Social Justice and Neoliberalism

The continuing expansion of neoliberalism and neoliberal economic and social policies into ever more spaces and spheres of life - in the west, the global south, and former 'communist' east - has profound implications for social justice. Despite the number of policies designed to target 'social exclusion', in many communities, people continue to be marginalized by economic restructuring processes. "Social Justice and Neoliberalism" explores the connections between neoliberalism, social justice and exclusion. The authors raise critical questions about the extent to which neoliberal programmes are able to deliver social justice in different locations around the world. It offers grounded, theoretically-oriented, empirically-rich analyses of the links between neoliberalism and social justice, bringing together work that critiques neoliberalism, along with understandings of neoliberalism's material impacts.It also stresses the need to extend analyses beyond the dominant spheres of 'capitalism', to explore the ways in which communities resist and remake capitalism, through processes of contestation and protest, but also through their everyday lives, their economies and their livelihood strategies. Global in scope, it brings together writers who critically explore these themes in the global south, the former 'communist' east and the west, at a variety of scales. As such, each chapter challenges us to ask how the experiences of marginal peoples, places and communities might challenge our conceptions of capitalism and its geographies.