1418​7433-​homel​a nd-s​ecuri​t y-fu​sion-​cente​r s-sp​yon-​citiz​ens-p​roduc​e -sho​ddy-w​ork-r​eport​- says​ Konkel, F. (2018, May 8). Amazon, Facebook and other tech giants will talk AI with White House. Nextgov. Retrieved from www.n​extgo​v.com​/emer​g ing-​tech/​2018/​ 05/am​a zon-​f aceb​ook-a​nd-ot​her-t​ech-g ​iants​-will​-talk​-ai-w​h ite-​house​/1480​39/ Linnemann, T., Wall, T. & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4), 506–527. Milavia. (2018). Air shows calendar: North America air show calendar 2018. Milavia. Retrieved from www.m ​i lavi​a.net​/airs​hows/​calen​d ar/s​howda​tes-2​015-n​orth_ ​a meri​ ca.ht ​m l

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National Retail Federation. (2018). Holiday and seasonal trends: Independence day. NRF. National Retail Federation. Retrieved from https​://nr ​f.com ​/insi​g hts/​holid ​ay-an​dsea ​sonal​-tren​d s/in​depen​dence​- day Neocleous, M. (2000). The Fabrication of Social Order. London, UK: Pluto Press. Neocleous, M. (2008). Critique of Security. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Neocleous, M. (2012). Don’t be scared, be prepared: Trauma-anxiety-resilience. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 37(3), 188–198. Neocleous, M. (2014, October 6). A taste for the secret: Interview with Mark Neocleous. Critical Legal Thinking, Law and the Political. Retrieved from http://criticallegalthinking. com/2014​/10/0​6/tas​te-se​cret-​i nter ​v iew-​m ark-​neocl​eous/​ Power, M. (2007). Digitized virtuosity: Video war games and post-9/11 cyber-deterrence. Security Dialogue, 38(2), 271–288. Rothe, D. L. & Linnemann, T. (2015). (Liberal) democracy means surveillance: On security, control and the surveillance techo-fetish. In Barak, G. (Ed.), Routledge International Handbook on the Crimes of the Powerful (pp. 515–525). New York, NY: Routledge. Shoot, B. (2018). Firework Facts: Americans incinerate $1 billion in July Fourth fireworks every year. Fortune. Retrieved from http:​//for​t une.​com/2​018/0​6/29/​july-​4th-f​i rewo​ rks-b​i llio​n-dol ​lar-b​u rn-i ​njuri​es/ Singer, N. (2012, June 16). You for sale: Mapping, and sharing, the consumer genome. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2012​/06/1​7/tec​h nolo​g y/ ac​x iom-​t he-q​u iet-​g iant​- of-c​onsum​e r-da​t abas​e -mar​ketin​g.htm ​l?pag​e want​e d=al​ l&_r=0 Spears, C. (2014, 2018). Airshow information. Airshows. Retrieved from www.airshows. com/ Statt, N. & Vincent, J. (2018, January 7). Google pledges not to develop AI weapons, but says it will still work with the military. The Verge. Retrieved from www.t​hever​ ge.co​m /201​8/6/7​/1743​9310/​g oogl​e -ai- ​e thic ​s -pri ​ncipl​e s-wa ​r fare ​-weap​ons-m ​i lita​ ry-pr​oject​-mave​n Sun n Fun. (2015, 2018). Sun n Fun international f ly-in & expo admission rates & information. Sun n Fun. Retrieved from https://www.f lysnf.org/ Top Events USA. (2018) Top 20 air show events and festivals in the USA. Retrieved from www.t​opeve​ntsus​a.com​/top-​a ir-s​how-e​vents​-USA.​html Theobald, B. (2015, November 5). Pentagon paid sports teams millions for patriotic events. USA Today. Retrieved from www.m ​sn.co​m /en-​us/ne​ws/po​l itic​s/pen​t agon​ -paid​sport​s-tea​m s-mi ​l lion​s-for​-patr ​iotic​- even​t s/ar​-BBmP​q j6?o​cid=s​parta​ndhp The Week Staff. (2012, June 20). Acxiom Corp: The ‘faceless organization that knows everything about you’. The Week. Retrieved from https​://th​eweek​.com/​a rtic​les/ 4​74509​/acxi​om-co​r p-fa​celes​s-org​a niza​t ion-​that-​k nows​- ever ​y thin​g -abo​ut Wall, T. & Monahan, T. (2011). Surveillance and violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes. Theoretical Criminology, 15(3), 239–254. Ži žek, S. (2008). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. New York, NY: Pan Books.

8 NEOLIBERALISM AND THE SELLING OF PATRIARCHY

In an age of neoliberalism, the varying power structures that marginalize, oppress and enact violence are often studied as separate and distinct sources of harm (Halley, 2008). Though recognized as being pervasive, they are then divorced from other structural and systemic sources of societal violence ignoring the intersection of these systems that allow for the legitimatization of said violence. This could be said of patriarchy, both as it is analyzed as a global gender structure and as an organizational vehicle at the institutional and interactional levels of analysis, whereby it is narrowly viewed as being solely about male interest, power and privilege over women in all societal interactions (Millet, 1970). Rather, it is through neoliberalism in its various forms that the superiority of men, gender inequality and violence against women are readily commodified, propagated and sold to the willing consumer. Material goods and cultural products are purchased both for their intended use and the underlying ideology they represent. Consider, for example, the commercial consumption of replications of gender subordination as is demonstrated in popular media depictions of masculinity and femininity (Armstrong, 2001; Bonomi, Altenburger & Walton, 2013; Collins & Carmody, 2011; Haynes, 2009), or the specific marketing of particular products to the female consumer as is the case with fashion and beauty marketing ( Jarvis, 2007), or, perhaps in its most obvious form, the commodification of violence against women in film and television as being sensationalized and in some instances romanticized (Bonomi et al., 2013; Collins & Carmody, 2011). While criminological recognition and subsequent analysis of these phenomena are not new what is largely missing is a broader analysis of the banality of this consumption, so much so that the products and acts of consumption are divorced from the “invisible imprint of violence” they bear (Renner, 2002, p. 53). In this chapter we strive to call attention to the relationship between the harms, violence and institutionalized inequalities and our own consumption, pacification,

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tacit support and facilitation of these—something that is often ignored. Further, we argue that violence against women is commodified and eagerly consumed in an age of neoliberalism, legitimizing the patriarchal power structures that subordinate women. Our goal, therefore, is not only to analyze the consumption of patriarchy more generally, but also to acknowledge women consumers who give consent to and facilitate the existing patriarchal power structure. To illustrate our argument, we will draw from examples in the media and the consumer market to emphasize that it is this banal consumption that legitimizes the heteronormative patriarchal status quo and allows for the continuation of gender inequality and power structures that privilege men over women.

The pervasiveness of the commodification and consumption of patriarchy: violence against women consumed There is considerable scholarly attention paid to the issues of gender inequality and violence against women more broadly (Belknap, 2007; Boakye, 2009; Carrington, 2015; Chesney-Lind, 2006; Hunnicutt, 2009). While there is considerable research on this topic that extends beyond the purview of criminology, since the 1970s considerable inroads have been made within cultural, critical and feminist criminology to document, analyze and theorize interactional and structural oppression, marginalization and violence perpetrated against women and girls (Adler, 1975; Brownmiller, 1975; Chesney-Lind, 2006; Simon, 1975; Belknap, 2007; Renzetti, 2013; Barberet, 2014; Collins, 2000; Henne & Troshynski, 2013; Potter, 2014). However, these bodies of research have been relatively silent on how the commodification of patriarchal culture is consumed and reified by not only the general population, but those that it directly oppresses—i.e. women. The consumption and commodification of patriarchy, gender inequality and violence perpetrated against women takes many forms. From Hollywood blockbuster movies, such as recently released The Perfect Guy, the Twilight Saga and The Boy Next Door, to the uniforms of the waiting staff at Hooters, to the sale of pink kitchen appliances, heteronormative patriarchal values have taken on an uniformity “as a whole and in every part” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1944). Through the propagation of free will, choice and agency, the consumer, especially in democratic societies, is blinded to the commodification of oppression. As such, cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse present the dominant definition of reality in such a way that it is accepted as common sense. Structurally, consumption is language, a mode of discourse that conveys messages and symbols as a means of communication. Through consumption, broader ideologies and structures can be propagated and reified, supporting unequal power structures that value some groups over others (e.g. men over women). In this sense, we use the term reification as conceptualized by Lukács (1967): “the structural process whereby the commodity form permeates life in capitalist society” (Zuidervaart, 1991, p. 76).

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Through the above frame, the popularity of a product is disconnected from the ideologies it conveys. It becomes just a song, or a movie or a toy to be played with, and is viewed as separate and distinct from what it represents. Consider, for example, the blockbuster movie franchise 50 Shades of Grey. This three-part film series based on the books of the same name by E. L. James, has been promoted for being progressive and liberating women’s sexual expression. This is despite the behaviors exhibited by the male protagonist toward his love interests being ref lective of “those observed in chronically violent couples” (Bonomi et al., 2013, p. 735). Beyond mirroring a violent relationship, the sexual liberation that the series is heralded for, ignores the underlying premise that the female protagonist’s self-discovery (both emotionally and sexually) is dependent on a man. The plot then, is less about female empowerment and more about the reaffirmation of the dominance of heterosexual masculinity, as the central message is that a woman can only be empowered by fulfilling male, heterosexual desires. Despite this, over 100 million books, the inspiration for the movie, were sold worldwide to predominantly female consumers (Bosman, 2014). Similar observations can be made about the consumption of popular songs, whereby the popularity of the song and its success in the charts is disconnected from the ideology it conveys. For example, consider the popular song Animals by Maroon 5, Baby, I’m preying on you tonight; Hunt you down eat you alive; Just like animals, animals, like animals—mals; Maybe you think that you can hide; I can smell your scent from miles … So what you trying to do to me; It’s like we can’t stop we’re enemies; But we get along when I’m inside you; You’re like a drug that’s killing me; I cut you out entirely; But I get so high when I’m inside you; Yeah, you can start over, you can run free; You can find other fish in the sea; You can pretend it’s meant to be; But you can’t stay away from me. (Levine, Shellback, & Levin, 2014) Where the lyrics not only promote and romanticize stalking and violence against the woman in the song, the accompanying music video depicts images of Adam Levine following her, breaking into her apartment, as well as taking covert and unsolicited photographs of her. These behaviors are then juxtaposed with a halfnaked Levine swinging from a meat hook, smearing himself in animal blood as he imagines having sex with her. Not only does the video glamorize violence against women but it strongly suggests that sexual predators have a ‘natural’ animal drive that they cannot control. The video received considerable criticism with the Rape, Abuse, Incest, National Network (RAIN) (2014) stating “No one should ever confuse the criminal act of stalking with romance … The trivialisation of these serious crimes, like stalking, should have no place in the entertainment industry” (RAIN, as cited in Denham, 2014). Despite the violent nature of the song and video, it reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100

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charts and sold over a million copies within three months of its release (Grein, 2014). Furthermore, the song was performed live on popular television shows Saturday Night Live (Locker, 2014) and The Voice (Laurie, 2014). It has long been recognized that music lyrics, across time and independent of genre, commonly link women’s value to their physical appearance and sexual attraction. They are referred to by derogatory names or portrayed as being weak, vulnerable and dependent on men (Bretthauer et al., 2007). The prevalence of these lyrics and images that accompany them in the music video create a popular culture that devalues women and their bodies, normalizing oppression and violence committed against them. Yet, they are readily consumed by both men and women alike, but for women, this is despite the inherent contradictions whereby they are tacitly supporting the very system that continues to marginalize and oppress. The separation of the product/thing/material good from its ideological underpinnings can be explained through the application of Baudrillard (1998)’s “magical thinking” (p. 31). Baudrillard argues that consumption is both an objective process and lived as a myth creating a “fantasy of goods and services” (Ritzer, 1998). This is disconnected from how and by whom the product is made (i.e. the exploited labor, sweatshops, human rights abuse, etc.), as well as any broader social meaning it may convey. In this case, the purchasing of a movie ticket to view the aforementioned film, 50 Shades of Grey, is disconnected from the realities of abuse experienced by women in a relationship characterized by violence. Similarly, humming along to the song on the radio, purchasing it, or watching the video or live performance is divorced from the violence against women it is propagating. The consumer acts willingly as they continue to live the myth, governed by the “magical thinking” that disconnects them from the reality of their consumption as well as the disconnection from the permeation of commodity into all of their everyday life. In this way the magical thinking, as Bauman states, becomes a form of seduction: “the paramount tool of integration (of the reproduction of domination) in a consumer society” (1988, pp. 221–222). Baudrillard’s (1998) pathological consumerism is driven by fantasies that are disconnected from reality. Through this lens, women engage in the consumption of cultural productions that contribute both indirectly and directly to their own oppression, supporting the maintenance of a heteronormative patriarchal status quo, as in the above case of 50 Shades of Grey, which is one of many examples of the targeting of the female consumer. From romance novels to the cable television channel, Lifetime, to television shows such as Law and Order Special Victims Unit, maleperpetrated violence against women, specifically sexualized violence, has been packaged and promoted as entertainment and then readily consumed. This form of violence has become omnipresent, a “fact of life” (Goold et al., 2013) as it is banalized, disavowed, depoliticized and normalized through cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse (Neocleous, 2008). Beyond the entertainment industry, the consumption of patriarchy extends to all aspects of social life. It is particularly prominent in the fashion and beauty

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industry where women are the primary target. Through billboards, television, radio, internet, cinema and magazines, the female consumer is bombarded with messages that critique the female body. This purposely manufactured anxiety, dissatisfaction and feeling of inadequacy push the female consumer to purchase the product necessary to fix, stave off or minimize the f law ( Jarvis, 2007). The female body is policed (e.g. how it looks, what goes in it, on it and over it) and becomes a site for capitalist accumulation where its various parts, such as hair, skin and eyes, are culturally repackaged through advertising, commoditization (e.g. the selling of perfect hair, softer skin, longer eyelashes) and then consumed to meet the patriarchal standard for female beauty. Despite this unrelenting policing of the female form, it is women who continue to make up the primary market for fashion and beauty, spending as much as 84 billion USD in 2016 alone on beauty-enhancing products (Statista, 2018). Again, we see Baudrillard’s (1998) “magical thinking” at play, as beauty ideals propagated by the advertising industry and the products being sold are divorced from their meaning; that of limiting and controlling the female form so it fits within standards dictated by the patriarchal status quo. It is not just these types of beauty products where patriarchal notions of gender are commodified and consumed. Consider the latest fashions, where success and status in society for women is strongly associated with the ‘right’ outfit. This suggests to many women that they must ‘power dress’, whereby they adorn ‘proper’ business attire that is sold as a vehicle for the conveyance of professionalism and importance. The reality is much more problematic, as it means wearing clothes that are more masculine such as padded blazers to broaden shoulders, high-neck shirts to conceal breasts, pant suits to hide shape and high-heeled shoes to appear taller. Therefore, power is only achieved by suppressing femininity and emphasizing masculinity, yet this is a form of masculinity that is also specific to white, heterosexual (cisgendered) men. This mimicry reinforces social hierarchies that preference white men over all others. Furthermore, undergirding the assumption that masculine clothing choices signify professionalism is the sexualization of women’s bodies, as tight blazers, skirts, high heels and make-up are then used to sexualize and feminize the suit. Therefore, power for women is less about their ability to perform a business task and more about their capacity to be sexually attractive to men (Simkin, 2017). Despite this, women willingly comply and even strongly advocate the need for such dress codes, with little thought about the patriarchal assumptions of what it means to be, look like, act or dress as a woman. An examination of the fashion industry more broadly indicates that women’s capital is inextricably linked to their bodies, or parts of their bodies, which are subject to surveillance and scrutiny from both men and women (Gill, 2009). This becomes apparent when examining the treatment of women and girls by the advertising industry. There is an abundance of examples of the direct objectification of women where women are overtly subordinated and subjected to sexualized violence in the advertising imagery. This is most apparent when adverts

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portray only one part of the female form (i.e. legs, breasts, buttocks, etc.). For example, in its most extreme, Australian shoe company Loula depicted the shoe clad foot and leg of a dead women hanging from the trunk of a car in an advert for their shoes. Similar advertisements have been produced by Jimmy Choo, Lamode Fashion Footwear and Marc Jacobs, where violence against women has been central to the advertising message. This is a common motif in advertising, where women are displayed as dead, as heads without bodies, bodies without heads, broken and sprawled across various objects or suffocated by plastic. By reducing women to faceless, broken body parts, they are stripped of their humanity and more easily objectified. Therefore, violence is used to reduce the value of women to just body parts (both living and dead) as they are visually dismembered—their value reduced to just a leg—for the purpose of selling goods. This process of objectification, while reducing the female form to a mere object, is readily consumed in the capitalist-consumer society, as it not only sets a desire to purchase or own, but it simultaneously sexualizes possession, as the most luxurious goods are those that carry the most sexual significance (Caputi, 2015). Women willingly consume these products as a form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), as it is a violence symbolically exercised against all women within a larger cultural hegemony that normalizes the oppression of women and girls. These images of objectification, whether proliferated by print or online media, are not only normalized within the broader consumer culture as they are so commonplace but so too is the message of objectification and resulting oppression that they represent. The dismembered image of the female form, and the violence it represents, is minimized by the women who then purchase the product using their consumer power to reinforce the acceptability of such advertising messages. As argued by Caputi (2015) the female form in its natural state “is a turn-off to a pornographic culture steeped in misogyny, body loathing and the technological ‘fix’ for the supposed imperfections of matter. She must be made new, remade into the perfect consumer object” (p. 380). As argued by Miller (2010) goods “have the unexpected capacity to fade out of view and become peripheral in our vision” (p. 51). Yet, in this case they reinforce notions of acceptable heteronormative gender behaviors, norms and stereotypes in a manner that is unobtrusive and innoxious. It is the banality or triviality of these products that lends them power, as through their pervasiveness they are rarely noticed or questioned, becoming part of the broader patriarchal status quo. Furthermore, the advertising industry sells their products through the marketing of hegemonic patriarchy providing a “discourse through and about objects” ( Jhally, 2003, p. 247). In the case of fashion and beauty, this object is the female form, which is sold through objectification, subordination and sexualization. The banality of the commodification of patriarchy is further evidenced by the pervasive nature of gender inequality, where less obvious forms of discrimination based on sex and gender persist, with little question from the population it directly impacts. Take for example, the greater amount of time women spent queuing for public bathrooms than men. This is largely related to an inherent and

