After dispossession: Ethnographic approaches to neoliberalization

Author： Berghahn Journals Oscar Berghahn Journals Mattias Borg

E-ISSN： 1558-5263|2016|74|3-12

ISSN： 0920-1297

Source： Focaal, Vol.2016, Iss.74, 2016-03, pp. : 3-12

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Abstract

Since the 1980s globalization has taken on increasingly neoliberalizingforms in the form of commoditization of objects, resources, or even human bodies,their reduction to financial values, and their enclosure or other forms of dispossession.“After dispossession” provides ethnographic accounts of the diverseways to deal with dispossessions by attempts at repossessing values in connectionto what has been lost in neoliberal assemblages of people and resources and thushow material loss might be compensated for in terms of subjective experiences ofrestoring value beyond the financial. Th e analytical challenge we pursue is one ofbridging between a political economy concerned with the uneven distribution ofwealth and resources, and the profound changes in identity politics and subjectformation that are connected to these. We therefore argue that any dispossessionmay trigger acts of repossession of values beyond the financial realm, and consequentlythat suffering, too, entails forms of agency predicated on altered subjectivities.Th is move beyond the suffering subject reconnects the study of subjectivitieswith the analysis of alienation, disempowerment, and impoverishment throughdispossession and attempts at recapturing value in altered circumstances.