Markets and Development : Civil Society, Citizens and the Politics of Neoliberalism

Markets and Development presents a series of critical contributions focused on the political relationship between citizens, civil society, and neoliberal development policy’s latest form. The dramatic increase of ‘access to finance’ investments, newly gender-sensitive approaches to building neoliberal labour markets, the universal promotion of public-private partnerships, and the ‘development financing’ of extractive industries, have all seen citizens, social movements, and NGOs variously engaged in, and against, neoliberalism like never before. The precise form that this engagement takes is conditioned by both the perceived and real opportunities, and the risks, of an agenda which seeks to intern ‘emerging’ and ‘frontier markets’ deep within a concretising world market, with transformative repercussions for both those involved and, notably, for state-society relations.

The contributors to this volume focus on essential aspects of the contemporary neoliberal development agenda and its relationship to and with citizens and civil society, tackling questions related to the roles that various actors within civil society in the underdeveloped world are playing under late capitalism, and how these roles relate to current efforts to establish and extend markets, and market society more broadly, in a neoliberal image. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Toby Carroll is Associate Professor and Associate Head in the Department of Asian and International Studies at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. His research concentrates on the political economy of development, with a particular geographical focus upon Asia.

Darryl Jarvis is Associate Dean (Research and Postgraduate Studies) in the Faculty of Liberal Studies and Social Sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong. His research and teaching interests focus on international and political risk, comparative public policy, regulation, infrastructure, and the political economy of investment into Asia.