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historical gender bias in architecture and design ensuring women wait in lines at schools, stadiums, office buildings, malls, fairgrounds, theme parks and other spaces that draw the public. This can be an uncomfortable, frustrating and in some cases humiliating experience. While architects typically design men’s and women’s bathrooms to be the same size, they do not account for the difference in needs. Women spend more time and use the facilities more frequently than men, this is due to a number of reasons including the need to sit to urinate (i.e. bathroom stalls versus urinals), menstruation, pregnancies, greater responsibility for children who often accompany women to the bathroom, baby-changing facilities are housed there and, in some instances, women use these spaces for breastfeeding. Despite the equal designation of space this emphasizes the difference between equity and equality where restrooms continue to be designed to suit men’s bodies, needs and experiences (Chemaly, 2015; George, 2018). Efforts have been made to address the issue of ‘potty parity’ through the passing of legislation that requires greater space for women’s bathrooms in new construction. However, this does not address existing bathrooms in more established public spaces, for example those in our must utilized institutions, such as government buildings and schools. For example, it was not until 2011 that women in the United States House of Representatives had access to facilities close to the Speakers Lobby. Prior to 2011, the closest bathroom was located at a distance that meant getting there and back exceeded the designated break time. In contrast the men’s bathroom was situated close by and contained within it a fireplace, shoeshine stand and a monitor televising the f loor proceedings (Chemaly, 2015). As argued by Plaskow (2008) “The distribution, quality, and structure of public toilets are both symbols and concrete representations of a larger system of social hierarchies” (p. 52). As is the case of the women of the Speakers Lobby, the absence of a women’s restroom denotes their exclusion from public spaces and positions of power. When women do complain, efforts for efficiency revolve around the introduction of products that expand their excreting options (e.g. urinating standing up), doubling down on the male-centeredness of the bathroom experience. Or alternatively women’s frustration and discomfort is degraded or ignored with statements such as “why wait?” or “no one is making them use that restroom?” with little acknowledgment for gender socialization where women are taught and expected to deal with pain, discomfort and frustration quietly (Chemaly, 2015). The prevalence of the banality of the consumption of patriarchy can also be seen in the marketing and consumption of everyday goods and services. These products both overtly and covertly reify existing gender roles and norms, as products are designed to ref lect ideals of masculinity and femininity—e.g. pink for a girl and blue for a boy. Products are often marketed and sold along the lines of the public and private spheres. From the selling of cleaning products, kitchen and home appliances (often in colors associated with femininity) to women, to increased car insurance premiums for women despite perfect driving records (Leefeldt, 2017), women are still associated with domestic work and men with

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working outside the home. When domestic products are marketed to men, they often include a label stating it is ‘for men’. For example, Kleenex tissues for men come in a black and grey box and are clearly marked ‘mansize’, Powerful, a yoghurt brand nicknamed their 8-ounce cups ‘Brogurt’, Unilever released a toothpaste for men encased in black packaging and Bounce sheets for the tumble dryer come in a package labeled ‘for men’. This is true of a plethora of products, ranging from his and her razors, Bic pens, earplugs, cars and even teas; Yogi Tea offers a ‘Men’s Tea’ and a ‘Women’s Tea’. Distinguishing between the sexes and the reinforcement of patriarchal values is so pervasive it is embedded in the most basic of consumer behaviors—buying laundry detergent—where the commodity itself has become greater than its intended use, as its value is associated with what it signifies—acceptable yoghurt for a woman or for a man. Here, the consumer comes to read the system of consumption, knowing what to consume, when and by whom. Furthermore, in an era that is often framed as being post-feminist, many products and services are sold as being gender neutral or representing equality. Consider the abundance of T-shirts, bags, gimmicky mugs, badges, jewelry, posters and home decor (e.g. throw pillows) that proudly display messages such as ‘#feminist’, ‘All I want for Christmas is the destruction of the patriarchy’, ‘men of quality respect equality’ or ‘women who seek to be equal to men lack ambition’. While the idea behind the messaging is the conveyance of greater autonomy and agency for women, the reality is they are mere slogans or sound bites that represent co-opted versions of popular feminist critique. In consuming these products and the messages they display, the consumer is led to believe they are fighting for a cause or advocating for equality and social justice. However, they are doing so without having to engage in nonconformity, dissent and resistance behaviors that actually achieve such equality. They are engaging in what Goldman (1992) terms commodity feminism. Through this process, women unwittingly become neoliberal subjects through exercising their purchasing power to acquire corporatized versions/ideals of gender-equality of female empowerment. These ideals still require judgment and self-monitoring of one’s own emotional state, as women exercise their purchasing power in support of a greater cause (e.g. the gimmicky T-shirt with the slogan of equality). However, to make such a purchasing decision requires that women consent to engage in the ideological and material consumption of post-feminist neoliberal consumerism. Women buy into the advertiser’s efforts to “reincorporate the cultural power of feminism” (Goldman, 1992, p. 130) and in doing so nullify or depoliticize the goals of feminism (Murray, 2012). The post-feminist premise of increased autonomy, self-surveillance, individualism, choice and empowerment (Gill, 2007), aligns particularly well with corporate capitalist interests where women can be seen as an autonomous “empowered consumer” (Tasker & Negra, 2007, p. 2). Post-feminist consumerism becomes synonymous with empowerment and choice within the marketplace and to exercise this power means to engage in material consumption (Gill, 2007). Women are able to

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buy what they want when they want as they are able to engage their power as a consumer. However, in doing so women align themselves with broader institutional goals of a patriarchal capitalist economy—the purchasing products that support the maintenance of gender inequality. This creates a façade of feminist empowerment, as individual choice is only exercised within the confines of the neoliberal market that dictates the parameters of consumerism—exercising their purchasing power to consume products that reinforce more broadly accepted views of gender equality. Such efforts are carefully and purposely constructed strategies introduced by the marketing industry to manage and correct the behaviors they themselves created (Stole, 2008). The resistance message attached to the product (e.g. #feminist) hides the true meaning of the product within the larger neoliberal capitalist market, creating a disjuncture between the consumer and the ideology it truly represents. Furthermore, when the ‘market’ reacts and ‘resistance’ to inequality and patriarchy emerges, it only does so within the cultural hegemonic system and consumption. By viewing these acts of consumerism as resistance we are pacified by the system itself. We, as consumers, have bought products that continue to reinforce the broader capitalist control of the neoliberal market, which does nothing to challenge the existing patriarchal social order.

Conclusion In an era often characterized as post-feminist, the complicity of women and men in the reproduction and reification of the heteronormative patriarchal status quo needs to be recognized. Drawing on a range of examples from popular culture and the marketplace, we have argued that the pervasiveness of this problem extends beyond specific products and services to include a deeply embedded system of patriarchal oppression that is consumed and reified by the very subjects of that oppression (i.e. women and girls). Furthermore, the everyday banality of this pattern of consumption pervades all parts of our cultural neoliberal hegemonic society. It is so embedded in the current neoliberal capitalist market, it manifests directly as illustrated through the more overt examples of film, music and advertising, and indirectly through more subtle manifestations, such as through the lack of potty parity, consumer products that sell messages of equality and resistance, as well as products that are assigned masculine and feminine signifiers for the purpose of selling to a particular gender. There needs to be further recognition of the reality of the ideology of these goods and services, one that is often separated or viewed as distinct from the meanings assigned. It is this misrecognition (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) that allows for continued oppression and the maintenance of the façade of market autonomy as consumers continue to exercise their choice and freedom within the broader neoliberal economic system that maintains the current state of being; a system so powerful it has co-opted the popular feminist tropes of resistance as just another corporate means for profit making, effectively quashing the intended message. Women, therefore, empowered by the very markets that oppress,

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willingly consume the very products that contribute to the broader oppressive regime, participating in the behaviors that are counter to their own self-interest, a form of “consum[m]ation, pure and simple destruction” (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 43). Consumption becomes a pathological behavior, a form of “magical thinking” (Baudrillard, 1998) that is disconnected from reality masking the broader neoliberal cultural (re)production of hegemonic patriarchal social control. Here again, this chapter is not intended to be blaming women for this, but to say what is often left unsaid.

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9 THE ENVIRONMENTAL DEATH MARCH Destruction, greed, profit and consumption

We recognize that climate change is due to human action that has been ongoing since approximately the mid-1700s with the onset of large-scale industrialization. Capitalism has enhanced the damage over the last nearly six decades with changes in farming, agriculture and mass food production. In addition, over the last several decades we have witnessed the impact of neoliberalism further accelerate the environmental destruction of the earth and of various species, both those protected and those not under state laws.Yet, there is still an abundance of individuals who deny the violence and harms we and our neoliberal economic system are doing to the world. We, here in the United States, see this in the political theatres where draconian policies are being implemented once again, reversing progress made toward the slowing of climate change. The Trump administration and Republican politicians (as they have for decades) are pushing for rollbacks on environmental protections. Regulatory bodies continue to be made impotent at best, and corporate profit is the priority, while extreme heat, drought, floods, hurricanes, forest fires and other ‘natural’ disasters increase across the globe. This has had devastating consequences including, but not limited to, higher levels of poverty and an increase in the number of climate-driven refugees. As the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent (2018) report states “[c]limate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet … The impacts of climate change are being felt in every inhabited continent and in the oceans” (IPPC, 2018). The following section provides a brief overview of the current status of climate change.

Climate change Climate change, despite the claims of those who deny it, is one of the leading threats to our environment, and yet the banality of neoliberalism, politics and

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Sea Height Variation (mm)

our everyday conveniences usurp addressing the harms already done and those surely to occur. While we often hear the rising levels of carbon dioxide are the primary factor that needs to be addressed to slow down the impact of climate change, it is the result of far more. This includes, but is not limited to, rising methane levels, mass food production and consumption from land to oceans, water usage and its corporate hold, our current patterns of consumption from gadgets to food to technologies that require environmental degradation and the extraction of minerals from the earth (not to mention the inequality and slavery associated with these extractions). As a result, we are witnessing rising sea levels, loss of land and species across the globe and the depletion of others, increasing numbers of wildfires, droughts, f looding, extreme temperature f luctuations, as well as an increase in migration and refugees, pollution and humanitarian crises. Consider that f looding from rising sea levels threatens roughly 300,000 coastal homes in the United States alone (Milman, 2018) (Figure 9.1). As we noted above, the process of rising sea levels and the warming of the Arctic has picked up considerable pace under the ideology and practice of neoliberal economics. Globally, the sea level rose roughly seven to eight inches overall during the 1900s, however, in the last 20 to 30 years the amount of overall sealevel rise has nearly doubled that of the 1900s and is hastening its pace every year (Nerem et al., 2018). Global temperatures have also been increasing even more under neoliberal logics. A graph created by NASA illustrates the change in the earth’s surface temperature with the 1951–1980 averages where “seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001” (NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2017, p. 1). In addition, oceans across the globe are absorbing the increased temperatures resulting in the water becoming hotter. This has greatly impacted the ecosystem in general, but has also had specific effects on coral, plants, mammals, fish and other sea creatures.

80 60 40 20 0 1995

2000

2005 TIME

FIGURE 9.1 Satellite

sea level observations 1993–present.

Source: https​://cl​imate​.nasa​.gov/​vital​-sign​s/sea​-leve​l/.

2010

2015

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In addition, the number of record high-temperature extreme natural events in the United States alone continues to increase while the number of record low-temperature natural events continues to decline. The United States has also experienced higher levels of intense rainfall during this period (USGCRP, 2017). Furthermore, air pollution and climate change are closely related. Consider that carbon dioxide emissions, such as the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, wildfires and other factors, are sources of air pollutants. Air pollutants pose health risks and contribute to the impact of climate change. Overall the levels of pollution have grown due to climate change. For example, Fang, Naik, Horowitz and Mauzerall (2013) suggest that between the end of the pre-industrial period (roughly estimated by the author as 1860) and 2000, “the global fine particle concentrations increased by 5% and near-surface ozone concentrations by 2% due to climate change”. In addition, Silva et al. (2013), argue that “the change from pre-industrial era resulted in up to 111,000 and 21,400 additional premature fine particle- and ozone-related deaths”. A headline in The Guardian reads: “Climate change impacting ‘most’ species on Earth, even down to their genomes” (Hance, 2017). This reminds us that the impact of climate change is much broader than the effect it has on humans and the ‘world for or of us’, as it impacts all living things. For example, Pacifici et al. (2017) found that 47 percent of land mammals and 23 percent of birds have suffered negative impacts due to climate change. In addition, in an article titled ‘Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species’, Wiens (2016) states that over 450 plants and animals have already undergone local extinctions and/or migration due to climate change. We are reminded of the poem by Niemöller (2018) where he says, First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. While this poem is more often used to reference the horrific crimes of Nazi Germany, the larger point of the poem is applicable here, that bystanders have to act to prevent atrocities from happening, and there is no greater threatening atrocity than the current and future consequences of climate change. We recognize that the brevity of our presentation on climate change and its consequences is doing this devastating problem a disservice. However, the overall goal of this book, and this chapter specifically, is to bring to the forefront the issue of neoliberalism, its harm and violence as well as our own complicit role in its creation and reproduction as it relates to climate change. As such, we now turn to the carnival or theatre of neoliberalism and politics as they impact our planet.

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Trump, Republican rollbacks and priorities—symbolic or ignored responses to climate change We have chosen to discuss the United States administration and the Republican political party as our primary focus, as to us the current political environment is at best a sorry spectacle, even though the United States remains a world superpower. As succinctly put by Bob Deans (2012), which continues to be an appropriate statement with today’s political administration, [w]e all have a right to our opinion. Something is badly askew, however, when the weight and consensus of the scientific world can be callously tossed aside by politicians who refuse to face facts and instead insist on blocking every reasonable attempt to begin the vital process of reducing the industrial carbon pollution that is changing our climate and threatening us all. (p. 6) We will also draw on examples from other countries’ symbolic, ignored or disavowed responses to climate change regardless of our primary focus on the United States. In addition, we recognize that the current Trump administration’s actions, or lack thereof, on climate change are not unique to them—Republicans in general have provided barriers to regulatory or reductive policies and, in general, promote climate change denial. As Ronald Kramer (2012) noted with regard to the former Bush administration, “[t]he current Republican Party not only obstructs any action to mitigate climate change, it also has recently waged an unprecedented legislative assault on environmental regulations and safeguards of any type” (p. 9). So, it is not unexpected that Donald Trump continues to mock the science behind human-caused climate change, even burying the government’s 2018 climate change report by choosing to release it on the United States Thanksgiving holiday. His administration insists scientific reports and evidence are constructed by scientists seeking to make a profit from their research or alternatively are simply unfounded. For example, just this week the science adviser to the Trump administration cast doubt on research linking fossil fuel pollution to deaths and significant health problems (Holden, 2018). In addition, Trump has promised to reignite the coal industry and increase the burning of coal, even though scientific reports abound stating “[t]here is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal” (Shindell, as cited in Landler & Davenport, 2018). For example, the Trump administration announced, December 6, 2018, that it will lift many “restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants” (Greshko et al., 2019). This is also at a time when scientists and members of governments recently met in Poland (December, 2018), holding a conference to solidify the parameters and actions set out by the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here, Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from

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the Paris Agreement (as did Brazil’s presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro during the height of the election season) (Shear, 2017). Furthermore, the Trump administration continues to make a mockery of itself and the seriousness of climate change, as they chose to give a presentation on the value of using coal as a contribution to addressing climate change (Witte & Dennis, 2018). We also note that Poland, the host country, heavily relies on coal production, with 80 percent of its electricity being based on coal, and utilized a venue next to a mining museum for coal as the location for the conference. Even with the participation of roughly 200 countries and hundreds of scientists, Poland and the United States are not alone in their symbolic, if not sabotaging, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide. As reported in The Guardian, “Britain is pushing ahead with gas fracking, Norway with oil exploration in the Arctic, and the German government wants to tear down Hambach forest to dig for coal” (Watts, 2018). The Trump administration continues to push through policies that undo former environmental protections aimed at reducing the United States impact on climate change. For example, in August 2018, Trump proposed a “freeze [on] antipollution and fuel-efficiency standards for cars, significantly weakening one of President Barack Obama’s signature policies to combat global warming” (Davenport, 2018). Even more telling of the relationship of policy and neoliberalism, is the revelation that major players in negating the Obama era rule were those from the oil industry. Consider that “Marathon began its outreach to the Trump administration early, asking to meet with Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency soon after he became its administrator in early 2017” (Tabuchi, 2018). Marathon then began targeting Congress, putting pressure on individuals using the Ogilvy Government Relations firm to lobby legislators to accept the ‘promoted’ fuel-economy standards and began a surreptitious campaign to roll back Obama’s emission standards. In September 2018, it seems more offerings were given to the oil industry by the Trump administration when the Interior Department “snuffed out new rules aimed at lowering the oil and gas industry’s methane emissions, just days after the Environmental Protection Agency started the process of euthanizing its own methane regulations” (Thompson, 2018). In addition, in December 2018, Trump rolled back efforts to address climate change as the Interior Department moved to ease restrictions on “oil and gas drilling across millions of acres of protected habitat” (Greshko et al., 2019). Five major oil and gas companies are now being allowed to use seismic air gun blasts in the seaf loor in order to explore for oil and gas deposits regardless of the impact on ocean life (Gibbens, 2018). Additionally, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is attempting to roll back protections of United States drinking water, compromising the safety of water for tens of millions of United States citizens (Goodkind, 2018). “The changes to the Clean Water Rule limits the types of waterways that are protected from industrial pollutants by changing the definition of ‘waterways’” (Goodkind, 2018). In addition, the Trump administration’s Department of Energy is attempting to reclassify radioactive waste that has resulted from nuclear

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weapon production, to lower the threat threshold to loosen the restrictions on its disposal. This is done with the underlying goal of decreasing associated costs (Associated Press, 2018). While we could continue with examples of Trump and the Republican Party’s efforts to not address climate change and to sabotage efforts and regulations previously made to address the issue, we would be remiss not to mention the role of corporations. Thus far, we have noted the role of corporations in these efforts through lobbying and serving in key Trump administration positions, yet corporations play an insidious roll in efforts to profiteer from the already existing natural disasters occurring due to climate change. As we have stated, one of the effects of climate change is an increase in natural disasters, including hurricanes such as Hurricane Maria that devasted Puerto Rico in 2017. Just after the disaster, reports of fund-raising by cruise companies for victims of the storms and about the delivery of relief supplies by their ships began to pop up in the news (e.g. Scipioni, 2017). Accompanying these efforts were articles that covered how cruise companies were encouraging people to book cruises to Puerto Rico, for example, despite the catastrophic conditions on the island (e.g. McClure, 2017). According to the logic provided by the companies, consumption was justified on the grounds that it was the pathway to recovery. While charity efforts more generally, as we note in Chapter 10, point to structural violence and systemic inequality (Ži žek, 2008), in this case the harm compounds the government’s response—or lack thereof—to the disaster, much like Hurricane Katrina (Ži žek, 2008). Companies urging tourists to take those cruises shortly after the hurricane, and consumers partaking in them, have no meaning without considering the horrific backdrop of the island, not only at the time but for months afterward. Many Puerto Ricans lost their homes and had no food, water or electricity, yet resources were guaranteed for tourists once they arrived at their destinations and took part in the accompanying excursions. Tourists were expected to consume their way to goodwill, while many people on the island were struggling to survive, not to mention the ones that were already dead. Even without disasters like Hurricane Maria to account for, there are plenty of criminological and zemiological issues associated with tourism and other leisure activities, such as the social and environmental consequences of traveling to popular locations like the Maldives (Smith & Raymen, 2018). And now, neoliberal leisure in the Anthropocene has brashly embraced the opportunity to commodify and consume the consequences of climate change. With the ice rapidly melting, at least one company is touting luxury cruises in areas of the Arctic that were once inaccessible but are now possible to navigate by ship (Dennis & Mooney, 2016). Along with the promise that the changing oceanscape has for capital in the context of leisure-based consumption, it opens up more room for trade and shipping routes (Struzik, 2016). These types of moves further exacerbate, and capitalize on, the same types of behaviors that are arguably at the heart of climate change in the first place. While humans and other beings are perishing, capitalism persists unfettered.

