Debate Section

DANIEL M. GOLDSTEIN

Decolonialising actually existing

neoliberalism
There are many issues at stake in the debate about neoliberalism that has unfolded
recently in the pages of Social Anthropology, to which this brief intervention aims to
contribute. One of these is the nature of the concept itself. As each of the contributors
points out, there exists no agreed-upon definition of neoliberalism, making it a slippery
subject of analysis, both for the many anthropologists who invoke it as a sort of
explanatory catholicon and for the commentators in this debate, who despite a rigorous
and stirring engagement leave the terrain rather more muddied than they found it. Space
limitations restrain me from entering fully into this discussion (which, given the nature
of the subject, would likely end only in further muddying); so in this brief commentary
I wish to call into question the nature of actually existing neoliberalism, the central if
surprisingly thin trope in terms of which the entire discussion is framed. In doing so,
I hope to contribute a much-needed ethnographic perspective on the ways in which
neoliberalism is conceptualised and lived amidst the profound political, economic and
social insecurity that decades of neoliberal political economy have wrought, in this case
in Bolivia, a country that has explicitly declared itself post-neoliberal. The resulting
depiction extends the doubts about Loc Wacquants (2012) rendering of the neoliberal
Leviathan, already raised by previous contributors. I also reflect on the possibility of
decolonialising actually existing neoliberalism, an object of analysis that, by virtue of
the fact that it actually exists, can prove troubling to a scholarship that claims to place
it at the centre of analysis, but in practice relegates it to the status of epiphenomenon.
What does it mean for neoliberalism to actually exist? It is the framing conceit
of Wacquants statement on neoliberalism, one that goes largely unremarked on by the
subsequent contributors. The question, though, hangs over the debate. It first appears
in Wacquants discussion, though his reference to an actually existing neoliberalism
is muted by his emphasis on generalities most suited to a Western context and
as Hilgers (2012) makes clear inappropriately extended to neoliberal societies the
world over. The importance of attending to neoliberalism in practice is echoed in
Peck and Theodores (2012) critique of the inevitabilist dogma surrounding much
neoliberalist theorising. Despite the guiding principles of the neoliberal playbook,
they state, in practice neoliberalisation displays a lurching dynamic characterised by
improvisation, opportunism and on-the-hoof recalibrations, resulting in a neoliberal
landscape that they describe as profoundly messy. Collier (2012) takes this further in
his response to Wacquant and Hilgers, challenging the distinction between the theory
and the implementation of neoliberalism, particularly Hilgers insistence that the latter
is the proper subject for anthropology (Hilgers 2010: 351), and suggesting (correctly, I
think) that the two are in fact not so clearly distinguishable. Several of the contributors

