Stigmatization as a form of neoliberal governance

Disaster Capitalism

Extracted and reworked from the Afterword of Revolting Subjects

In “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, Naomi Klein details the ways in which ‘the policy trinity’ of neoliberalism, ‘the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending’ has been enabled through the invention and/or exploitation of crises, be they natural disasters wrought by hurricanes or earthquakes, terrorist attacks on civilian populations or the collapse of international banks (Klein, 2007, p. 16). In the context of contemporary Britain, the fear and anxiety generated by the ‘shock’ of the current economic crisis provides one explanation for how public consent has been procured for the current programme of seismic welfare reforms that ‘punish the poor’ (Wacquant, 2008) while allowing the amassing of wealth in the hands of individuals and corporations through the privatization and ‘asset-stripping’ of public institutions, infrastructure and natural resources…