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In Chapters 8 and 11, we have discussed the role of the fashion industry in promoting, knowingly or not, heteronormative patriarchal notions of gender and their usurping acts of resistance by commodifying the cause at hand, so it seems fitting that we brief ly discuss their role in ignoring and enhancing climate change and causing irreparable environmental harm, specifically the vast amounts of water pollution, toxic chemical usage and textile waste produced: “fast fashion comes at a huge cost to the environment” (Perry, 2018). Given the focus of profiting from fast fashion (made with low costs and speed), to deliver the barrage of new collections enthused by catwalk looks or celebrity style reproduction, the environmental impact is ignored. However, the environmental cost is a pressing matter at this stage of global climate change. The documentary, RiverBlue, attempts to highlight the impact of the fashion industry, “[f ]ollowing conservationist Mark Angelo around the world, the film examines rivers in China, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Zambia, England and the US, and notes the ways that they've been effected [sic]—usually for the worse—by the garment industry” (Bauck, 2017). This includes the impact of large corporations such as Gap, Nike, Zara and Puma, all linked to contributing to toxic water and environmental harms (Bauck, 2017). Another nexus of states and corporations ignoring climate change for profit and maintaining the status quo can be seen in the Amazon region. “As habitat destruction trends interact with climate change, the concern is that the Amazon will be caught up in a set of ‘feedback loops’ that could dramatically speed up the pace of forest lost and degradation”, though it plays a major role in maintaining the global climate (WWF, 2018a). Given that the reduction of carbon dioxide by plants and trees, and the water released by them into the atmosphere, the oceans and the rivers, the Amazon inf luences world climate and the circulation of ocean currents. In the name of profit, mass deforestation is occurring, removing forest cover that in return causes a major change in rainfall patterns and distribution. As noted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (2018a), “[C]urrent deforestation in the Amazon has already altered the regional climate”. For example, roughly 9 percent of Amazonian forests “disappeared between 1985 and 2017, reducing the rainforest’s ability to absorb the carbon emissions that drive climate change … [in addition] between August 2017 to 2018, 1.1 million acres of Brazilian Amazonian forest were cleared” (Garrett, 2018). This is primarily due to the mass food production of meat, namely beef, to satiate consumers’ diets and to ensure the beef and dairy industry continue to profit regardless of the known impacts of mass agricultural production on the environment and humans (Curtis et al., 2018). While we may think of plastic as a problem of waste disposal, the plastic industry and our consumption of their products are a significant factor in the ongoing devastation of Earth and enhancement of climate change. Consider that “the plastic packaging market was valued at close to $198.0 billion” in 2017 (Plastics Today Staff in Packaging, 2018). We as global citizens produce roughly 300 million tons of plastic each year. To make this amount of plastic takes roughly 12

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million barrels of oil. In addition, the buildup of plastic garbage in oceans is a cause of ecosystem disruption. “An estimated 100,000 marine animals die each year from suffocating on or ingesting bags” (1 Bag at a Time, 2018). Consider the recent case of a sperm whale that had over 13 pounds of plastic in its stomach. Moreover, plastics give off “powerful greenhouse gases as they break down, contributing to climate change. Of particular concern is the plastic type that releases gases at the highest rate: low-density polyethylene (or LDPE). This is also the most prevalent discarded plastic in the ocean today” (Parleys for the Oceans, 2018). The corporate and state response are public education propaganda campaigns telling us to do our part, recycle plastic, use paper straws and take a reusable bags to the grocery store, measures that are symbolic at best, given the mass production and use of plastic by corporations. As with other forms of our technofetishism (such as surveillance and personal security protections) we spoke of in Chapter 3, our consumption of the latest and best gadgets, vying for the latest Apple and/or smarter phone, makes us complicit in the process of living in the neoliberalism era. Through the processes of neoliberalism, the corporate sector sells us the notion that one cannot survive or be successful without embracing these gadgets. We not only purchase all the new cell phones, latest gadgets, smart tablets, iPads, etc., but we do not think of our subjugation into the harms of neoliberalism such as the corporate and elite destruction, harms and crimes that are associated with mineral extraction necessary for their sale. Instead, it is consumption and having the latest, the best and/or making our lives simpler/ easier that become our focus. As a result of our consumption and the marketing of these technologies, we have significantly impacted climate change and the destruction of the earth, with the United States in the lead, with 49 of the world’s largest tech companies being from the United States. In addition, in 2017, four of the largest tech companies had a value of 2.6 trillion USD. However, A growing information society increases the level of energy consumption and the emission of carbon dioxide, for the growing spread and use of ICT [Information and Communication Technologies] services, networks and devices. The amount of e-waste is on the rise and … can cause severe environmental and human health impacts. (Ambrosi, 2018) There is an entire electronic-waste industry that dumps illegal surplus in Global South countries, leading to harmful toxins destroying waterways, land and people as they are exposed to toxins varying from mercury and arsenic to chromium and more. In 2018, it is believed that there were 49.8 million metric tons of electronic waste produced globally (Statista, 2018). Given that the harms and damage of our technologies lead to corporate profits and again mask neoliberalism’s violence, more corporations are being created to ‘solve’ the problem by properly recycling products, ignoring the damage on the environment from the extraction of these minerals.

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Another subtle corporate response to climate change was to offer us the LED lights to do our part (addressed more fully in the following section). However, a study has revealed that exposure to LED lights “can cause irreparable harm to the retina of the human eye” (Gunnar, 2018). Touted as energy-efficient alternative to traditional bulbs—thus addressing consumption of electricity—they are contributing to the harmful impact on humans indirectly linked to climate change responses. LED lights are already widely used in “mobile phones, televisions, computer screens and can also be fitted as a replacement for traditional lighting in the home” (Gunnar, 2018). While we could continue to provide examples of the relationship of neoliberalism and environmental degradation resulting in climate change, it is naive and overly simplistic to think it is all about the evils of neoliberalism and its spectacle machinery. As such, we once again turn to a discussion on how we are actively complicit in the process, even when we think we are addressing the cause by embracing identities of ‘being green and environmentally responsible’.

Damn, we can’t blame it all on them? We do not want to partake in the ongoing practice of what Foucault (1979) calls the mode of individualistic self-formation or libertarian individualism that is produced by our current neoliberal logics, where the focus on a broader structural problem is shifted from the realization of the root to individuals who are given the blame or said to cause the problem. They then internalize and subdue this problem themselves; internalizing the message that individuals need to do more as they are not doing their part. Therefore, creating the psychological dogma of the self-blaming culture (Bohlander, 2018). We fully recognize the peril of our indoctrination to believe climate change is an issue we, individually, can tackle head on; as such, this section attempts to demystify the institutionalized belief that it is an individualized responsibility. As succinctly put “[t]he delusion that individuals hold the power to halt years of climate change in its tracks is really a tool devised by post-WWII neoliberalism”. Facilitated by neoliberal policies, “we have been institutionalized into believing we have power, or perhaps more importantly, being made to feel that our individual expression of it is enough” (Baskin, 2017). With the individualized shift we are led to think if each of us would just do our part, if we would just … take a quick shower, use low-f low showerheads and faucets, install eco-friendly toilets or f lush less, purchase energy efficient appliances, do not water outdoor plants or our lawns, check our sprinklers for leaks, use a car pool, take a bus, ride a bike or buy a hybrid, use energy-efficient LED lights, wash clothes in cold water, winterize our home, buy local or organic vegetables or grow our own, install solar panels, become a vegetarian or vegan, use rechargeable batteries, recycle, donate our old phones, laptops and computers, and so on … the list of examples abounds under ‘eco-consumerism’. Corporations are jumping on the bandwagon of individual blame and solutions for climate change

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while concurrently continuing their path of environmental degradation. As one of us recently purchased a 12-pack of diet coke, yes, the irony and self-blame abounds, the Coca-Cola company had put stickers on every 12-pack and case of pop thanking us, the consumer, for doing our part and not partaking in the evils of plastic consumption that we know is also a factor in climate change and environmental degradation. Such hypocrisy, given the aisles and aisles of Coca-Cola products in plastic bottles and its history of water hoarding. Martha Stewart and Payless Shoes have teamed up by selling consumers Stewart’s vegan leather shoe collection. In return, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will thank Stewart and Payless with PETA’s Compassionate Collaboration Award and a holiday box of cow-shaped vegan chocolates. As we discuss in Chapter 11 on resistance and Chapter 10 on the role nongovernmental organizations play in commoditizing their cause and promoting consumerism, non-profits addressing climate change are no different. For example, to help reduce the effects of climate change on wildlife you can adopt an endangered pet for very little money and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) will send you a stuffed animal (WWF, 2018b). You can join the Arbor Day Foundation, commit to planting a tree to address climate change and, through your small membership fee, you will get ten free trees or they will plant yours in the Amazon or the United States forests (Arbor Day Foundation, 2018). You can go vegan and PETA will send you your free vegan starter kit (PETA, 2018). “These pervasive exhortations to individual action—in corporate ads, school textbooks, and the campaigns of mainstream environmental groups, especially in the west—seem as natural as the air we breathe” (Lukacs, 2017). Once the self-blame, self-responsibility takes hold, its dogma is replicated by individuals: if you do not turn off your water when you brush your teeth you are part of the problem not the solution (not acknowledging that brushing our teeth with commoditized corporate toothpaste contributes to the mass plastic waste destroying our water systems); use a small glass for drinking water to cut down on waste; if you are not a vegan you cannot call yourself an environmentalist; if you do not eat grain-fed pasture-raised free-farming eggs you are part of the problem, not the solution. This list (re)appropriates the individualistic self-formation ideology while reinforcing one’s own self esteem as being mindful of the cause. The messages and hegemonic discourse are just tools of neoliberalism that persuade us to address climate change by spending money to alleviate our own self-blame, yet ignores the structural factors that are the real culprits. Our consumption of eco-friendly products not only adds to climate change but simultaneously gives us an identity of being green and responsible. As we discuss more fully with regard to resistance in Chapter 11, the commodity we purchase to reduce our ‘footprint’ becomes greater than its intended use, as its value is associated with what it signifies—eco-consciousness and doing our part. It has value beyond its devouring and is transfigured to hold ideological meaning through the signage itself, interwoven into the constructions of status identity—me as green and doing my part. The sign-value then provides individuals with an

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enhancement of their self-esteem by knowing they have supported a cause. Yet, identity politics is consumerism as social action. Taking the throttlehold that capitalistic/neoliberal realism has on social relations into consideration, better consumption is not enough, nor is it the answer. After all, the dogma of better consumption is tied to particular instances of neoliberal hegemony that reside at the intersections of climate change, consumerism, harm and violence—‘hedonic realism’.

Conclusion Constructing a narrative that individuals alone can solve climate change through banal daily choices and consumption is “itself a symptom of the overarching problem: the current ideological triumph of a relentless capitalist neoliberalism, grounded above all in the supposed wants and needs of the (consumerist) individual” (Stoekl, 2013). Moreover, as populism and fascism spread and the ills of administrations such as Trump’s push to not only deny climate change but negate any past efforts to address the damage being done to the earth, the outlook seems bleak. We cannot individually change or alter the course of climate change. While we cannot fall into the traps of fatalism, blind optimism will also get us nowhere. As Thacker (2010) reminds us, we cannot see any other options beyond what we know historically and currently. We cannot see the unknown, much to the chagrin of positivistic assumptions of predictions. “As we begin to think through how we might change our future, we can at least draw strength and motivation from the absolute certainty that the path we’re on leads to catastrophe” (Winlow, 2017, p. 190).

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Davenport, C. (2018, August 2). Trump administration unveils its plan to relax car pollution rules. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2018​/08/0​2/ cli​m ate/​t rump​-auto​- emis​sions​- cali​forni​a.htm​l Deans, B. (2012). Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Dennis, B. & Mooney, C. (2016, August 16). A luxury cruise ship sets sail for the Artic, thanks to climate change. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.w​a shin​g tonp​ ost.c​om/ne​w s/en​ergy- ​envir​onmen​t/wp/​2 016/​0 8/16​/a-lu ​x ury- ​c ruis​e -shi​p -set ​s -sai​ l-for​-the-​a rcti​c-tha​n ks-t​o -cli​m ate-​chang​e/?ut​m _ter​m=.f3​f 343d​23ce2​ Fang, Y., Naik, V., Horowitz, L. W. & Mauzerall, D. L. (2013). Air pollution and associated human mortality: The role of air pollutant emissions, climate change and methane concentration increases from the preindustrial period to present. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 13(3), 1377–1394. Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and Punish. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Garrett, R. (2018, November 5). Strict Amazon protections made Brazilian farmers more productive, new research shows. The Conversation. Retrieved from http:​//the​ conve​r sati​on.co​m /str ​ict-a ​m azon​- prot​e ctio​n s-ma​d e-br ​a zili​a n-fa ​r mers​- more ​- prod​ uctiv​e -new​-rese​a rch-​shows​-1057​89 Gibbens, S. (2018, November 30). How whales and dolphins may be harmed by new seismic airgun approval. National Geographic. Retrieved from www.n​ation​a lgeo​g raph​ ic.co​m /env ​i ronm​e nt/2 ​018/1​1/noa ​a -app​r oves ​- seis​m ic-a ​i rgun ​- blas​t ing- ​oil-g ​a s-dr​ illin​g -atl​a ntic​- ocea​n / Goodkind, N. (2018, December 10). Trump administration rollback could threaten clean drinking water for millions of Americans, environmental group says. Newsweek. Retrieved from www.n​ewswe​ek.co​m /cle​a n-wa​ter-e​nviro​n ment​- epa-​clima​te-ch​ ange-​t rump​-1252​623 Greshko, M., Parker, L., Howard, B. C., Stone, D., Borunda, A. & Gibbens, S. (2019, January 17). A running list of how President Trump is changing environmental policy. National Geographic. Retrieved from https​://ne​ws.na​t iona​lgeog​raphi​c.com​/2017​/03/ h​ow-tr​u mp-i​s-cha​nging​- scie​nce-e​nviro​n ment​/ Gunnar. (2018, November 28). Do ‘environmentally friendly’ led lights cause blindness? GUNNAR. Retrieved from https​://gu​n nar.​com/d​o -env ​i ronm​ental ​ly-fr ​iendl​y-led​ -ligh​t s-ca​use-b​l indn​ess/ Hance, J. (2017, April 5). Climate change impacting ‘most’ species on earth, even down to their genomes. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​onmen​t/ rad​ical-​conse​r vati​on/20​17/ap​r/05/​clima​t e-ch​a nge-​l ife-​w ildl​i fe-a​n imal​s -bio​d iver​ sity-​ecosy​stems​-gene​t ics Holden, E. (2018, December 14). Trump science adviser casts doubt on links between pollution and health problems. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​ hegua​ rdian​ .com/​envir​onmen​t /201​8/dec​/14/e​pa-ad​v iser ​- cast ​s -dou​bt-on​- scie​nce-l ​i nkin​g -pol​ lutio​n-to-​healt​h-pro​blems​ IPPC. (2018). Special report: Global warming of 1.5 ºC. IPPC. Retrieved from www. ipcc.ch/sr15/ Kramer, R. C. (2012). Climate change: A state-corporate crime perspective. Retrieved from www.e​nviro ​s ecur ​ity.o​r g/ec​o cide​/nov2 ​012/K ​r amer​, R.C.​% 2820​12%29 ​- Clim ​a te Ch​a nge_ ​A _sta​te-co​r pora​te_cr ​i me_p​erspe​ctive​.pdf Landler, M. & Davenport, C. (2018, October 8). Dire climate warning lands with a thud on Trump’s desk. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2018​ /10/0 ​8/us/​polit ​ics/c​l imat ​e -cha ​n ge-u ​n ited ​-nati​ons-t ​r ump.​html? ​utm_s​ource​=twit​ ter&utm_medium=Duke+University

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Lukacs, M. (2017, July 17). Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​onmen​t/tru​e nor ​t h/20​17/ju ​l /17/​neoli​b eral ​i sm-h ​a s-co​n ned-​u s-in​t o-f i​g htin​g -cli ​m ate- ​chang​e as-​i ndiv​idual​s McClure, R. (2017, October 17). Cruise lines return to Puerto Rico and urge travelers to book Caribbean sailings. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from www.l​atime​s.com​/trav​ el/cr​u ises​/ la-t​r-cru​ises-​puert​o -ric​o -sai​l ings​-resu​me-20​17101​6 -sto​r y.ht​m l Milman, O. (2018, June 18). Flooding from sea level rise threatens over 300, 000 US coastal homes—study. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​ onmen​t/201​8/jun​/17/s​ea-le​vel-r ​ise-i​mpact​-us-c​oasta ​l-hom​es-st ​udy-c​l imat​e -cha​nge NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. (2017). Global temperature. NASA Global Climate Change. Retrieved from https​://cl​i mate​.nasa​.gov/​v ital​- sign​s/glo​bal-t​emper​ ature​/ Nerem, R. S., Beckley, B. D., Fasullos, J. T., Hamlington, B. D. Masters, D. & Mitchum, G. T. (2018). Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era. PNAS, 115(9), 2022–2025. Niemöller, M. (2018). First they came for the Socialists. Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Pacifici, M., Visconti, P., Butchart, S. H. M., Watson, J. E. M., Cassola, F. M. & Rondinini, C. (2017, February 13). Species traits inf luenced their response to recent climate change. Nature and Climate Change, 7, 205–208. Parleys for the Ocean. (2018). A new link between plastic and climate change. Parley. Retrieved from www.p​a rley​.tv/u​pdate​s/201​8/7/2​3/a-n​ew-li​n k-be​t ween​-plas​t ica​nd-cl​i mate​- chan​ge Perry, P. (2018, January 8). The environmental costs of fast fashion. Independent. Retrieved from www.i​ndepe​ndent​.co.u​k /lif​e -sty​le/fa​shion​/envi​ronme​nt-co​stsf​a st-f​a shio​n-pol ​lutio​n-was​te-su​stain​abili​t y-a8​13938​6.htm ​l PETA. (2018). Meet PETA’s rescue team and the animals they help. PETA. Retrieved from https​://in​vesti​g atio​n s.pe​t a.or​g/pet​a s-re​scue-​team/ Plastics Today Staff in Packaging. (2018, June 27). Global plastic packaging market worth $269.6 billion by 2005. Plastics Today. Retrieved from www.p​lasti​cstod​ay.co​m /pac​ kagin​g/glo​bal-p​lasti​c-pac​k agin​g -mar​ket-w​orth-​2696-​billi​on-20​25/71​41393​09589​98 Scipioni, J. (2017, September 27). Carnival, Royal Caribbean ship to help Puerto Rico aid efforts. Fox Business. Retrieved from www.f​oxbus​i ness​.com/​featu​res/c​a rniv​a l-ro​ yal-c​a ribb​ean-s​h ips-​to-he​lp-pu​erto-​r ico-​a id-e​f fort​s Shear, M. D. (2017, June 1). Trump will withdraw the U.S. from Paris Climate agreement. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​/2017​/06/0​1/cli​m ate/​t rump​ -pari​s-cli ​m ate-​agree​ment.​html?​modul​e=inl ​i ne Silva, R. A., West, J. J., Zhang, Y. Q., Anenberg, S. C., Lamarque, J. F., Shindell, D. T., et al. (2013). Global premature mortality due to anthropogenic outdoor air pollution and the contribution of past climate change. Environmental Research Letters, 8(3), 1–11. Smith, O. & Raymen, T. (2018). Deviant leisure: A criminological perspective. Theoretical Criminology, 22(1), 63–82. Statista. (2018). Forecast of electronic waste generated worldwide from 2010 to 2018 (in million metric tons). Statista. The Statistics Portal. Retrieved from www.s​t atis​t a.co​m / sta​t isti​cs/49​9891/​proje​ction​- ewas​te-ge​nerat ​ion-w​orldw ​ide/ Stoekl, A. (2013, May 16). Review of: The wrath of capital: Neoliberalism and climate change politics. Adrian Parr. Climate & Capitalism. Retrieved from https​://cl​i mate​a ndca​pital​ ism.c​om/20​13/05​/16/t​he-wr​ath-o​f-cap​ital-​neoli​beral​i sm-a​nd-cl​i mate​- chan​g e-po​ litic​s/