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concur that contrary to what neoliberal fundamentalists and many social scientists
might assume neoliberalism as theory does not exist in some sort of Ur text against
which the actual implementations of it can be measured and found wanting. As Colliers
discussion of the assumptions his students hold about the Washington Consensus
illustrates (i.e. what is thought to be a founding moment of neoliberal theory is not
nearly as uniform, nor as retrograde, as many presume), the theory of neoliberalism,
like its implementation, is heterogeneous and contradictory, as messy, one might say,
as the actual expressions of it.
If the theory of neoliberalism is neither to be found in some pure original form
nor clearly distinguishable from its implementation both involve social relations,
institutions and their functioning (to quote Collier quoting Hilgers) then both theory
and implementation can be understood as temporally and spatially positioned social
processes, unfolding in real time in specific locations. That is to say, neoliberalism as
both theory and practice actually exists, and not only in the belly of the Leviathan. The
ideas and discourses about what neoliberalism is and how it operates are not limited to
Western boardrooms and Parliamentary committees and business lunches; neoliberal
theory may be sketched on the backs of cocktail napkins from the Washington Hilton,
but that is not the extent of it. If anthropologists are to speak of actually existing
neoliberalisms as do Peck and Theodore, the use of the plural underscoring Hilgers
point that neoliberalism in context is much more varied than Wacquant allows we must
emphasise that these neoliberalisms are not merely locally variegated instantiations of
global ideas but fully lived realities in which people and states have their own theories,
and elaborate their own discourses and critiques, about the worlds they inhabit and the
ways in which these should be organised. Actually existing neoliberalism(s) are more
than curious local manifestations of global norms, but sets of theories and practices
about the world that are fundamentally the products of local history and experience
much of it shaped by colonialism and its aftermath and impactful of lived daily
reality.
To insist on this is to deconstruct the neoliberal Leviathan, a process that Wacquants
interlocutors in this debate have already begun. Similar work has been done with
other apparently monolithic forms of political and social organisation, contributing
to a decolonialisation of epistemologies of power (Quijano 2000). I am reminded,
for example, of the way in which many students of international politics discuss
democracy in Latin America they find extremely high levels of violence in actually
existing democratic states and on that basis declare these to be failures (e.g. Fukuyama
2004); or they apply a host of adjectives to non-Western democracies (imperfect,
illiberal, incomplete, delegative, disjunctive) to account for their deviation from
an implicit Western norm (e.g. ODonnell 1994). But as Arias and Goldstein (2010) have
noted, violence is often a fundamental component of democracy in Latin America and
elsewhere around the world, better understood as part of the overall system, central to
its origin and operation. Walter Mignolo (2011) points to the Zapatista movement in
Chiapas, Mexico as an example of the ways in which democracy may be deployed as a
universal signifier without necessarily appropriating the supposedly universal meanings
that accompany it (universalist assertions by Zizek [2009] notwithstanding). Similar
observations can be made of human rights, in some ways neoliberalisms counterpart
in 21st-century expansionist global politics. Conceptualised by many as an international
force that has moved across the globe, being adapted (and in some cases reworked or
challenged) in a host of local contexts (Goodale 2007), human rights might also be

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thought of as a universal signifier, but one that is deployed in ways that encapsulate
locally relevant histories and struggles for dignity without necessarily invoking the
universalisms that human rights entails. This does not necessarily mean that human
rights or democracy are not important concepts or that democratisation is not a
relevant meta-context for understanding what is happening in the Americas. It just
means we have to question our understandings of these ideas in light of actually
existing realities, histories and epistemologies, with the explicit aim of decolonialising
our own understandings of what we are observing, and giving place to emerging ethical
and political imaginaries beyond the limits imposed by abstract hegemonic universals
(Alonso n.d.). As Mignolo puts it: The colonial experience in South America and the
Caribbean did not have to wait until the word postcolonialism entered the US academy
in the early 1980s, after the word postmodernism was introduced in France. However,
very much like natural resources, Third World thoughts are processed in European
intellectual factories (2011: 57).
The decolonialisation of the neoliberal state in Bolivia began in 2005, when Evo
Morales became that nations first indigenous president, under a pro-indigenous,
socialist banner. One of the new regimes first projects was to rewrite the Bolivian
constitution, declaring Bolivia to be a plurinational state and inscribing demands
for racial and cultural equality into that founding document. These moves were not
only decolonial in the broadest sense, but also a rejection of all previous forms of
the Bolivian nation-state, a sociopolitical formation that historically privileged people
of European ancestry and speakers of Spanish. From this perspective captured in
official state discourse that resonated powerfully with popular utopian imaginaries the
neoliberal state was merely the latest manifestation of the colonial dominant, the direct
descendent of earlier forms of racialised hierarchicalisation in which the indigenous
habitually occupied the lowest stations. This national historicity was revealed in other
reconceptualisations, especially of national resources, which were reimagined not as
commodities but as part of the common property of the plurination. Evo Morales
justified the expropriation of key industries, including natural gas and oil reserves,
and the tight state control of lithium exploration and industrialisation, by referencing
earlier forms of neoliberal-cum-colonial exploitation of natural resources that benefited
foreign entities but not the Bolivian people. These ideas had emerged even earlier, as
events like the Cochabamba Water War were cast in an idiom of ancestral claimsmaking and defence of the commons (The water is ours, carajo!; Albro 2005).
Neoliberalism in Bolivia was thus theorised as part of an ongoing structure of colonial
domination, neither particularly new nor innovative, but one that could nevertheless
be labelled (neoliberalismo became a frequently hurled epithet in the Morales era) and
denounced.
But things are more complicated than that. Despite this reimagining and rejection
of the neoliberal past in Bolivia, it would be a mistake to accept at face value the states
assertion that these moves have made it post-neoliberal. Indeed, despite its claims
to represent an indigenous socialism, in many respects the Evo Morales regime is as
neoliberal as its predecessors. This is quite evident in the domain of economic policy,
seen most recently in the states attempts to construct a major highway through lowland
rain forests (the Territorio Indgena y Parque Nacional Isiboro-Secure, or TIPNIS)
in order to expedite trade with Brazil, prompting a series of marches and protests
by groups representing the interests of the regions indigenous inhabitants. This has
brought to international attention the irony of indigenous people marching against a

