Arun Kundnani

The proposed research project aims to transform our understanding of neoliberalism by developing a new analysis of how it generates its own distinctive structures of racism, expressed in mass incarceration, border violence, and Wars on Drugs and Terror. It suggests that neoliberalism was as much a response to mass Black and Third World struggles against racism and colonialism as it was a response to the growing power of organized labor in Europe and the US in the twentieth century. The project involves new readings of key neoliberal thinkers, such as Friedrich Hayek, historical studies of neoliberal think-tanks, such as the Manhattan Institute, and of political activists, such as Alfred Sherman and Enoch Powell. It also examines various movements arrayed against neoliberalism and its policing, carceral, border, and military manifestations, such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in its Black Power period from 1966 to 1969. Individual figures, such as H. Rap Brown, Gloria Richardson, and Kwame Nkrumah, are focused upon as symptomatic of the larger process being described. The project’s theoretical framework is shaped by the works of Angela Davis, Stuart Hall, Cedric Robinson, and A. Sivanandan, and combines political economy and critical discourse analysis methods. Most scholarship on neoliberalism fails to fully engage with its racial and colonial dimensions, a problem exacerbated by academic disciplinary separations. Likewise there is a tendency to make sense of social movements in terms of a division between those focused upon neoliberalism (for example, the movements around Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK) and those focused upon racism (for example, Black Lives Matter). It is hoped the research will contribute to bridging these academic and movement divides and produce a better understanding of some of the key social challenges of our time.