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Struzik, E. (2016, November 17). Shipping plans grow as Arctic ice fades. Yale Environment 360. Retrieved from https​://e3​60.ya​le.ed​u/fea​t ures​/carg​o_shi​pping​_ in_t​he_ar​ctic_​ decli​n ing_​sea_i​ce Tabuchi, H. (2018, December 13). The oil industry’s covert campaign to rewrite American car emissions rule. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.n​y time​s.com​ /2018​/12/1​3/cli​m ate/​cafe-​emiss​ions-​rollb​ack-o​i l-in​dustr ​y.htm ​l Thacker, E. (2010). After Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Thompson, J. (2018, September 28). Trump’s methane rule rollback burns the natural gas bridges. The Denver Post. Retrieved from www.d​enver​post.​com/2​018/0​9/28/​t rump​ -coal​-powe​r-pol​icy-n​atura​l-gas​/ USGCRP. (2017). Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I. [Wuebbles, D. J., Fahey, D. W., Hibbard, K. A., Dokken, D. J., Stewart, B. C. & Maycock, T. K. (Eds.)]. Washington, DC: U.S. Global Change Research Program. Retieved from doi:10.7930/J0J964J6 Watts, J. (2018, October 8). We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​onmen​t/201​8/oct​ /08/g​lobal​-warm ​i ng-m​ust-n​ot-ex​ceed-​15c-w​a rns-​landm​a rk-u​n-rep​ort Wiens, J. (2016). Climate-related local extinctions are already widespread among plant and animal species. PLOS Biology 14(12), e2001104. Winlow, S. (2017). The uses of catastrophism. In Atkinson, R., McKenzie, L., & Winlow, S. (Eds.), Building Better Societies: Promoting Social Justice in a World Falling Apart (pp. 179–192). Bristol, UK: Polity Press. Witte, G. & Dennis, B. (2018, December 10). That was awkward—at world’s biggest climate conference, U.S. promotes fossil fuels. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.w​a shin​g tonp​ost.c​om/wo​rld/e​u rope​/that​-was-​awkwa​rd--a​t-wor​lds-b​igges​t-cli​ mate-​confe​rence​- us-p​romot​e s-fo​s sil-​f uels​/2018​/12/1​0/aa8​6 00c4 ​-f8ae​-11e8 ​- 8642​ -c971​8a256​cbd_s​tory.​html?​utm_t​erm=.​1280c​fe93c​89 WWF. (2018a). Climate change in the Amazon. WWF. Retrieved from http:​//wwf​ .pand​a .org​/ know​ledge​_ hub/​where​_we_w​ork/a​m azon​/amaz​on_th​reats​/clim​ate_c​ hange ​_ amaz​on/ WWF. (2018b). Species adoption: Adopt a polar bear. WWF Gifts. Retrieved from https​://gi​f ts.w​orldw​i ldli​fe.or​g /gif​t-cen​ter/g​i fts/​Speci​es-Ad​optio​n s/Po​l ar-B​ear.a​spx? s​c=AWY​1800O​Q1831​7A019​0 9RX&_ga=2​.1760​18978​.1814​43511​3.154​91428​94-18​ 75953​030.1​54914​2894 Ži žek, S. (2008). Violence. New York, NY: Picador.

10 THE SILENT ROLE OF NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IN THE NEOLIBERALISM TRAP

Non-profit organizations provide a range of services, from uncovering the violence of the state, to supplying basic subsistence during catastrophic events, to women’s crisis centers and domestic violence shelters, to sexual and reproductive health programs to name just a few. Consider, there are roughly 10 million nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and/or non-profit organizations across the globe (Global, 2018). If the these organizations were considered to be a country, it would rank as the fifth largest economy globally (Center for Civil Society Studies, n.d.). In addition, non-profits employ roughly 11.4 million United States citizens (Nonprofit Tech for Good, 2018). However, this is only half of the story (Klein, 2002), as non-profits are framed in the discourse and ideology of philanthropy and as a necessity in global civil society. After all, according to a survey conducted by Walden University (2012), 80 percent of surveyed citizens believe that NGOs “make it easy to be involved in positive social change” (p. 3). This can be understood in Gramscian terms. For Gramsci (1971), ideological hegemony is where a particular ideology (neoliberalism) is ref lected throughout society, permeating all institutions and social relations, making it appear innate. It becomes the only way it should be or what Gramsci would term common sense. Yet, common sense can be profoundly misleading, obfuscating or act as a disguise for a more heinous ‘truth’: the violence and harm of the system itself. Gramsci also notes that ‘civil society’ is ruled through consent. Cultural hegemony refers to “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 12). Furthermore, hegemonic discourse represents the dominant ideology (neoliberalism, consumerism and individualism), justifying the social, political and economic status quo while masking the violence of the system. The discourse is “intended to sustain the pre-existing modes of hegemonic dominance” (Pearce & Tombs, 2006, p. 1). This discourse is also consumed, regurgitated and sold by

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corporations to gain profit at the expense of tragedy, pain, violence and harm. However, forms of consumer culture that are framed as altruistic and compassionate point to something quite different. Consider the recent events surrounding Puerto Rico and Hurricane Maria in 2017. Just after the disaster, reports of fund-raising by cruise companies for victims of the storm and about the delivery of relief supplies by their ships began to appear in the news (e.g. Scipioni, 2017), along with articles that covered how cruise companies were encouraging people to book cruises to Puerto Rico despite the catastrophic conditions on the island (e.g. McClure, 2017). According to the logic provided by the companies, consumption was justified on the grounds that it was the pathway to recovery. While charity efforts more generally point to structural violence and systemic inequality, in this case the harm also compounds with the United States’ response—or lack thereof—to the disaster, much like Hurricane Katrina (Ži žek, 2008). As mentioned in Chapter 9, tourists were urged by corporations to take cruises shortly after the hurricane. Both the cruises and their consumer behaviors have no meaning without considering the horrific backdrop of the island not only at that time, but for months afterward. There was mass devastation including the loss of homes and shortages of food, water and electricity. The irony, however, is that resources were guaranteed for the tourists once they arrived at their destinations. There was an expectation that tourists would consume their way to goodwill, while many people on the island were struggling to survive, not to mention the ones that were already dead. In this way then, from a Gramscian perspective, non-profit organizations and the corporatized play on philanthropy, serve a role in promoting ‘consent’ for neoliberalism and the status quo by depoliticizing social problems and legitimizing the neoliberal project. There are more banal examples of the corporatization of benevolent discourse under the guise of corporate social responsibility or social innovation (Einstein, 2012). Product sales and profiteering are linked to a variety of social ills including global warming, cancer, heart disease and other illnesses, human trafficking, hunger, homelessness, tainted water supplies, inequality, racism, sexism and poverty. For example, Western Union has joined the corporatized philanthropy bandwagon with its latest campaign for World Refugee Day, where you can join the #IamMore challenge to contribute and promote their link to increase donations. As we note in Chapter 9, Coca-Cola’s philanthropy includes putting stickers on cases of Coke, congratulating the purchaser of their contribution to climate change—not buying the plastic Coke option. In addition, one need only open Google shopping to see the mass number of pink ribbons for sale (along with T-shirts, mugs and other apparel) leading to the profitization of awareness campaigns for breast cancer as well as funding research for a cure. As Pinto (2018) notes however, [B]reast Cancer Action, a nonprofit organization known as the watchdog of the breast cancer industry coined the term ‘pinkwashing’ … It happens when a company or organization claims to care about breast cancer by

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promoting pink ribbon products, while at the same time produces, manufactures and/or sells products that are linked to the disease. (p. 1) The Komen Breast Cancer organization has also linked up with Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and General Mills (to name a few). All of this ignores the root causes of cancer, including food safety (preservatives, chemical bleaching, pesticides etc.) and environmental toxins. Likewise, the Save the ‘Ta-tas’ slogan has commodified products by corporations implies it is the breasts that need saving, not the women the cancer primarily targets. As Einstein (2012) notes, charities have become commodities where corporations use non-profits to sell products while the non-profits brand themselves to be marketed to the corporate sector. Civil society can then think of “shopping as philanthropy and thereby believe we have been relieved of any responsibility” (Einstein, 2012, p. xiii), rejecting the broader system of neoliberal capital and the carceral violence of states. This then plays into the facilitation and reproduction of what we see as systematic and symbolic violence. After all, inherent in the social conditions of neoliberalism, along with the subsequent symbolic violence, is the naturalization of systemic violence. As noted by Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), symbolic violence is “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (p. 167). As mentioned in prior chapters, they refer to this complicity as “misrecognition: recognising a violence which is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive it as such” (pp. 167–168). It is therefore ironic that neoliberal commoditized consumption through corporatized philanthropy and non-profits, is at the core of the solution to global social inequalities and the violence of the theology of neoliberalism and has been normalized as the response. It becomes the abnormal normality. The corporatized sector’s inclusion of profiting from philanthropy serves to remove any discussion or dissent, rather we as consumers accept that “caring for others can be easy, then what happens to real compassion, to real change, to real lives?” (Einstein, 2012, p. x). In other words, the symptoms are quasi-addressed while the root problem is ignored and gains momentum, making consumers victims of “systemic misdirection” (Einstein, 2012, p. 106). While the corporate sector’s use of philanthropy to gain in the neoliberal capitalistic race to profit is horrific, our concern here is with the non-profit sector itself and the role they inadvertently play in the silencing of dissent and enforcing the notion that social ills are solved by addressing individual needs rather than the violent global and national systems of carceral logics and neoliberalism. We should not forget that these organizations are always entangled in politics, state control and neoliberal capital. The non-profit complex is “the set of symbiotic relationships that link together political and financial technologies of state and owning-class proctorship and surveillance over public political discourse” (Pinto, 2018, p. 1). As such we turn to the ignored and silent side to recognize how non-profits directly and indirectly reinforce the violence, inequalities and the status quo.

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Non-profits: global and local carceral logics and the neoliberal trap Imagine a large river with a high waterfall. At the bottom of this waterfall hundreds of people are working frantically trying to save those who have fallen into the river and have fallen down the waterfall, many of them drowning. As the people along the shore are trying to rescue as many as possible one individual looks up and sees a seemingly never-ending stream of people falling down the waterfall and begins to run upstream. One of other rescuers hollers, “Where are you going? There are so many people that need help here”. To which the man replied, “I'm going upstream to find out why so many people are falling into the river”. (Alinsky, as cited in Shelden & Macallair, 2008, pp. 162–163) The quote above sums up the role of non-profits across the globe, savers of a few, a necessary evil, all the while ignoring the root of the problem. Consider how the Global South has long suffered from the Global North’s, and more so the United States’, neoliberalist politics, exploitation and imperialism, all as a means to maintain control over the South’s natural resources and labor and to ensure ongoing economic opportunities and accumulation that benefit the North. As conditions continue to deteriorate, the non-profit sector expands to address the individual social ills. For example, in Pakistan there are between 8,000 and16,000 registered NGOs (i.e. registered as NGOs with the Worldwide Nongovernmental Organization Directory and the country where they are operating), and, with unregistered non-profit groups included, the figures rise to 25,000 to 35,000. Haiti, Ghana, the Philippines, Turkey, India and Bangladesh, all had a high presence of non-profit organizations. Haiti, was once considered the NGOs’ capital of the world “with over 900 foreign development NGOs and an estimated 10,000 NGOs overall operating in the small Caribbean nation of 8 million inhabitants” (Gürcan, 2015). Perhaps more telling of the impact, devastation and destruction of the neoliberal project, consider that the United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the origin of the neoliberal agenda and the primary source of the carceral logics and capital accumulation webbed out to other countries and international financial institutions, has 21,876 registered non-profit organizations (World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations, 2018). On a national level, the number of non-profits escalates to over 1.5 million NGOs currently operating in the United States (United States Department of State, 2017).While the United States and other countries listed above have a considerable number of nonprofits as an integral component of the political economy and carceral governing, the illegal and ongoing war against terrorism leaves countries with widespread devastation and only a small number of non-profits to address the ongoing atrocities. According to the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations (2018), in Afghanistan there are only 27 registered NGOs; Iraq has 38 and Syria has 18.

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The global reinforcement of the Western projection of carceral logics through international non-profits includes the dominant hegemonic projection of morality, politics and priorities, through the ‘expertise’ of the ‘advanced’ Western countries. As Chapter 8 highlighted, the neoliberal project promotes the carceral logics of patriarchy, and this includes through non-profit organizations. While several decades have witnessed a plethora of non-profits aimed at providing basic healthcare and reproductive tools to women across the globe, the assumption remains that pregnancy is a woman’s problem and poor women cannot and do not have any hygiene knowledge. There is no challenge to the broader system of patriarchy. In addition, while claiming to provide a benevolent and necessary service, what is ignored in the response is the systemic raping of women and young girls leaving them pregnant, with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, as well as long-term physical and mental health issues. Again, the selling of non-profits as natural and ordinary masks us from rejecting the carceral logics of states. This is similar to what Fraser (1995) refers to as affirmation strategies: actions that provide superficial solutions to social ills but do not disrupt the structure and conditions that created them. In this sense, non-profit organizations and NGOs are part of the neoliberal state delivery/governance service sector. On the other hand, continued carceral logics play out to harm these nonprofit services, increasing the governing of bodies. Dressed in Christian morality, Donald Trump signed an executive order on January 24, 2017, that bars international NGOs/non-profit organizations that promote or perform abortions from receiving United States’ funding. This reinforces a hegemonic morality that governs women’s rights to decide for and how to care for their own bodies. Moreover, Trump expanded the ban, leaving impoverished women in the Global South (and the United States) without treatment for HIV, birth control, pregnancy care, malaria and other diseases. This adds up to a reduction of 8.8 billion USD for the United States Global Health Aid. However, “unsafe abortion is a major cause of maternal mortality globally, and the collapse of health systems in crises suggests it likely increases in humanitarian settings” (McGinn & Casey, 2016). Affirmation strategies are much broader than women’s reproductive rights, as demonstrated by the carceral logics of state during times of conf lict. The war in Syria, where the United States is one of the players, has resulted in over 500,000 deaths. Ironically, one of organizations involved in providing food emergency aid is the World Food Program United States Aid. The war has also left more than 5.6 million refugees. Here again, while providing needed services, non-profits and the governments’ aid are not addressing the root of the issue, especially when several countries are involved in sustaining the conf lict, resulting in yet another example of affirmation strategies at best. In addition, corporations have been quick to jump on the bandwagon to increase their ‘brand’ reputation and gain profit from the refugees’ misery including the United Parcel Service, IKEA, Lyft, Airbnb, Starbucks and Walmart ( Johansson, 2018). In addition, countries are putting up figurative and literal walls, refusing refugees rather than addressing the problem.

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The corporatized use of philanthropy has another aspect that is often overlooked, the selling of symbols or sign-value to citizens. The value, or sign-value, as defined by Baudrillard (1981) as the expression and mark of style, identity and standing, “becomes an increasingly important part of the commodity and consumption” (Kellner, 2006, p. 3). Through the process of consumerism there is a conversion from the economic exchange value to sign-value; value is no longer solely monetary rather it is associated with the status and prestige attached to a particular commodity (Baudrillard, 1981). As we note in Chapter 11, the commodity itself then becomes greater than its intended use, as its value is associated with what it signifies (identity, style and, in this case, benevolent civic society duty). It has a value beyond its devouring and is transfigured to hold ideological meaning through the signage itself. Economic power therefore, is reworked and continues to dominate but through the less overt process of sign production. As argued by Baudrillard (1981) “signs and culture appear enveloped in a ‘fetishism’, a mystery equivalent to, and contemporaneous with that of the commodity” (p. 3). As such, the entire society is organized around consumption and the active displaying of commodities that, according to Baudrillard (1981), is organized under the “super-ideology of the sign” (p. 122). The autonomization of the sign-value supports a broader hegemonic capitalist structure that is more subtle in the power it holds than overt forms of exploitation. It is through this structure that the sign becomes more than the rather idealistic and somewhat simplistic connection to the commodity itself, rather it “is an operational structure that lends itself to a structural manipulation compared with which the quantitative mystery of surplus value appears inoffensive” (pp. 121–122). The commodification of philanthropy then becomes another tool for the ongoing reification and normalization of the ideology or hegemonic discourse within an exploitative neoliberalism system. Beyond the issues of commodifying philanthropy, sign-value also provides individuals with an enhancement of their self-esteem by knowing they have supported a cause: by helping others, ‘doing good’ (Einstein, 2012). This creates a “magical thinking” that disconnects individuals from the reality of the structural conditions that create and sustain a need for these non-profits. As we previously noted, Baudrillard (1998) argues that consumption “is governed by magical thinking” (p. 31) as it is both an objective process and lived as a myth, creating a “fantasy of goods and services” (Ritzer, 1998). From a structural perspective, consumption is language, a mode of discourse that conveys messages and symbols as a means of communication. In the case here, philanthropy and our ‘civil duty’ to aid/cure the social ills of neoliberalism are given to us. This is another example of hyper-individualization and of placing the blameworthy label on citizens to fix the ills of neoliberalism. Whether this be from the purchase of a commodity (e.g. the yellow bracelet, pink ribbon to name but two, or feed-the-hungry grocery boxes at supermarket checkouts); or giving, during holiday times in particular and during ‘cause’ months, to non-profits, including to the Salvation Army Bell Ringers or domestic violence centers; or the adoption

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of local families by small businesses in order to provide holiday food for a family or gifts for their children. Consider that the most significant individual contributions to non-profits occurs in the last couple of months of the year. Roughly 32 percent of annual giving occurs in December with 12 percent of all giving occurring in the last three days of the year (Gordy, 2018). In the United States, the push for donations begins primarily on the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving Day and has its own hashtag #GivingTuesday, perfect timing to enhance the emotive aspect to self-esteem and supporting a cause. This not only reinforces the consumption of commodities and consumption/holiday spending, it legitimates the hegemonic ideology and discourse of neoliberalism and the mythical thinking that one is helping to address a cause. The reality of hunger across the globe is staggering. It is estimated that 815 million people across the globe go undernourished and hungry every day (DoSomething.org, n.d.) with 60 percent being women. In the United States 41 million to 46 million people, with 13 million of that number being children and 5 million seniors, turn to non-profit food banks to eat on a daily basis (DoSomething.org, n.d.; Charity Navigator, 2019). The largest non-profit serving these populations is Feeding America (2018) with 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries across the United States. While this provides a regrettably necessary service, the neoliberal aspect can be seen with a glimpse into the compensation of the President of Feeding America with a base salary of 422,197 USD annually, with approximately 620,000 USD total in compensations. The former CEO (as of 2017) received 653,883 USD salary. The total revenue for 2017 was 2,717,127,060 USD with a surplus of ‘profit’ at 32,306,339 USD and assets worth 128,999,014 USD (Charity Navigator, 2019). As such, Feeding America is indeed in a symbiotic relationship with neoliberalism and the carceral state, serving the economy while ignoring the carceral logics of poverty, politics and inequality. Hunger is also addressed through religious organizations where the signvalue of helping those in need—supporting a cause—can be translated into religious doctrine of doing God’s work and spreading the word of the Bible, while simultaneously promoting one’s self-worth and status in one’s local community. Religion then becomes intertwined with the hegemonic discourse of the violent carceral state and neoliberalism. This is the case in the United States and globally where religious dogma is disguised under philanthropic behaviors to promote Christianity. Of course, this is not new, as missionary work has been a tool of colonialism and resource appropriation for hundreds of years, and it continues as neocolonialism. ‘Missionaries’ are sent primarily to the Global South to provide some service while simultaneously prophesizing or evangelizing through the ‘gospel’. Monies are raised to support the cause, providing religion exposure as well as sign-value to those participating and donating. Here again, the problem of inequality and the Global North’s exploitation of the Global South is not only ignored but legitimated through this process. In addition to that, the economic aspect should not be ignored. The capitalist economy and corporate sector

