Overview

In the world neoliberalism has made, the pervasiveness of injustice and the scale of inequality can be so overwhelming that meaningful resistance seems impossible. Disorienting Neoliberalism argues that combatting the injustices of today's global economy begins with reorienting our way of seeing so that we can act more effectively. Within political theory, standard approaches to global justice envision ideal institutions, but provide little guidance for people responding to today's most urgent problems. Meanwhile, empirical and historical research explains how neoliberalism achieved political and intellectual hegemony, but not how we can imagine its replacement. Disorienting Neoliberalism argues that people can and should become disposed to solidarity with each other once they see global injustices as a limit on their own freedom. Benjamin L. McKean reorients us by taking us inside the global supply chains that assemble clothes, electronics, and other goods, revealing the tension between neoliberal theories of freedom and the hierarchical, coercive reality of their operations. In this new approach to global justice, he explains how neoliberal institutions and ideas constrain the freedom of people throughout the supply chain from worker to consumer. Rather than a linked set of private market exchanges, supply chains are political entities that seek to govern the rest of us. Where neoliberal institutions train us to see each other as competitors, McKean provides a new orientation to the global economy in which we can see each other as partners in resisting a shared obstacle to freedom DL and thus be called to collective action. Drawing from a wide range of thinkers, from Hegel and John Rawls to W. E. B. Du Bois and Iris Marion Young, Disorienting Neoliberalism shows how political action today can be meaningful and promote justice, moving beyond the pity and resentment global inequality often provokes to a new politics of solidarity.

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9780190087807

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Reviews

McKean's theory of freedom within the supply chain builds on an admirably diverse set of authors. He reads generously and synthetically across traditions to propose a comprehensive vision of how we might understand and work for genuine freedom within a global economy * Emma MacKinnon, Contemporary Political Theory * [A] genuine achievement in political theory, markedly advancing debates about neoliberalism, global justice, and freedom. * Steven Klein, Perspectives on Politics * McKean's book offers a powerful and persuasive new account of global (in)justice and solidarity; it is an inspiring call to arms for egalitarian theorists. ... [T]his book is a major contribution to international political theory and that it sets a superb example of how to combine scholarly rigour with what might be called activist theorising. * Alasia Nuti, European Journal of Political Theory * [W]ell-researched and documented...help[s] us better understand our world today. * Thomas P. Rausch, America: The Jesuit Review * It is vital, for reasons McKean persuasively develops, to separate collective empowerment from the impossible ideal of state sovereignty. McKean also provides powerful reasons to begin the critique of neoliberalism from the reality of global supply chains understood as political structures that should be subject to critique and political resistance. Disorienting Neoliberalism thus stands as a genuine achievement in political theory, markedly advancing debates about neoliberalism, global justice, and freedom. * Steven Klein, King's College London, Perspectives on Politics * Benjamin McKean strikes out a refreshing place in the global justice literature. Rather than apply abstractions to a world that doesn't yet exist, McKean wants to orient global activists to act in the world in which we find ourselves. He does this beautifully with the case of the global supply chain. His analysis shifts Western social justice activists from feeling obliged to save overseas sweatshop workers toward recognizing their solidarity as both being subject — though not in the same ways with the same material consequences — to globalization. * Lisa Disch, University of Michigan * This is the one book you need if you want to understand our world and contribute to the movements that will change it. Brilliant and accessible, grounded in real stories and often heartbreakingly funny, political theorists will love it, but so will organizers and everyone interested in why things are not working. McKean gives us global justice theory as it ought to be: grounded in political economy, oriented towards solidarity, and aiming for a new freedom beyond our exhausted free-market pieties. * Elisabeth Ellis, University of Otago/Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo * Disorienting Neoliberalism argues that people with privilege must act in solidarity with victims of injustice to transform unjust social arrangements. There's much to recommend in this thoughtfully, and passionately-written book, but McKean's discussion and critique of supply chains as crucial structures of global injustice stands out as fresh, timely, and deeply illuminating. Anyone concerned with global economic injustice will benefit from reading this important work. * Michael Goodhart, University of Pittsburgh * Liberal theories of global justice have all overlooked the advent of neoliberal practices since John Rawls published his famous Theory of Justice in 1971. In this deeply insightful book, Benjamin McKean reorients our thinking on global justice and domestic inequality. McKean brilliantly explores the contemporary reality of transnational supply chains and, drawing on a more social conception of freedom from the work of Hegel, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Rawls himself, advocates for an ethos of solidarity. Erudite, provocative, and insightful, this book is written in a personal tone that makes it also a pleasure to read. * Bernard E. Harcourt, Columbia University and EHESS * A neoliberal world of transnational supply chains presents those of us in wealthy countries with a paradox: such chains seem to enhance our well-being and freedom while visiting suffering on others across borders. McKean creatively argues that such chains actually harm our freedom as well as theirs. Thus the basic disposition we should cultivate is not humanitarian pity but rather a political sense of global solidarity. This book is marvelously ambitious and deeply thought-provoking; a real achievement. * Stephen K. White, University of Virginia * This is a substantial intellectual product. * Tracy Lightcap, New Political Science *

A neoliberal world of transnational supply chains presents those of us in wealthy countries with a paradox: such chains seem to enhance our well-being and freedom while visiting suffering on others across borders. McKean creatively argues that such chains actually harm our freedom as well as theirs. Thus the basic disposition we should cultivate is not humanitarian pity but rather a political sense of global solidarity. This book is marvelously ambitious and deeply thought-provoking; a real achievement. * Stephen K. White, University of Virginia * Liberal theories of global justice have all overlooked the advent of neoliberal practices since John Rawls published his famous Theory of Justice in 1971. In this deeply insightful book, Benjamin McKean reorients our thinking on global justice and domestic inequality. McKean brilliantly explores the contemporary reality of transnational supply chains and, drawing on a more social conception of freedom from the work of Hegel, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Rawls himself, advocates for an ethos of solidarity. Erudite, provocative, and insightful, this book is written in a personal tone that makes it also a pleasure to read. * Bernard E. Harcourt, Columbia University and EHESS * Disorienting Neoliberalism argues that people with privilege must act in solidarity with victims of injustice to transform unjust social arrangements. There's much to recommend in this thoughtfully, and passionately-written book, but McKean's discussion and critique of supply chains as crucial structures of global injustice stands out as fresh, timely, and deeply illuminating. Anyone concerned with global economic injustice will benefit from reading this important work. * Michael Goodhart, University of Pittsburgh * This is the one book you need if you want to understand our world and contribute to the movements that will change it. Brilliant and accessible, grounded in real stories and often heartbreakingly funny, political theorists will love it, but so will organizers and everyone interested in why things are not working. McKean gives us global justice theory as it ought to be: grounded in political economy, oriented towards solidarity, and aiming for a new freedom beyond our exhausted free-market pieties. * Elisabeth Ellis, University of Otago/Te Whare Wananga o Otago * Benjamin McKean strikes out a refreshing place in the global justice literature. Rather than apply abstractions to a world that doesn't yet exist, McKean wants to orient global activists to act in the world in which we find ourselves. He does this beautifully with the case of the global supply chain. His analysis shifts Western social justice activists from feeling obliged to save overseas sweatshop workers toward recognizing their solidarity as both being subject - though not in the same ways with the same material consequences - to globalization. * Lisa Disch, University of Michigan *

Author Information

Benjamin L. McKean is Associate Professor of Political Science at The Ohio State University. He is a political theorist whose research concerns global justice, populism, and the relationship between theory and practice. His work has been published in academic journals including American Political Science Review and Political Theory as well as in popular media including The Washington Post and Jacobin.

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