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thrives on these missions from the purchasing of plane tickets, transportation, lodging and other ‘essentials’ needed for a successful mission. To link back to our discussion of hunger and non-profits, we would be remiss if we did not point out how this issue is also tied to religion. After all, religion, neoliberalism, non-profit organizations and the reification of hunger continue to be intertwined. As stated by Lifeway “There is an abundance of food in the US, but plenty of people still go hungry … Many churches respond by faithfully following the biblical principle of being open handed to the poor and needy by maintaining well-stocked food pantries to share” (Smietana, 2018, p. 2). Most all of the church food pantries are a part of Feeding America discussed above (Paulsen, 2017). The discussion in Chapter 8 on the consumption of patriarchy as a neoliberal project, also carries over into non-profits. For example, in 2018 there were over 3,000 domestic violence shelters across the United States, a number that cannot possibly be sufficient to meet the needs of the number of domestic violence victims, primarily women and children (DomesticShelters.org, 2019). Here again, we have a regrettably necessary service that is intertwined in the neoliberal carceral logics. Moreover, with the ongoing (2018/2019) shutdown of the United States government over political bribery to gain a wall spanning the southern border, the Violence Against Women Act expired officially, which threatened federal funding to services for victims. While grant funding that had already been awarded was honored, new requests were denied or delayed until the act was reauthorized (Gathright, 2018), something that only recently happened in April 2019. One need only search the internet to see the linkage with the corporate sector. For example, in 2015, Avon—primarily a cosmetic/perfume corporation targeted toward women and girls, partnered with the National Domestic Hotline service to grant 500,000 USD to 25 local domestic violence programs (Marek, 2015). As such, Avon promotes its brand and continues to sell the dominant hegemonic definition of ‘beauty’ through a philanthropic gesture, linking its image with benevolence for consumers who can then feel good about buying their products. To return to our previous discussion of non-profits and the carceral logics of patriarchy and the governing of women’s bodies, we would be specious if we did not discuss, in brief, Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood, part of the Planned Parenthood Federation, is a national and international non-profit that provides sexual and reproductive healthcare services. The non-profit has approximately 30,000 staff members and volunteers with 825 health centers across the United States. They serve the needs of roughly five million people worldwide including 2.5 million in the United States (Lawrence & Ness, 2017). However, the need for Planned Parenthood speaks to the greater logics of the patriarchal state across the globe where, in several countries, women and girls remain the property of their husbands/fathers. The patriarchal system utilizes biopolitics and biopower (governing of bodies) to reinforce the status quo, including the

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systemic sexism, violence and inequality. The combination of patriarchy and religion is a toxic environment. In the United States, Christianity has long been used to oppress as noted above. When the morality of Christianity is ref lected in policy and the carceral project of control, centers such as Planned Parenthood attempt to address the gap. However, addressing the gap fails to demystify the system. It also ignores the role non-profits fill in the neoliberal project. For example, Planned Parenthood in the United States reported that, in 2017, their total revenue was 437,915,508 USD and that they held money market accounts 70,413,377 USD, certificates of deposit 10,248,835 USD and government and corporate bonds 65,009,470 USD, to name a few (Planned Parenthood, 2017; Planned Parenthood Federation, 2017). As such, the intertwinement of neoliberalism and non-profit continues to aid the machine inadvertently. Hidden in the banality of everyday life, non-profits reproduce the existing violence and social ills they aim to relieve. Neoliberalism and non-profits are interminably linked. While we have discussed the corporatization of philanthropy and examples of how non-profits serve neoliberalism and the carceral logics of the state, the relationship between neoliberalism and non-profits can also be seen in a host of ‘special invite’ galas that say they are raising money for a special cause. Typically these include three or more, course dinners, auctions, raff les and, generally, a celebrity to ‘speak’ on behalf of the cause. For example, the Met Gala sold tickets to attend at 30,000 USD, where celebrities and the elite serve as additional spectacles (Hoffower, 2018). The Charity Art Gala to benefit the fight against human trafficking in the Philippines was a black-tie, invite-only event that required you to ‘join’ the cause. Here sign-value, status and conscience can be claimed through engagement in a philanthropic event, whereby for many the spectacle of the event itself becomes the focus, not the underlying cause. In 2016, the Action Against Hunger’s 17th Annual Gala Against Hunger, held on Park Avenue, honored Weight Watchers, Oprah Winfrey and the Director of the World Food Program. It seems ironic to us that a gala for hunger, was sponsored by a weight-loss corporation. Not only are these events the epitome of neoliberalism, where attendees participate in mass spending and consumption, they do little to end the social ill of their cause as they ignore the root cause of many of these problems. The role of NGOs and their efforts to address social ills that are a result of neoliberalism, power and inequality is not just at the individual or community levels. As Chapter 9 in this volume highlights, neoliberal harm impacts the environment and climate change and, as a result, NGOs step up to try to address these harms. As indicated in a report from the World Bank by Ademola Braimoh (2015), climate change is largely due to our current system of food, specifically how the neoliberal model of agricultural production is unsustainable and drives land degradation. “Agriculture is also the world’s leading anthropogenic source of methane (52 percent) and nitrous oxide (84 percent) emissions, and the principal driver of deforestation worldwide. Agriculture and agriculture-driven landuse change contribute 24 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions”. A recent

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report in The Guardian by Damien Carrington (2018) detailed new research that shows that “without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75%—an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined—and still feed the world”. Meat and dairy mega corporate food producers use 83 percent of farmland while simultaneously producing 60 percent of agricultural greenhouse gases. Yet, with the most wellknown NGOs, the focus remains on issues that are not particularly impactful on combating climate change. As noted in the film, Cowspiracy (2014), the world's largest environmental groups that are supposed to be ‘saving our world’ do not mention the system of food production and its impact on climate change. Rather, they seem to have a prioritization of obtaining contributions and creating a victim/perpetrator sort of plotline over the most pressing climate change problem. “They're looking to maximize the number of people making contributions. And if they get identified as being anti-meat … it will hurt with their fundraising” (Cowspiracy, 2014). They, as with the mega food producers, need to maintain their profile and be ‘profitable’. Greenpeace, Oceana, Sierra Club and other large environmental groups limit the focus to social and politically palatable causes— protect animals, address climate change, oceans and water planetary destruction, yet they are primarily silent about one of the leading factors of climate change: animal abuse, inequalities and harms of our food system itself (see also Chapters 9 and 11). The reality is that these NGOs are being complicit in the reproduction of climate change and the power of the meat and dairy lobbyists—they are contributing to the legitimacy of the inept status quo, intentionally or not all in the name of helping. As Chapter 11 discusses, non-profits are also complicit in the legitimization of neoliberalism, even, inadvertently, in their efforts of ‘resistance’, as they participate in and encourage consumption, namely their products to display a cause giving us identity of resistance to the problem or as a sign of our charitable efforts. They are, in essence, market-based approaches that impose the responsibility of the ills of neoliberalism onto individuals through further commoditization and consumption. This includes those organizations we note above but is also far more expansive than we can cover in a few chapters. No matter what the non-profits seem to do, they are here because of our social order and they inadvertently play a role in the reproduction of the harms, violence and inequalities they are attempting to fix through a market service model that appears as a necessary evil.

Conclusion While recognizing the much-needed and well-intentioned services that nonprofits provide across the globe and locally, our goal here was to highlight the hidden side of non-profits, namely, how they simultaneously serve the carceral states’ neoliberal hegemonic discourse. “Non-profits that see themselves as opposing neoliberal economic policies are nonetheless enabling its continuation

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in the form of ‘progressive neoliberalism’” (Brown, 2015, pp. 201–202). They are the community face of neoliberalism, the carceral state and the status quo. Inadvertently, non-profits absorb and reproduce the depoliticized side of the hegemonic control in the current state of neoliberalism. Non-profits are also a symptom of the violence of neoliberal carceral logics—the “community face of neoliberalism” (Petras, 1997). Through our ignorance we discount the mythical thinking of neoliberalism and are only seeing the symptoms being quasiaddressed and the ‘beneficiaries’ that are often displayed as a spectacle or success story (see, for example, the non-profit organizations’ efforts to garner your financial support through ‘appeals to pity’ using of images starving children and abused animals). The root problem is not only ignored but continues to gain momentum. As Einstein (2012) states, “[n]eoliberalism, the belief that the market is better than the government as a purveyor of services of all kinds” (p. 101) is sold to us as citizens through hegemonic ideology and discourse. This is ref lected in the United States Department of State’s (2017) hegemonic ideology: The United States firmly believes that a robust civil society—independent of state control or government involvement—is necessary for democracy to thrive … We are committed to the idea that the public interest is served best when private citizens and members of civil society are able to choose freely the aims, organizations, and causes they support … Accordingly, US regulations that impact civil society organizations are designed to facilitate and support the formation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Yet we see this hegemonic discourse as another example of the selling of mythical thinking. It is the ongoing continuation of pushing onto society the obligations of the state. Through neoliberalism, the traditional responsibilities and services of the state continue to be provisioned to the non-profit complex and corporate sector (though we note they are profiting from their efforts) (Kettl, 2000). Rather than buying the hegemonic discourse that neoliberalism’s damage should be addressed through civil society, should not a healthy civil society be free of hunger and homelessness, where all people have equal access to medications and healthcare? Should we not strive to be free of sexism, racism, classism, ethnoism? Should we not reject the systemic misdirection we are subjected to?

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Braimoh, A. (2015, April 6). Greenhouse gas accounting: A step forward for climatesmart agriculture. The World Bank. Retrieved from http:​//blo​g s.wo​rldba​n k.or​g/cli​ matec​hange​/gree​n hous​e -gas​-acco​u ntin​g -ste​p -for​ward-​clima​te-sm​a rt-a​g ricu​lture​ Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. New York, NY: Zone Books. Carrington, D. (2018, May 31). Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on earth. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.t​hegua​rdian​.com/​envir​ onmen​t/201​8/may​/31/a​voidi ​n g-me​at-an​d -dai ​r y-is ​- sing ​le-bi​g gest​-way-​to-re​duce-​ your-​i mpac​t-on-​earth​ Center for Civil Society Studies. (n.d.). About the center. Center for Civil Society Studies. Retrieved from http://ccss.jhu.edu/ Charity Navigator (2019). Feeding America. Charity navigator. Retrieved from www.c​harit​y navi​g ator​.org/​i ndex​.cfm?​bay=s​earch​.summ​a ry&orgid=5271 Cowspiracy. (2014). Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. Movie script. Spring field! Spring field! Retrieved from www.s​pring ​f ield​sprin​g fiel​d.co.​u k/mo​v ie_s​cript​.php?​ movie​=cows​pirac​y-the​- sust​a inab​i lity​- secr​et DomesticShelters.org. (2019). Domestic violence shelters search tool. Domesticsshelters.org. Retrieved from www.domesticshelters.org/help#?page=1 DoSomething.org. (n.d.). 11  facts about world hunger. DoSomething.org. Retrieved from www.d​osome​thing​.org/​f acts​/11-f​acts-​about​-worl​d-hun​ger Einstein, M. (2012). Compassion, Inc. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Feeding America. (2018). How does the Feeding America network of food banks work?. Feeding America. Retrieved from www.f​eedin​g amer​ica.o​rg/ou​r-wor​k /foo​d-ban​k-net​ work.​html Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘postsocialist’ age. New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Gathright, J. (2018, December 24). Violence Against Women Act expires because of government shutdown. NPR. Retrieved from www.n​pr.or​g/201​8/12/​24/67​98381​ 15/vi​olenc​e -aga ​i nst-​women​-act-​expir​es-be​cause​- of-g​overn ​ment-​shutd​own Global. (2018). ICPIC 2013. Global, the global journal. Retrieved from www. theglobaljournal.net Gordy, J. (2018). 10 year-end giving statistics every fundraiser should know. Neon. Retrieved from www.n​eoncr​m.com​/10-y​ear-e​nd-gi​v ing-​stati​stics​- ever​y-fun​d rais​ er-sh​ould-​k now/​ Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York, NY: International Publishers. Gü rcan, E. C. (2015, April 1). The nonprofit-corporate complex. Monthly Review. Retrieved from https​://mo​nthly ​revie​w.org​/auth​or/ef​ecang ​u rcan​/ Hoffower, H. (2018, May 8). $30,000 tickets, $2 million jewelry, and $2,000 tuxedos: Unbelievable facts show how opulent the Met Gala is. Business Insider. Retrieved from www.b​usine​ssins​ider.​com/m​et-ga ​la-20​18-th​eme-c​ost-t ​icket​- dres​s-jew​lery-​2018-​5 Johansson, A. (2018, January 29). The top 6 companies giving back to refugees. INC. Retrieved from www.i​nc.co​m /ann​a-joh​a nsso​n /the​-top- ​6 -com​panie​s-giv ​i ng-b​ackt​o -ref​ugees​.html​ Kellner, D. (2006). Jean Baudrillard after modernity: Provocations on a provocateur and challenge. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, 3(1). Retrieved from www2.​ubish​ ops.c​a/bau​d rill​a rdst​udies​/vol3​_1/ke​l lner​.htm Kettl, D. F. (2000). The transformation of governance: Globalization, devolution, and the role of government. Public Administration Review, 60(6), 488–497.

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Klein, N. (2002). No Logo: No Space, no Choice, no Jobs. New York, NY: Picador. Lawrence, H. C. & Ness, D. L. (2017, March 21). Planned Parenthood provides essential services that improve women’s health. Annals of Internal Medicine, 166(6), 443–444. Marek, K. (2015, July 6). What’s Avon doing on domestic violence prevention? Inside Philanthropy. Retrieved from www.i​n side​phila​nthro​py.co​m /hom​e/201​5/7/6​/what​savo​n-doi​ng-on​- dome​stic-​v iole​nce-p​reven​t ion.​html McClure, R. (2017, October 17). Cruise lines return to Puerto Rico and urge travelers to book Caribbean sailings. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from www.l​atime​s.com​/trav​ el/cr​u ises​/ la-t​r-cru​ises-​puert​o -ric​o -sai​l ings​-resu​me-20​17101​6 -sto​r y.ht​m l McGinn, T. & Casey, S. E. (2016, March 24). Why don’t humanitarian organizations provide safe abortion services? Conflict and Health, 10, 8. Nonprofit Tech for Good. (2018). 25  facts and stats about NGOs worldwide. Nonprofit Tech for Good. Retrieved from http:​//tec​h repo​r t.ng​o/pre​v ious​/2017​/fact​s-and​- stat​sabo​ut-ng​os-wo​rldwi​de.ht​m l Paulson, D. (2017, November 5). Episcopal food pantries are part of nationwide network with goal of ending hunger in U.S. The Episcopal Church. Retrieved from www.e​pisco​ palch​u rch.​org/l ​ibrar ​y/art ​icle/​episc​opal-​food-​pantr ​ies-a​re-pa​r t-na​t ionw ​ide-n​etwor​ k-goa​l-end​i ng-h​u nger​-us-0​ Pearce, F. & Tombs, S. (2006). Hegemony, risk and governance: ‘social regulation’ and the American chemical industry. Economy and Society, 25(3), 428–454. Petras, J. (1997). Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America. Monthly Review, 49(7). Retrieved from https​://mo​nthly​revie​w.org​/1997​/12/0​1/imp​erial​ism-a​nd-ng​os-in​ -lati​n-ame​r ica/​ Pinto, D. (2018). The façade of breast cancer awareness, Susan G. Komen and the pink ribbon. The Truth About Cancer. Retrieved from https​://th​etrut​habou​tcanc​er.co​m /sus​ an-g-​komen​-pink​-ribb​on-fa​cade/​ Planned Parenthood. (2017, March). Defunding Planned Parenthood: An attack on public health. Planned Parenthood. Retrieved from www.n​ation​a lpar​t ners​h ip.o​rg/ou​rwor​k /res​ource​s/rep​ro/de​f undi​ng-pl​a nned​-pare​nthoo​d-an-​attac​k-on-​publi​c-hea ​lth. p​d f Planned Parenthood Federation. (2017, June 30). Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. and related entities: Consolidated financial statements and supplementary information. KPMG. Retrieved from www.p​lanne​dpare​nthoo​d.org​/uplo​ads/f ​i ler_​ publi​c/78/​14/78​144ef ​5 -743​e -40e​1-8de​2 -ad6​6c2fe​4231/​ppfa_​f inal​_ fs_f​y2017​_1.pd​f Ritzer, G. (1998). Introduction. In Baudrillard, J. (Ed.), The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London, UK: Sage. Retrieved from https​://mo​nosko​p.org​/imag​es/d/​de/ Ba​udril ​lard_ ​Jean_​The_c​onsum​er_so​ciety​_ myth​s _and ​_ stru​cture​s _197​0.pdf​ Scipioni, J. (2017, September 27). Carnival, Royal Caribbean ship to help Puerto Rico aid efforts. Fox Business. Retrieved from www.f​oxbus​i ness​.com/​featu​res/c​a rniv​a l-ro​ yal-c​a ribb​ean-s​h ips-​to-he​lp-pu​erto-​r ico-​a id-efforts Shelden, R.G. & Macallair, D. (2008). Juvenile Justice in America: Problems and Prospects. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press Inc. Smietana, B. (2018, November 21). Almost a quarter of American families have turned to church food pantries for help. Lifeway. Retrieved from https​://li​feway​resea​rch. c​om/20​14/11​/21/a​l most​- a-qu​a rter​- of-a​meric​a n-fa​m ilie​s -hav​e -tur​ned-t​o -chu​rchf​ood-p​a ntri​es-fo​r-hel​p -2/ United States Department of State. (2017, January 20). Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United States. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Retrieved from www.s​t ate.​gov/j​/drl/​rls/f​s/201​7/266​904.h​t m

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Walden University. (2012). 2012  Social Change Impact Report—Survey Findings. Retrieved from www.w​a lden​u.edu​/abou​t/soc​ial-c​hange​/impa​ct-re​port-​2012/​f indi​ngs World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations. (2018). Worldwide NGO Directory. WANGO. Retrieved from www.w​a ngo.​org/r​esour​ces.a​spx?s​ectio​n=ngo​ dir Ži žek, S. (2008). Violence. New York, NY: Picador.

11 THE COMMODIFICATION AND ILLUSION OF RESISTANCE

Since the election of Donald Trump to the United States presidency in 2016, various movements have emerged that speak out against inequality and harm. From anti-fascism, the Women’s Marches, A Day Without Immigrants, to the ‘Take A Knee’ campaign, many of these movements have garnered considerable social support including endorsements from celebrities and politicians alike. For example, consider the ‘Take A Knee’ campaign famously started by the American football player, Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick took a knee during the pre-game playing of the National Anthem in an effort to bring attention to police brutality against unarmed black men (Mindock, 2018). While we recognize the efforts of such social movements and the validity of the causes they bring attention to, we argue that in an era of hyper-neoliberal capitalism, resistance too becomes commodified therefore serving to perpetuate the system. This is counter to other academic work that has argued mass commodities can be sites for cultural innovation and popular resistance (Willis, 1990). Our departure from this argument is situated in an understanding of resistance that recognizes the power that commodification and commercialization has in usurping and/or subsuming platforms of change into the existing status quo. This is not to minimize the importance of resistance as it is necessary for a healthy democracy, however when it becomes commodified, commercialized and consumed—as most resistance causes are—it quickly loses oppositional value and power to make any significant social change. As argued by Hayward and Schuilenburg (2014) resistance today in the West should be considered a ‘reactive gesture’, as it is not oppositional behavior because it does not represent a meaningful challenge to the status quo. Based on the pervasive nature of neoliberalism it is more appropriately conceptualized as “attempted resistance” (Hollander & Einwohner, 2004). Revisiting the aforementioned example of the ‘Take A Knee campaign’, it becomes evident that capitalism is fueled by its very critique (Baudrillard, 1970),

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when you consider that Nike featured Colin Kaepernick as the new face of their ‘Just Do It’ campaign. Here we see symbols of resistance, or the sign-value of Kaepernick’s resistance cause, being appropriated into the capitalist system, which commodifies and sells resistance for the purpose of profit acquisition— selling Nike apparel in the name of supporting Kaepernick’s ‘Take A Knee’ campaign. As is the case with Nike’s use of Kaepernick and his cause, material goods such as apparel, bumper stickers, key chains, hats and more become part of the larger neoliberal capitalist state (Debord, 1988). This extends beyond material goods to other forms of banal consumption that are a necessary expenditure of resistance efforts and organizing—e.g. transportation to and from resistance sites, lodging and food. While we recognize the extraordinary efforts of those engaged in various resistance efforts, our focus here is not to criticize a particular resistance cause, or their approaches and impacts, rather it is to draw attention to how, through the processes of commodification and consumption, resistance too becomes part of the neoliberal system that commoditizes in totality. In this chapter we argue that there is a need to revisit the role of resistance more broadly as it relates to the more inherent violence of the state and the current economic system. In the following section we draw on several current examples of resistance causes and counterculture movements to demonstrate our argument

Resistance commodified The examples of resistance being commodified are numerous. Independent of the cause or roots, there is a long history of resistance efforts becoming packaged, commodified and sold to the consumer in the neoliberal economic market. Even those resistance efforts that are grassroots in their origins become more and more commercial as they gain momentum and reach a broader audience where their language, and what Baudrillard (1981) terms sign-value, is commodified for capital gain. Baudrillard (1981) defines sign-value as the expression and mark of style, identity and standing that “becomes an increasingly important part of the commodity and consumption” (Kellner, 2006, p. 3). This occurs through the process of consumerism where there is a conversion from the economic exchange value to sign-value. This process means that value is no longer solely monetary but instead it is associated with the status and prestige that then becomes connected to a particular commodity (Baudrillard, 1981). Consider for example, the broad array of merchandise that accompanies the feminist movement. There are T-shirts, mugs, bags, pins and various other apparel. Posters and T-shirts of iconic images such as Rosie the Riveter, slogans such as ‘We Can Do It’ or the Venus symbol, which are mass produced and sold in efforts to convey to the world that the consumer has aligned themselves with the larger ideological underpinnings of women’s rights, resistance and empowerment. Yet, purchasing and, perhaps, wearing or displaying these products does very little for the movement itself, beyond, perhaps, raising awareness, as there is very little specific resistance effort, much less activism, involved with owning,

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displaying a poster or wearing a T-shirt. This is better conceptualized as an example of sign language (Baudrillard, 1981), where the consumer is exercising their purchasing power to fulfill an individualized ideal of status or identity. The poster or T-shirt in our example, or other merchandise containing the resistance message—that of women’s rights or empowerment—becomes greater than its intended use, as its value is associated with what it signifies. Its value extends beyond its consumption and is transformed to hold ideological meaning through the signage itself. In our above example, consumers, through their resistance purchase, are encouraged to think of themselves as activists, or fighters for rights, equality and social justice, however, actual dissent, nonconformity or ‘real-life’ engagement in grassroots activism is not a requirement. Purchasing a poster or a T-shirt can be done from the comfort of home or work, with little real interruption to the patterns and routines of everyday life. As argued by Goldman (1992) this commodity feminism embraces women as neoliberal subjects as they purchase a sanitized, corporate-approved idea of gender equality. Take, for example, shopping for a T-shirt displaying a feminist message. A brief online search results in a wide variety of apparel, however, many of these T-shirts are form-fitting, colored pink, tied at the waste, or modelled by women who fit traditional ideals of heteronormative femininity. Therefore, the message is packaged through objectification and sexualization of women’s bodies, reinforcing dominant notions of beauty standards that reaffirm patriarchal understandings of gender that are rooted in dualistic notions of anatomical sex. The broader message of resistance is situated in a larger system that oppresses women, one that suggests in buying a resistance T-shirt, you too can be slim, pretty and sexually attractive to men. Therefore, the decision to purchase means women are required to engage in the ideological and material consumption of a post-feminist neoliberal consumerism. Advertisers “reincorporate the cultural power of feminism” (Goldman, 1992, p. 130) and this serves to quash or depoliticize the goals of the feminist movement (Murray, 2012). The consumer is manipulated not only by the sign-value attached to their resistance purchase, but also by supporting the very structures they are attempting to resist. This, however, is not restricted to the feminist movement but spans all forms of resistance causes. From Black Lives Matter, to anarchist movements, to the aforementioned ‘Take A Knee’ campaign, the economic power of the neoliberal state is reworked so it can continue to dominate through less overt processes of sign production. Following a similar pattern to the feminist movement, the Black Lives Matter campaign has also been commodified with associated phrases and language corporatized and sold to the willing consumer. Phrases such as ‘white silence equals white consent, black lives matter’ or simply ‘black lives matter’ are often printed accompanied by a graphic of a raised fist on T-shirts, sweaters, tote bags alike that saturate the marketplace and are produced and sold by companies that have no association with the Black Lives Matter movement. Interestingly, the fist graphic, that originated in 1917 with the Industrial Workers of the World, has been popularized and utilized as a symbol of resistance for many different causes including

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but not limited to the Spanish Civil War, Tailer de Grafica Popular (in Mexico), the United States Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Ukraine separatists in 2015. Here, the symbolism of the fist carries with it sign language that, independent of the cause, has been utilized throughout history to communicate resistance. This symbol has been appropriated, co-opted and employed by corporate interests to sell commodified products. Mass-produced resistance products are widely available, so much so they are banal whereby making a political statement becomes equated with consumerism. Efforts for substantive change are subsumed into the broader economic system that sustains the hegemonic status quo. In addition, individual resistance efforts become blurred with issues of status and identity, and making such a purchase becomes less about the cause and more about the projection of self-identity to society more broadly. As argued by Williamson (1978) they are “selling us something else besides consumer goods: in providing us with structure in which we, and those goods, are interchangeable, they are ‘selling us ourselves’” (p. 13). The consumer can purchase a resistance identity, but it is one that consumes activism and its causes within the existing neoliberal economic marketplace. Furthermore, corporate co-option of resistance causes serves as a blatant reminder of the power of sign language for corporate profit making. There is considerable research on corporate orchestrations of “social responsibility” (Ginzel, Kramer & Sutton, 1992; Nelson, 1998; Smith, 1998), where corporations adopt particular messaging with the specific goal of improving their public image, shape their brand and ultimately increase their profits. This arguably is exactly what Nike has done by using Colin Kaepernick as the face of their advertising campaign. For example, immediately following the premiere of their advertisement featuring the athlete their online sales grew by 31 percent (Raggs, 2018), Nike’s brand exposure increased by 163.5 million USD (LaVito, 2018), and the advertising video itself has reportedly been viewed over 80 million times on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube (Creswell, Draper & Maheshwari, 2018). Ironically, because the ‘Take A Knee’ campaign has been so divisive in the United States, both the positive and the negative responses to Nike’s use of Kaepernick as the face of their brand increased sales. Those who support his ‘Take A Knee’ campaign purchased more Nike apparel to wear in solidarity with the cause, and those who opposed the campaign bought Nike apparel to burn in protest. Independent of the controversy, Nike made money. The use of resistance or counter-hegemonic messaging is a pervasive advertising technique. In a similar approach to that adopted in Nike’s recent ad, Pepsi attempted to capitalize on the popularity of resistance as a brand when it used highly sanitized imagery of a street protest, with the addition of Kylie Jenner, to sell carbonated drinks. The advertisement focuses on a youthful and multicultural street protest, complete with dancing and pop-locking, smiles and ambiguous resistance protests, moving through the streets passing Jenner as she is working on a photo shoot. Inspired by the protest, and a young man—who she locks eyes with—she removes her blonde wig and bright lipstick and joins

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the protest. The ad ends as Jenner grabs a can of Pepsi and hands it to a police officer who is holding a line in opposition to the protesters. This is obviously supposed to mirror the iconic picture captured of Ieshia Evans who stood on her own in direct opposition to a line of militarized police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Pepsi, 2018). Rather than being met with handcuffs, the police officer accepts the Pepsi from Jenner, smiles and the crowd erupts in cheers of joy. The advertisement received extensive criticism for not only being tone deaf but for “represent[ing] a pervasive and persistent white liberal fantasy of United States protest politics that trivializes the long and oftentimes dangerous work of resistance and protest” (Attiah, as cited in Hampton, 2017). Although Pepsi removed the advertisement, it neatly encapsulates the commodification of a fictionalized version of resistance that is readily consumed through protest selfies, clever signs, facebook statuses and safety-pin movements. Similarly, Gillette—a company known for selling shaving cream and razors to men, was met with polarized responses to an advertising campaign that tackled the topic of toxic masculinity. Highlighting damaging behaviors such as sexual and street harassment, bullying and violence more generally, Gillette attacks the toxic ideals of manhood that are destructive to both men and women alike ( Johnson, 2019). However, the bottom line is profit, and, in such advertising campaigns, the product has been positioned by a corporation as holding an anti-establishment ideology that appeals to the consumer, as they can use their purchasing power to buy (a can of fizzy drink or a Gillette razor) as a form of resistance that then “translates the possibility of agency to the privatized act of buying goods rather than engaging in forms of self- and social-determination” (Giroux, 1994, p. 18). Given that we draw on climate change, neoliberalism and its violence in Chapter 9, it seems appropriate to note here—like other campaigns that address social inequalities and other societal issues of harm—that resistance to climate change too is usurped and turned into a commoditized product for our consumption and to provide us with a sense of resisting. This includes stickers we can add to our bumpers or license plates on our vehicles warning us there is no planet ‘B’ thus alerting others that we ‘care’. This serves as a public display of our ‘resistance’. This also can be argued about cause-specific attire depicting the evils of neoliberalism and the corporate abuse of our environment and climate change. We can donate directly to nongovernmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace or Surfrider, to name a few, or support their causes by buying their products contributing to the commodification of resistance. For example, we can save endangered wildlife by symbolically adopting animals. In return, we receive a small plush animal from our charity of choice (e.g. the Sierra Club). Similarly, the Surfrider Foundation aims to ‘save’ the world’s oceans, and to demonstrate our support of their cause, we can purchase products such as hats, T-shirts, beach towels and coffee mugs. The same can be said of Greenpeace, which has held exhibits displaying their collection of T-shirts as an ‘iconic communication tool’. This also provides a sense of resistance identity, as the organizer of one of these events, Mai Sazuki, states, “When you wear a Greenpeace

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T-Shirt, everyone can look at you on the street. It is a potent and direct way of communicating information”, and, for us, resistance identity (Sazuki, as cited in Greenpeace, 2009). Likewise, as we state in Chapter 9, even non-profits attempting to address a social problem such as climate change rely on commodities and consumption to raise money and awareness. This corporatization and commodification of resistance is in no way isolated to Black Lives Matter, climate change, the ‘Take A Knee’ campaign or the aforementioned example of the feminist movement, however, it pervades all efforts of resistance, including those movements that emerge as counter movements or in protest to existing movements such as ‘Police/Blue Lives Matter’, ‘White Lives Matter’ and ‘All Lives Matter’. These groups also have products, platforms including social media, online recruitment sites and messages that simultaneously capitalize on their own ideological agendas through material consumption. They also consume and commodify an identity that specifically objects to the sign-value associated with Black Lives Matter. The messaging of White Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter ignore the central tenets of the Black Lives Matter campaign as being one associated with calling attention to racialized police practice that disproportionately impacts persons of color. For example, in the case of White Lives Matter, it calls on racist ideologies by promoting neo-Nazi white supremacy (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2017). By co-opting the same language in their branding of the group (i.e. changing the ‘Black’ in the recognizable slogan ‘Black Lives Matter’ to ‘White’), they capitalize on the familiarity of the tagline while subverting the sign-value associated with cause of the Black Lives Matter movement. By purchasing products such as T-shirts, the individual can claim collective action and identity grounded in a specific political, racial and social ideology that simultaneously, and quite directly, initiates an attack on the legitimacy of the original movement. To consume, then, extends beyond the purchasing of a singular material good to include a sense of identity bestowed on the consumer through their engagement with the economic market. In examining the other two groups, All Lives Matter and Blue/Police Lives Matter, we are not in any way endorsing their cause, as they refocus the attention away from the original message of the Black Lives Matter movement—that of racial injustice in the criminal justice system that disproportionately impacts one group—and instead redirects the message to be one of disregarding the plight of other groups in society arguing they too are deserving of attention. This again, appropriates the original messaging of the Black Lives Matter movement, and capitalizes on misinformation, existing prejudices and emotionally charged political and media rhetoric to market merchandize adorning their message in efforts to demonstrate group cohesiveness, individual and social identity and their ideological underpinnings that are grounded in the sign-value of the original group. This serves as a reminder of the power of the hegemonic capitalist system, one that is so pervasive that, independent of the message (e.g. racism, prejudice, oppression or marginalization), the needs of the market take precedence.

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The needs and power of the market can be perfectly illustrated by recent outrage at an online costume company that sells outfits for Halloween, marketing and selling a ‘sexy Handmaid’s tale’ costume. Margaret Atwood’s now famous tale is set in a dystopian future where the United States is under a totalitarian regime and women are objects of state property who have no control over their own bodies including their reproductive rights as they are forced into sexual servitude for the purposes of providing offspring for the higher classes. The signature red handmaid’s costume (a red dress, red cloak and large white cap) associated with the portrayal of the main character Offred in the adapted-fortelevision mini-series, has emerged as a symbol of resistance across the country in efforts to call attention to sociopolitical efforts to reduce/erase women’s rights. This then resulted in a ‘sexy’ version of the costume (a shorter, more revealing, tighter dress) being made available for Halloween in 2018. Here we have a costume that carries significant sign-value as a symbol of greater agency, autonomy and rights for women. Yet, it has been redesigned to convey and reaffirm the objectification and sexualization of women’s bodies, an understanding of gender that is highly misogynistic and carries with it ideals of womanhood that are related to typical (and unhealthy) standards of beauty (e.g. skinny, white, scantily clad and sexually pleasing to men). Ironically, this is a costume for women, who through their purchasing power, consent and consumption, are adhering to and reinforcing these patriarchal gender tropes that are grounded in their oppression. Although the Halloween version of the costume seems most abhorrently overt, the commodification and consumerism revolving around the book and the costume are multilayered. It must be recognized that the made-for-television series that brought the story back into the public eye, is also about the commodification of a message, a sociopolitical commentary that has been made more palatable to the average viewer through its on-screen production. Consider that in May 2018 it was announced that the series will get a third season, due to the doubling of its audience from season one to two (Hooten, 2018), and Hulu, the television streaming service, announced it made 1 billion USD in advertising revenues in 2017 partially due to the launch of its live television service that hosts shows such as The Handmaid’s Tale (Lynch, 2018)—its most celebrated and popular series. Furthermore, more serious protesters that adorn the costume for resistance efforts are relying on the symbolism associated with its imagery to convey their message, something that again is reliant on the audience’s knowledge of the television mini-series (or further attracts others to watch the series). These protesters also have to purchase their costumes to be able to rely on its power as a protest performance—a costume that costs between 50 USD and 80 USD to buy online. Despite the importance of the specific message, the use of the Handmaid’s Tale costume cannot be divorced from the neoliberal capitalist market, one that is fed and maintained by those (the resistors) fighting against it. It becomes pretty evident that neoliberalism, as a system, has no conscience. It usurps through processes of commodification and consumption of resistance

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and counter-resistance causes through the expenditure of capital. This in turn signifies legitimacy, whereby particular resistance causes achieve recognition, or legitimacy, within the broader hegemonic status quo. As argued by Nicholson (1997), the products and language “while viewed as ‘resistant’ by some because of the manner in which it is presented, merely pumps capital back into the system the agent wishes to resist” (p. 179). This, however, is less apparent to the resistance consumer, who, either through purposeful avoidance or an inadvertent misreading of the consumer system, fails to recognize that engaging in consumerism to protest or resist does not place them outside the capitalist system. As argued by Winlow and Hall (2007) there is a falsehood at play, whereby the consumer feels they operate independently of the seductions of the neoliberal capitalist market. Albeit in a different context, they further expand on this, especially as it relates to even those most marginalized in society. Can genuinely oppositional counter-values constantly recreate themselves among marginal groups in an industrialized West whose channels of communication are dominated by consumer values that now permeate every nook and cranny of everyday life? Are young people really subverting the metaphors of capitalism and stamping their own identity on their world because they appear ‘creative’ when reworking and ritualizing the symbolism of corporate goods? (p. 395) Here, we would argue ‘no’, as we would argue that resistance in the context discussed here, represents individual and lifestyle choices within the existing consumer society—just another way of engaging the neoliberal market (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Furthermore, there is an added layer of classism, as engaging resistance through capitalist consumption and the exercise of purchasing power reinforces existing class structures that dictate who can engage resistance in this manner, i.e. those with expendable incomes. Miles (2014) argues that being able to consume is “normal” in a consumer society (p. 80), and those who do not have the means to consume in the designated manner, i.e. what is deemed normal, become “f lawed consumers” unable to participate in “happy life” (Bauman, 1998). In a consumer society, social degradation and ‘internal exile’ are dictated by a person’s ability to consume. If they are inadequate in this ability, then this can transform into a “bitterness at being left behind, disinherited or degraded, shut off from the social feast to which others gained entry” (Bauman, 1998, p. 38). Therefore the market, including the resistance market, is characterized by money and materialism that then become a language for which we navigate everyday life, even when consumption and the purchasing of products are diametrically opposed ideologically to the very message being endorsed or supported (Haiven, 2014). One such overt example is that of anarchist resistance movements, which are broadly coached in an anti-state, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian ideology.

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In using the example of anarchist resistance movements, we recognize there are many different groups with varying nuances in approaches, values and messages. Yet, fundamentally, the contradictions in opposing and fighting against an ideology of a state built on violence, that of an oligarchical state that is entrenched in corporatism and neoliberalism, are hard to fight completely independently of the current neoliberal capitalist system. The very frameworks of the anti-fascist or anarchist resistance efforts are by definition anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian. However, the material production of goods displaying symbols and language associated with these causes demonstrates that commodification and consumption are central to resistance participation. These products are sold as symbols of, and commitment to, an alternate ideology that ironically only serves to reinforce the violence of neoliberalism and the state. Here, we see that the symbolism of the products is more of an expression of style, identity or standing (Kellner, 2006), and the resistance commodity becomes less about the cause and more about the status and prestige associated with its possession (Baudrillard, 1981). As argued by Baudrillard (1981) “signs and culture appear enveloped in a ‘fetishism’, a mystery equivalent to, and contemporaneous with that of the commodity” (p. 3). As such, the entire society is organized around consumption and the active displaying of commodities that, according to Baudrillard (1981), is organized under the “super-ideology of the sign” (p. 122). In this sense, these resistance groups are part and parcel of a consumer culture linked to resistance (Hayward & Schuilenburg, 2014). They have adopted a resistance lifestyle involving the use of ‘radical iconography’. As we have previously noted, the purchases of these commodified products of resistance support the spectacular domination of the state and capital. Before concluding, it must be noted that the consumption and commodification of resistance cannot be restricted to material goods. Rather, it is much broader, including liking gifs, memes, pages and videos on social media, as well as the adoption of certain lifestyles such as those that are considered to represent ‘counterculture’. Although there are many examples that can be used to illustrate our point, ranging from gangsta rap to punk, the now often gently ridiculed ‘hipster’ culture serves as a reminder of the power of neoliberal acquisition. The term hipster originated in the 1940s. The original hipsters were young, middle-class white people who rejected the segregation of the time and embraced jazz music as well as the culture that accompanied it. However, the modern-day hipster is now associated with inner-city enclaves of socially and politically informed millennials, progressives and nonconformers, who are more often than not college educated (Gonzalez, 2018). In addition, they are often associated with rejecting consumerism, buying organic and/or second hand, conserving the environment, as well as a range of activities deemed ‘edgy’. Critics of the culture have pointed out that, unlike the hipsters of the 1940s, the modern-day version is less about community building and more about status identity and individual image. Yet, this is largely due to the mass production of the ‘hipster’ style, brand and lifestyle through its commodification and

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corporatization. To emulate the lifestyle is to exercise considerable purchasing power (e.g. having the resources to shop organic), the style and the gadgets. As argued by Peter Furia, the producer of a documentary style web series on the American hipster, “the ironic part is that hipsters’ opposition to pop culture has become pop culture” (Weeks, 2011). Although our attention here on hipster culture is cursory at best, our larger point is how quickly and efficiently the system envelops a lifestyle that is promoted as ‘counter’. Stylistic markers, lifestyle symbols (e.g. material goods, artisan restaurants and breweries) and fashion trends have become mainstream, packaged and sold to the consuming public. In differentiating between the authentic hipster creators (original artists, writers and producers who create ideologies and creative mindsets) and hipster consumers (regular people who use their purchasing power to emulate what they perceive to be ‘hip’), it is this mass consumerism that has made the ‘hipster’ less counterculture and more mainstream, as they do not exist outside the system. As argued by Moor (2018) “Without a postmodern philosophical backing and resistance to capitalism, hipsterism quickly devolves into just what it always appeared to be to the uninitiated: a shallow, meaningless, vain, hyper-consumerist, self-hating and poisonous system of living”. Although we agree with his general take on consumerism, we are not convinced that the addition of postmodern philosophical backing and resistance capitalism would really do anything to subvert the existing power of neoliberal capitalism. The dominance of consumerism and the capitalist neoliberal market emphasizes individualism, and within a society where counter-values have to constantly recreate themselves, lifestyle choices as well as their accompanying ideologies are more readily commercialized so that they too can be easily accessed by the willing consumer—they become just another way of engaging the neoliberal market (Pine & Gilmore, 1999).

Conclusion Through the introduction of a variety of examples that range from more overt forms of resistance groups and activities to cultures and lifestyles that are considered ‘counter’, we have highlighted in this chapter that, independent of cause, the commodification and consumption of resistance legitimates the violence of neoliberalism. Despite our stance, we are in no way belittling or undermining genuine and important resistance efforts that are instrumental to the maintenance of a democratic society, however, we are advocating caution and greater awareness. More specifically, we are arguing that what appears as a form of resistance or ‘détournement’ can be viewed as how the neoliberal system responds and the market reacts, making resistance appear to be ‘successful’. This acts to satisfy the public, while allowing for the continued endorsement of state violence and social inequalities that pervade the status quo. Essential to unpacking the violence of neoliberalism is to demystify and depoliticize the hegemonic system of control to allow for real and meaningful resistance to occur. This means unveiling the

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inherently violent structure of state and market. In addition, there should be a refocusing of resistance efforts away from individual causes to those of the state and the current neoliberal order. It is only then, with a unified effort, that perhaps some of the violent powers of state and neoliberal capital can be dismantled.

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LaVito, A. (2018, September 6). Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ads created $163.5 million in buzz since it began—and it’s not all bad. CNBC. Retrieved from www.c​nbc.c​om/20​ 18/09​/06/n ​i kes- ​colin​-kaep​ernic​k-ad- ​c reat​e d-16​3poin​t 5-mi ​l lion​-in-m​e dia- ​expos​ ure.h​t ml Lynch, J. (2018, January 9). Thanks to shows like The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu 2017 ad revenue topped $1 billion. Adweek. Retrieved from www.a​dweek​.com/​t v-vi​deo/ t​h anks​- to-t​he-ha ​n dmai​d s-ta ​le-an​d -its​- live ​- tv-s​e rvic​e -hul​u s-20​17-ad​- reve​nuet​opped​-1-bi​l lion​/ Miles, S. (2014). Young people, ‘f lawed protestors’ and the commodification of resistance. Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, 28(1), 76–87. Mindock, C. (2018, September 4). Taking a knee: Why are NFL players protesting and when did they start to kneel? Independent. Retrieved from www.i​ndepe​ndent​.co.u​k / new ​ s /wor ​ l d/am ​ e rica ​ s /us- ​ p olit ​ i cs/t ​ a king ​ - a-kn ​ e e-na ​ t iona ​ l -ant ​ h em-n ​ f l-tr ​ u mpw​hy-me​a ning​- orig​i ns-r​acism​-us-c​olin-​k aepe​r nick​-a852​1741.​html Moor, R. (2018). On Douchebags. Wag’s Revue, 1, 58–85. Retrieved from wagsrevue. com/Issue_1/#/58 Murray, D. P. (2012). Branding ‘real’ social change in dove’s campaign for real beauty. Feminist Media Studies, 12, 1–19. Nelson, J. (1998). Building Competitiveness and Communities: How World Class Companies are Creating Shareholder Value and Societal Value. London, UK: Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum and United Nations Development Programme. Nicholson, D. R. (1997). The Diesel jeans and workwear advertising campaign and the commodification of resistance. In Frith, K. T. (Ed.), Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising (pp. 175–196). Ann Arbor, MI: Peter Lang Publishing. Pepsi. (2018). Full deleted Pepsi ad commercial with Kendall Jenner HD. YouTube. Retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFxVB99UZZI Pine, J. & Gilmore, J. (1999). The Experience Economy. Chicago, IL: Harvard Business School Press. Raggs, T. (2018, September 8). Nike enjoys 31 percent bump in online sales after debut of Colin Kaepernick campaign. The Washington Post. Retrieved from www.w​a shin​ gtonp ​ o st.c ​ o m/ne ​ w s/ea ​ r ly-l ​ e ad/w ​ p/201​ 8/09/​ 0 8/ni ​ ke-en​ j oys- ​ 31-pe ​ r cent ​ - bump​ -in-o​n line ​- sale​s-aft​er-de​but-o​f-col ​i n-ka​epern ​ick-c​a mpai​g n/?n​oredi ​rect=​on&utm_ term=.a1c4a4ad5fd0 Smith, T. M. (1998). The Myth of Green Marketing: Tending Our Goats at the Age of Apocalypse. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2017). White lives matter. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved from www.s​plcen​ter.o​rg/fi​g htin​g -hat​e/ext​remis​t-fil​es/gr​oup/w​h ite-​l ives​ -matt​er Weeks, L. (2011, November 17). The hipsterfication of America. NPR. Retrieved from www.n​pr.or​g/201​1/11/​16/14​23874​90/th​e -hip​sterf ​icati​on-of​-amer ​ica Williamson, J. (1978). Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London, UK: Marion Boyars. Willis, P. (1990). Common Culture: Symbolic Work at Play in the Everyday Cultures of the Young. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Winlow, S. & Hall, S. (2007). Book review: Resistance through rituals (2nd edn) Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds). Crime Media Culture, 3(3), 394–397.

12 CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The overall theme of this book, that of violence and neoliberalism, should not be construed as a narrow critique of individuals, the elite or capitalism by any means. The violence and harms of societies spanning centuries of time and across the globe are the result of the insidious nature of power and the dogmatic hegemonic discourse that fuels and maintains systems of oppression. Nonetheless, the politics of neoliberalism and carceral logics cannot be ignored, as they permeate all aspects of social life as implanted in our everyday lives— something we have tried to highlight throughout the chapters of this volume. To draw attention to our argument, we have “used the ‘evidence’ of everyday existence, wherever it is found and in whatever form it can be found” to demonstrate the banality of violence and harm of neoliberalism (Presdee, 2000, p. 15). We live in a socially coercive consumer culture where we embrace the comforts, freedoms and choices promised to us by our neon ‘god’—neoliberalism. Yet, neoliberalism is violent, harmful and entrenched in inequalities, all the while legitimating and reproducing itself. As we have argued, this results in more mass harm, oppression, violence and inequalities. As the novel Slave by Laura Frances (2016) highlights, when Hannah states in response to Cash’s question of what is wrong, “All of it. Everything is wrong about this world. Watchers killing Workers. Workers beating their families. Eight-year-olds left orphans by men who are trying to save their own children” (p. 246). This quote, to us, represents the cyclic nature of the violence and harms of the system where those in power continue to exploit, kill and abuse in the name of neoliberalism. In return, through our own everyday lives, we help to facilitate the violence and harms at the expense of ourselves and generations to come with our consumption and demand for commodities. Throughout this volume we have discussed a range of topics, though not exhaustive by any means. We discussed the commoditization of violence from

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professional sports, self-defense, entertainment, state violence and nationalism, corporatized extension of the carceral state, to neoliberalism’s defining and assigning value of the dead. We covered the harm and violence inf licted on vulnerable populations, including the homeless, refugees and immigrants and the reproduction of the patriarchal system. From here we discussed neoliberalism’s impact and harm on the Earth and the effects of climate change, including some of the current Trump administration’s rollbacks. The final chapters also deal with the role of corporations or corporatized symbolic philanthropy and the silent role of non-profits in the legitimation of neoliberalism, and their complicity in the reproduction of harms and violence, along with the commoditization and usurping of resistance to neoliberalism’s harms, violence and inequalities. Yet, there are so many other examples of the harm of neoliberalism’s theology of politics and the commodification of all aspects of our social life in the name of choice (Kotsko, 2018). Consider how we have been convinced to buy toothpaste to brush our teeth: this choice is purchasing products that contain plastic particles that enter our waterways and harm the Earth. We are convinced we need to purchase and carry our plastic bottles of water wherever we go, containing more plastic particles we ingest and subsequently discard in our waste systems. We have dozens of choices of soaps to choose from, all containing various chemicals, the same for lotions that enter our bodies through our skin. We buy food that contains acceptable levels of arsenic and rat feces. Moreover, in the United States, almost all of our packaged food contains the chemicals butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) that are carcinogenic and have been banned in 160 other countries (Helmenstine, 2018; Scientific America, 2018). There are many more examples of the use of chemicals used in food production, agriculture, the environment, health and beauty, all of which cause great harm to humans, animals and the Earth. We could go on with so many examples and encourage readers to unmask their ‘choices’ as well. In addition, these examples cannot be seen as separate to/from the topics we covered in this volume as they are all part of one—neoliberalism’s violent politics. Where, as Kotsko (2018) suggests, “neoliberalism makes demons of us all, confronting us with forced choices that serve to redirect the blame for social problems onto the ostensible poor decision making of individuals” (pp. 2–3). Our examples are from the most banal forms of our everyday lives to highlight the hidden or disavowed harms of neoliberalism in an effort to refocus our concerns to the underlying ‘demon’ that has been so masked and hidden in our busy individualized focus and actions. Where consumer neoliberalism “carefully cultivates dissatisfaction, generating profit by stimulating a sense of lacking that can be assuaged by new commodities and experiences which help the competitive individual distinguish themselves from ‘the herd’” (Raymen, 2018, p. 13). Or, as succinctly stated in the novel The Circle (2013), “the tools you guys [corrosive consumer capitalism] create actually manufacture unnaturally extreme social needs” (p. 134). After all, we have been convinced by what Kotsko (2018) calls political theology (neoliberalism) that the commoditization of all things

152  Concluding thoughts

and our consumerism gives us freedom, choice and individuality. Our world has been constricted into a “sophisticate, angst-ridden vortex of the individual human subject” (Thacker, 2011, p. 4). In this vortex, we are believing the claim that the current state of things is what we collectively chose and is innate in a sense (Kotsko, 2018). We have been duped into being merely “peopled with minds, whirling faster than any wind, in search of distraction and escape from the predicament of change, the dilemma of [our] life” that we do not stop to see what is so easily seen (Millman, 2006, p. 42). In this sense, neoliberalism, while seemingly tragic, is a comedy or, put much more succinctly, “the life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy: but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy” (Schopenhauer, 1966, p. 322).

A way forward, backward, sideways or is there an end? Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it. (Atwood, 1998, p. 67) Regretfully, we live in a socially corrosive consumer culture that is embedded within neoliberalism’s politics, violence and harm. Moreover, we adopt the notion that neoliberalism is a theology of politics that has invaded every aspect of our social fabric. This, combined with the current times of divisiveness, the rise of populist, nationalist and narcissistic leaders, promoting themselves through the rhetoric of hatred and enhancing inequalities that further fuel violence, makes the potential for change seem bleak. The protection of elite interests, their increased carceral logics of oppression and the ongoing efforts to reverse many of the individual rights that have slowly been gained, are the only beneficiaries of the current, violent, neoliberal system. As the quote opening this section suggests, while nothing changes instantly, it does so over time—and we do not notice the ‘temperature’ rising until it is too late. We accept that our outlook may be seen as fatalistic or consumed by nihilism. Regretfully, unlike so much liberal discourse, to us it is not about ‘weathering’ the current wave of oppression and nationalists that disavow globalization. Rather, we see the discourse of ‘weathering the storm’ as liberal discourse that presumes the neoliberal system should be saved, adapted, modified, but continued in some version of its current form. This amounts to nothing more than band-aid fix/es. We view this as not only counterproductive, but as legitimating a violent system of control, while ignoring the symbiotic and dialectic relationships that fuel the broader system of inequality, power and neoliberalism. After all, neoliberalism ensures the inability to escape the facilitation and reification of the inequalities, harms and violence while self-legitimating. Perhaps most problematic are the suggestions for a ‘different’ system, including but not limited to a ‘benevolent capitalism’ or social democracy. We see this as a philosophical

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exercise at best. Reforming the current system does not challenge, and will not change, the hegemony of capitalism/hedonism, as reformation relies on the very idea that continues these problems in the first place. While we may not want to fall into the traps of fatalism, blind optimism will also get us nowhere. As Thacker (2010) reminds us, we cannot see any other options beyond what we know historically and currently. This is ref lected in much of science fiction and dystopian fiction, as their worlds are essentially logical extensions of our current world while ‘warning’ us of the likely undesirable future developments. Consider for a moment the seven-novel series The Gender Game by Bella Forest (2016), where two societies are formed after the destruction of the United States. In the end the two societies, one patriarchal and one matriarchal, become societies that replicate today’s society with few differences. In other words, we cannot see the unknown, much to the chagrin of positivistic assumptions of predictions. While there are pockets of resistance, these too are complicit in the reproduction of the violence and harm of neoliberalism through consumption, as we discussed in the previous chapter. In addition to our points in Chapter 11, we should also note that, given there are so many different groups, movements, protests and messages that (regardless of the variety of efforts to change the systems of oppression, inequality, racism, sexism, classism and fascism) they get swept into legitimating the broader social structure—‘democracy’. This is through consumption indeed, but also the very act of protesting serves to highlight ‘democracy’s freedom’ and fails to unite with a common message, which is that at the heart of all of these movements is the dissatisfaction with the social structure. After all, “neoliberalism is, in sum, a totalizing world order, an integral self-reinforcing system of political theology, and it has progressively transformed our world into a living hell” (Kotsko, 2018, p. 95). Our choice at best, as we see it, is to unmask the inherent unequal system of oppression that is so embedded in all our lives and the socially constructed narratives supporting them. Then perhaps we can unite the various social movements to make the hundreds of thousands of people that protest about significant inequalities and oppression, into one consolidated mass of hundreds of millions of individuals, effectively creating one movement. It is this unification and shared resistance that will allow us to say “hell no we won’t go” along with this anymore. Yet, as a potential solution, this too is not without criticism and could be considered a somewhat naive approach, promoting a human-centric worldview. As the words of Jean-Paul Sartre (1961) remind us, If violence began this very evening and if exploitation and oppression has never existed on the earth, perhaps the slogans of non-violence might end the quarrel. But if the whole of the regime, even your non-violent ideas, are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity serves only to place you in the ranks of the oppressors. (p. 21)

154 

Concluding thoughts

However, even Sartre’s interpretation does not go far enough, as we believe the only way to change the status quo and neoliberalism’s hold on all aspects of life is with a total collapse of the structure, political and economic systems and current societies. With this, there must be an accompanying change in collective consciousness across the globe. Perhaps we should rid our expectations that the world and all of our consumption should fulfill us. However, as Thacker (2010) rightly reminds us, we only see the ‘world for us’ or ‘the world of us’ even when we think of the ‘world without us’. As we stated previously, this outlook is filled with a sense of nihilism, no doubt, however we believe it is our only option given our inability to see the unknown beyond what we know.

References Atwood, M. (1998). The Handmaid’s Tale. New York, NY: Anchor Books. Eggers, D. (2013). The Circle. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Forest, B. (2016). The Gender Game. Nightlight Press. Frances, L. (2016). Slave (Book One). Independent Publishing Platform. Helmenstine, A. M. (2018, December 24). Chemistry of BHA and BHT food preservatives. ThoughtCo. Retrieved from www.t​hough​tco.c​om/bh​a-and​-bht-​food-​ prese​r vati​ves-6​07393​ Kotsko, A. (2018). Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Millman, D. (2006). The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. Novato, CA: New World Library. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. New York, NY: Routledge. Raymen, T. (2018) The enigma of social harm and the barrier of liberalism: Why zemiology needs a theory of the good. Academia. Retrieved from www.a​cadem ​ia.ed​u/ 370 ​0 9721​/ The_ ​E nigm ​a _of_ ​S ocia ​l _Har ​m _and ​_ the_ ​B arri​er_of ​_ Libe​r alis​m _Why​ _Zemi​ology​_ need​s _a_t​heory​_of_t​he_Go​od Sartre, J. (1961). Preface. In Fanon, F., The Wretched of the Earth (pp. xliii–lxii). (Trans.) Richard Philcox. New York, NY: Grove Weidenfeld. Retrieved from www.m​a rxis​ ts.or​g/ref​erenc​e/arc​h ive/​sartr​e/196​1/pre​f ace.​htm Schopenhauer, A. (1966). The World as Will and Representation. (Volume 1). New York, NY: Dover Publications. Scientific America. (2018). BHA and BHT: A case for fresh? Scientific America. Retrieved from www.s​cient ​i fica​meric​a n.co​m /art ​icle/​bha-a​nd-bh​t-a-c​a se-f​or-fr​esh/ Thacker, E. (2011). In the Dust of This Planet: Horror of Philosophy. Washington, DC: Zero Books.

INDEX

Page numbers in italics indicate figures. 24 (television show) 88 Abe, K. 80 “accumulation of dispossession” 12 Action Against Hunger gala (2016) 132 Adidas company 44 Adorno, T. 47 advertising industry 102–103, 140 Afghanistan: NGOs in 127; refugees from 60 African countries, migrants from 61 Agamben, G. 58 agency of individuals 30; see also freedom and choice agriculture and mass food production 110, 111, 116, 132–133 Airbnb 128 air pollution 112 Albert Einstein School of Medicine (New York) 74 Alexa devices 94 Algeria, migrants in 61 alienation 45, 48–49 Alinsky, S. 127 All Lives Matter campaign 143 amateurism rule (in collegiate sports) 46 Amazon (company) 90 Amazon region 116 anarchist and anti-fascist movements 145–146 Apple company 16, 92

Arbor Day Foundation 119 architecture, gender bias in 104 Arctic: oil exploration in 114; warming of 111 artificial intelligence 90–92 assault, frequency of 27 Associated Press 18 AT&T 92, 93 Atwood, M. 144, 152 austerity measures 63 Australia: refugees in 62 Avon corporation 131 Axciom corporation 92 Bangladesh, sweatshops in 16 bathrooms and ‘potty parity’ 103–104 Baudrillard, J. 101, 102, 129, 139, 146 Bauman, Z. 33, 101 Beck, U. 30–31 Beck-Gernsheim, E. 30–31 Bernstein, N. 74 biobanks 91 biopolitics and biopower 58, 65, 131–132 Black, M. 42 Black Friday shopping 11 black individuals, violence against 34–35, 46 Black Lives Matter campaign 140–141 Bolsonaro, J. 114 Bosworth, M.: What is Criminology? 3 Bourdieu, P. 14–15, 84–85, 126

156 Index

Bradford, E. F., Jr. 35 Braimoh, A.: World Bank report (2015) 132–133 Brazil: cost of Olympic Games in 40; World Cup (2014) 43 Breast Cancer Action 125–126 Budweiser company 44 ‘bum free’ architecture 65 Bush administration 113 Call of Duty: Black Ops II (video game) 89 Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal 91 Canadian Wellness Index viii Capital Gazette shooting (2018) 35 Caputi, J. 103 carceral state violence 84–95; and carceral logics 8, 28, 62–64, 66–68, 77, 84–95, 126–134, 150, 152; and corporations, role of 90–92; and nationalism, patriotism and the military 85–90; overview 84–85; and surveillance 92–94 carcinogenic additives 151 Carrington, D. 133 Castile, P. 35 CBS News 91 CCTV 93 Channel WIFR 23 (Rockford, Illinois) 79 Charity Art Gala 132 child labor 17–18 children’s toys 88 Chile: public healthcare in 19 chocolate production 18 Christianity 128, 130, 132 chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) 48 citizenship (vs. individualism) ix, 4 Civil-Military Fusion Centre 32 Clancy, T. 29 classism 145 climate change and environmental harms 110–120; commodification of 142; and food production 132–133; and government rollbacks 113–118; and individual responsibility 118–120; overview 7, 110–112; sea levels, rising 111, 111 Cloud 93 Coca-Cola corporation 44, 125, 126 coffee production 18, 20 Collins, D. 32 Colombia: coffee production in 20

colonialism 65, 69n1, 130 coltan production 17 Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) 91 commercial shipping industry 32 commodification: of climate change 142; of culture 47; of death 74–75; of feminism 105; of patriarchy 99–106; of philanthropy 129; of resistance 139–148; of sport 42–50; violence of neoliberalism perpetuated through 2 “common spirit” concept 15 commuting viii consent 59, 93–95, 105, 124, 125 consumption and consumerism: human cost of 15–20; of Independence Day 86; and “magical thinking” 15, 101, 107; post-feminist 105–107; and power structures 99; and sport 48; and state surveillance 93; violence of neoliberalism perpetuated through 2, 4 corporations, role of 35, 115, 126, 141; see also philanthropy; individual corporations counterculture 146 Cowspiracy (film) 133 crime vs. harm 2–4 criminality 25, 29, 60–62, 66, 68, 79–80, 91, 93 criminology 2–3, 99 critical sports scholarship 42 cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse 5, 14, 99, 101, 124–125 Currie, E. 31 ‘Damsel in Defense’ website 29 data mining corporations 92–93 Davis, A. 49 Deans, B. 113 death and the dead 6, 73–81 Debord, G. 8, 45, 59 ‘Defense Divas’ website 29 deforestation 18, 116 Del Casino, V. J. 65–66 Detroit, Michigan: funeral homes in 78 DNA collection and storage 91–92 domestic goods ref lecting gender norms 104–105 domestic violence 131 drones 88, 94 “the drone stare” 93 Duerson, D. 48 Durkheim, É. 15 duty of care (of the state) 5, 26, 35

Index 

EAA AirVenture event 87 Eggers, D. 92; The Circle 90, 94, 151 Einstein, M. 126, 134 El Salvador, migrants from 61 Elsevier corporation 92 emulation and ownership 14 Epsilon corporation 92 Ericson, R. 36 European Union (EU): and laws addressing deforestation and child labor 18; millionaires in 69n1; Trump on 61 Evans, I. 142 e-waste industry 12, 117 Experian corporation 92 Facebook 87, 88, 90, 91, 93 Fairview surveillance program (NSA initiative) 92 family separations 66–67, 69n2 Fang, Y. 112 fashion and beauty industry 98, 101–102, 116 fear and insecurity, discourses of 26–27, 31, 33, 36, 75, 86; see also risk and responsibilization; self-defense Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) 43–44 Feeding America organization 130, 131 feminist movement merchandise 139–140 fetishist disavowal 80–81, 90 fingerprint and iris identification 94 fishing industry 18 Forest, B.: The Gender Game 153 Foucault, M.: on biopower 58; and carceral network 84; on criticizing institutions 9; on discourse 59; on individualistic self-formation 118; on self-realization 30 Foxconn factory village 17, 20 France, Durnik refugee camp 62 Frances, L.: Slave 150 Fraser, N. 128 freedom and choice 2, 77, 151 Freistadt, J. 62 Fresno shooting (2017) 35 Frey, B. 50 funerals 74–75 Furia, P. 147 Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) 92 gala events 132 Gamalon (company) 90 Gap corporation 116

157

garbage collectors 77 Garland, D. 34 gated communities 31 General Mills corporation 126 Genz, J. 45 geolocation 93 Germany, Hambach forest in 114 Gibson, T. 65 Gillette company 142 Giulianotti, R. 42–43 #GivingTuesday 130 global markets and discourse 11–21; beneficiaries of 12; and disconnected consumerism 15, 17, 18; economic and environmental exploitation 12–13; and human costs 15–20; overview 5; and success, measures of 14 Global North 5, 60, 127, 130–131 global positioning system (GPS) 93 Global South 117, 127, 128, 130–131 Goering, H. 86 Golden State Killer 91 Goldman, R. 105, 140 Google 90–94 Goold, B. 93 Gordon, D.: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously 4 Gramsci, A. 124, 125 Gray, F. 79–80 Greece, public healthcare in 19 Greenpeace 133, 142–143 Groombridge, N. 51n1 The Guardian 112, 114 gun violence 27–29 Haiti, migrants from 61 Hall, S. viii–ix, 145 Hambrecht, E. 42 Hambrecht, W. 42 handmaid’s Halloween costume 144 The Handmaid’s Tale (television show based on novel) 144 harm vs. crime 2–4 Harmon, P. 79 Hart Island (New York) 74 Harvey, D. 1, 12 Hayward, K. 138 healthcare see public healthcare ‘hedonic realism’ 120 Henry, S. 3 heteronormative behavior 100, 105, 116 Highway 401 (MacDonald-Cartier Freeway) viii

158 Index

Hillyard, P.: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously 4 hipster culture 146–147 HIV and sexually transmitted diseases 128 Hogeveen, B. 62 homelessness 6, 43, 58–59, 62–66, 78–79 Horowitz, L. 112 Hoyle, C. 27; What is Criminology? 3 Hulu (streaming service) 89, 144 Human Factors Behavior Sciences Division (of S&T) 92 Human Rights Watch 17 human trafficking 44 Hungary, migrants in 61 hunger and malnourishment 130–131 Huntsman, J. 73 Hurricane Katrina (2005) 115, 125 Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico, 2017) 115, 125 #IamMore challenge 125 identity politics x, 120 ideological hegemony 124; see also cultural hegemony and hegemonic discourse IKEA 128 immigrants 6, 58–59, 66–68; see also migrants income gap 12 Independence Day celebrations 85–86 ‘index’ crimes (of FBI) 2 individualism ix, 8, 14, 20, 105, 118, 124 individualistic self-formation 118 individualization process 5, 26 Industrial Workers of the World 140–141 informal labor markets 13, 17 integrated spectacle 8, 64, 89 “intentional harm” vs. “preventable harm” 3 International Labour Organization (ILO) 17 International Maritime Bureau 32 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 19 Interstate Photo System (FBI initiative) 91 “invisible imprint of violence” 5 Iraq, NGOs in 127 Italy, refugee camps in 62 ‘ivory tower’ ix Jackson, M. 73 James, E. L.: 50 Shades of Grey 100, 101 Jean, B. 34 Jenner, K. 141–142 Jimmy Choo (shoe company) 103

Jocoy, C. L. 65–66 Jones, T. 31 Kaepernick, C. 138–139, 141 Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation 126 keyboard quarterback (term) 35, 36n4 kidnap insurance 32–33 King, S. 60 Komen Breast Cancer organization 126 Kotsko, A. 151; Neoliberalism’s Demons 1–2 Kramer, R. 113 labor rights 12 Lamode Fashion Footwear 103 language, acceptable and unacceptable x Lanier, M. 3 late-capitalism and risk 86 Latin America, public health system in 19 Law and Order Special Victims Unit (television show) 88–89, 101 LED lights 118 Levine, A. 100 LGBTQIA individuals 81n1 libertarian individualism 118 Lifetime channel 101 Lifeway 131 Loader, I. 33–34 Loesch, D. 34, 35 Lomnitz, C. 74 Los Angeles, homelessness in 64, 78 Loula (shoe company) 103 low-density polyethylene (or LDPE) 117 loyalty programs 93–94 Lukács, G. 15, 99 luxury materialism 18 Lyft corporation 128 Machida, L. 49 “magical thinking” 15, 101, 102, 107, 129 Mahtani, M. 13 Major League Baseball (MLB) 42 Marc Jacobs (shoe company) 103 Maroon 5: Animals (song) 100–101 mass shootings 36n1; see also specific shootings Mauzerall, D. L. 112 Mbembe, J. 58 media, violence against women portrayed in 30, 100–101 Met Gala 132 Microsoft services 93 migrants 13, 43, 44, 61; see also immigrants Miles, S. 145

Index 

military exercises and displays 86–88 Miller, D. 103 mining industry 17–18, 117 misrecognition 15, 19, 20, 85, 106, 126 missionaries 130–131 Møller, V. 45 Monahan, T. 93 Moor, R. 147 Morrissey, P. 42 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting (2015) 34–35 music see popular music Muzzatti, S. L. vii–xi Naik, V. 112 Napier, S. 46–47 NASA 111 The National Basketball Association (NBA) 42 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) 46, 47 The National Football League (NFL) 42 National Hockey League (NHL) 42 National Retail Federation (NRF) 85 National Rif le Association (NRA) 28–29, 31, 34–36 national security 91, 92 necropower 58–59 Neocleous, M. 32, 85, 86 neoliberalism, defined 1–2 Netf lix 89 Newburn, T. 31 news and infotainment 75 New York Times 60 Next Generation Identification system (FBI initiative) 91 Nicholson, D. R. 145 Niemöller, M. 112 Nike 116, 139, 141 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 124 non-profit organizations 124–134; and consent 7; and corporate philanthropy 125–126, 129; donations to 130; environmental 133; and fundraising 132; and global and local carceral logics 127–133; overview 124 North America, millionaires in 69n1 Norway, and Arctic oil exploration 114 Obama, B. 35, 114 Oceana (environmental group) 133 Ogilvy Government Relations firm 114 oil and gas industry 114

159

Olympic Games 40–41 OnStar 93 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 28 the other 62 Ott, H. 61 Pacifici, M. 112 Pakistan, NGOs in 127 palm oil farming 18 Pantazis, C.: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously 4 Paris Agreement conference (Poland, 2018) 113–114 patriarchy 98–107; and biopower 131; commodification and consumption of 99–106; and non-profit organizations 128; overview 7, 98–99, 106–107; and religion 132 patriotic events 86–87 Pavarini, M. 29, 33 Payless Shoes 119 Pearce, F.: Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance 4, 15 Pegatron factories (Shanghai) 17 Pemberton, S. 3 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) 119 people of color 81n1; see also black individuals Pepsi 141–142 personal responsibility 63 pesticide exposure 12 philanthropy 124–126, 129, 131; see also corporations, role of Piketty, T. 12 ‘pinkwashing’ 125–126 Pinto, D. 125 piracy (maritime) 32 Planned Parenthood 131–132 plastic industry 116–117 Police/Blue Lives Matter campaign 143 police officers, death of 75, 77 police violence 5, 79–80 policing 33–34 popular music 100–101 Portugal, public health system in 19 post-feminist consumerism 105–106 postmodernism 34 poverty 57 Presley, E. 73 “prism of crime” definition 3 privacy and surveillance 91–94 private security industry 5, 26, 31, 35–36

160 Index

privatization 5, 12, 26 “progressive neoliberalism” 134 “projects of reassurance” 65 property rights 12 Pruitt, S. 114 public healthcare 18–20 Puma corporation 116 Qatar, World Cup (2022) in 43 racial structures of society 13 racism 35, 36, 46 radioactive waste 114–115 Rape, Abuse, Incest, National Network (RAIN) 100 reforming the system 152–153 refugees 6, 58–62, 128 reification 15, 99 religious organizations 130 Renner, M. 5 resistance and protest 138–148; and advertising 141–142; anarchist and anti-fascist movements 146–147; commodification of 140–141; and consumerism 145; and democracy, legitimating 153; focus of 148; and handmaid’s Halloween costume 144; overview 7–8; and ‘Take A Knee campaign’ 138–139 responsibilization 5, 26, 30, 34 Rice, T. 36n3 ‘Rice rule’ 34, 36n3 right to kill (droit de glaive) 58 risk and responsibilization 30–34; see also fear and insecurity, discourses of; self-defense RiverBlue (documentary) 116 Roberts, D. J. 13 Roberts, N. 33 Roofe, D. 34–35 roundups (by ICE) 67 Rousey, R. 49 Russia: public health system in 19; Sochi Winter Olympics (2014) 44 Salvini, M. 61 Sartre, J.-P. 153 Saturday Night Live 101 Save the ‘Ta-tas’ slogan 126 schemes of perception 14–15 Schindler, S. 79 Schuilenburg, M. 138 Schwendinger, H. 3 Schwendinger, J. 3

second impact syndrome (SIS) 48 security industry see private security industry self-defense 25–36; and gun violence 27–29; and insurance 32–33; and policing 33–35; and private security 26–27, 31–33; and responsibilization 26, 30–34; against the state 5, 34–35; for women 29–31 self-identity 27, 45, 141 Sessions, J. 66 SFGate 79 Shearing, C. 34 Sherman, H. and B. 73 Shields, C. 49 Sierra Club 133 sign-value 119–120, 129–130, 132, 139–140, 143–144 Simmel, G. 58, 65, 74 Singer, N. 92 SLFORCE product 27 Smart, C. 30 Sochi (Russia), Winter Olympics (2014) in 44 social contract 26 social death 58, 59, 61–64; see also ‘stranger’ concept social harm 3–4 social media and smartphone technology 75; see also specific platforms soldiers, death of 77 Somalia, piracy in 32 Sony company 44 South Africa, gated communities in 31 spectacle 8, 74–76; see also integrated spectacle; sport sport (as violent spectacle) 40–51; and boxing 49; and collegiate sports 45–47; and consumption 41–42, 48; defined 51n1; gender inequalities and sexism in 41, 49–50; and hyper-commodification 42–50; and injuries 47–48; Olympic Games 40–41; overview 5–6; and patriotic events, staged 86–87; and person-to-person relationships 43; and sponsorships 44; World Cup 43 Sprint 93 spyware and tracking devices 93 Starbucks 128 state-perpetrated violence 6–7, 26, 77; see also carceral state violence status identity 14, 18, 20, 119–120 stereotypes of the homeless 63 Sterling, A. 35

Index 

Stewart, M. 119 Stewart, P. 2 ‘stranger’ concept 58–62, 65, 74 ‘student-athlete’ term 46 success, measures of 14, 16, 48, 76, 78 “super-ideology of the sign” 129, 146 Surfrider Foundation 142 surveillance and privacy 91–94 sweatshops 12, 16 symbolic violence 126 Syria: NGOs in 127; refugees from 60; war in 128 “systemic misdirection” 126 ‘Take A Knee’ campaign 138–141 Taylor, J. J. 80 technofetishism 117 technological sector 90–91; see also specific companies terrorism 60, 86, 127 Thacker, E. 120, 153, 154 Theobald, B. 87 tobacco industry 17, 21n1 Tombs, S.: Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously 4 Toronto, Canada vii–viii tourism 115, 125 toxic waste dumping 13, 114–115 “training in resilience” 85 Trump, D. 60–61, 67, 68, 113, 128 Trump administration 7, 66, 90, 110, 113–118, 120 truth, hegemonic 68 Twitter 93 United Kingdom (UK): gas fracking in 114; policing in 33–34 United Nations: Framework Convention on Climate Change 113; High Commissioner for Refugees 64; Human Rights Council 60; Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in United States 63, 64; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 110; Population Fund 62 United Parcel Service 128 United States: border separation policy 66–67; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 90–91; child labor in 17; Citizenship and Immigration Service 61; Clean Water Rule 114; collegiate sports in 45–47; Congress’s omnibus bill (2018) 67–68; death industry in 75; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 90;

161

Department of Energy 114–115; Department of Justice 43; Department of State 134; economic inequality in 57; Environmental Protection Agency 114; Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 91, 93; gated communities in 31; Global Health Aid 128; gun violence in 27–29; Homeland Security 95n1; Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (of S&T) 92; homelessness in 62; Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) 67; National Domestic Hotline service 131; National Security Agency (NSA) 92, 93; NGOs in 127; Pentagon 86–87; Project Maven 90; refugees in 60; Science and Technology (S&T) 92; Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations 95n1; Speakers Lobby (House of Representatives) 104; unaccompanied children program 67–68;Violence Against Women Act 131 universities ix Veblen, T. 14 Verizon 92, 93 violence against women 7, 29–30, 36, 98, 102–103 violence of neoliberalism 2, 4–5; see also carceral state violence; state-perpetrated violence violent deaths 76–77 Visa company 44 The Voice (television show) 101 Wacquant, L. 63, 85, 126 Walden University 124 Wall, T. 93 Wallace, B. 47 Walmart 128 war-risk insurance 32–33 Washington, J. 35 Weidman, C. 49 Weight Watchers 132 welfare programs 63 Western Union corporation 125 White Lives Matter campaign 143 Wiens, J.: ‘Climate-Related Local Extinctions Are Already Widespread among Plant and Animal Species’ 112 Williams, S. 49 Williamson, J. 141 Winfrey, O. 132 Winlow, S. viii–ix, 145

162 Index

women: and abortion rights 128; in informal labor markets 13; and non-profit organizations 128; objectification of 102–103, 144; in refugee camps 62; and self-defense 29–31; in sports 49–50; and valuation of the dead 81n1; violence against 7, 29–30, 36, 98–99, 102–103 ‘Women on Guard’ website 29 Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) 49 workfare 63–64 World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations 127

World Cup: 2014 43; 2015 49; 2018 40; 2022 43 World Food Program 128, 132 World Refugee Day 125 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 116, 119 ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ demarcation 58, 62–64, 80–81 Young, J. 4, 15 Zara corporation 116 Zedner, L. 27 zemiology 3 Žižek, S. 80–81, 84, 90