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supposedly indigenous state, but one that is nevertheless caught up in the sticky business
of global capitalism. Similar observations can be made about the delivery of public
services, especially water. Despite the successes of the Water War, water distribution
in Cochabamba remains limited to the wealthier parts of town; meanwhile, in poor
neighbourhoods people organise their own local committees to try and bring water to
their communities, doing for themselves the work that the state will not. Nevertheless,
the Morales government has moved to define water as a basic human right, invoking the
universal signifier so successfully that in 2010 the United Nations General Assembly
approved a resolution recognising it as such. But this signification accords poorly with
indigenous conceptions of water as common property, suggesting that what resonates
internationally may not be suitable for governance in local settings and again calling
attention to the ruptures between (neoliberal? post-neoliberal? socialist?) theory and
practice on the ground.
Perhaps most relevant to the present discussion is the Morales administrations
approach to crime and violence, and the provision of what has come to be known
locally, nationally and across the Americas as citizen security. Unlike Wacquants
version of the contemporary West in which the penal wing of the neoliberal Leviathan
is expanded and celebrated in post-neoliberal Bolivia the discourse of citizen security
indexes an approach that is fully resonant with transnational forms of neoliberal
governmentality. As I have documented elsewhere (Goldstein 2012), citizen security as
social policy in Latin America has mostly been about the demonisation of the poor and
the young; the relabeling of, without significant reinvestment in, policing institutions;
and the devolution to community groups and individuals the responsibility for local
surveillance and self-defence. The mantra of the New York City Transit Authority
and a world of Walmarts both of which promote the slogan, If you see something,
say something could be fittingly applied to the Bolivian approach to security, which
tolerates vigilantism and a do-it-yourself or flexible form of self-help justice making in
rural and urban areas alike (Goldstein 2005; see also Harvey 1991). Unlike Wacquants
depiction of penality and the Leviathan, Bolivian police institutions are poorly funded
and understaffed, with police officers required to provide their own firearms, uniforms,
even gas for their vehicles, or else go without. Bolivian prisons have long been stuffed
full of small-scale drug mules and coca cultivators, but the countrys carceral institutions
have not seen the expansion that Wacquant describes, and pornographic penality (2012:
75) cannot be said to characterise the states approach to insecurity. To the contrary,
in Bolivia it is the poor and marginalised who most agitate for more aggressive forms
of policing and punishment, even expressing a willingness to surrender their own civil
rights in exchange for greater security (Goldstein 2010). I agree with Wacquant that
official affirmations of law and order emerge as the (post)neoliberal states authority
weakens, and that this discourse effectively targets those made most vulnerable by
neoliberalisms advances (2012: 76). But in poor countries like Bolivia, neoliberal
doctrines like citizen security do not necessarily and inevitably contribute to the
building of the Leviathan, they merely paper over the cracks in its edifice.
As Collier suggests, artificially inflating neoliberalism can obscure the actually
existing realities that frequently cannot be contained within singular frameworks. As
the preceding discussion demonstrates, the implementation of neoliberalism in Bolivia
is clearly messy, rife with contradictions and reversals. So, too, is the theory of
neoliberalism: Having explicitly rejected neoliberalism, the post-neoliberal, ostensibly
socialist Bolivian state borrows popular utopian imaginaries of an inclusive plurination

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while denying its own reliance on neoliberal forms of governmentality to carry out its
agendas. What actually exists in Bolivia, as in many other poor non-Western societies, is
neither neoliberalism nor post-neoliberalism; nor can the Bolivian state be in any sense
(except, perhaps, in the old Hobbesian conception) considered a Leviathan. Bolivia
today is marked by a political and economic landscape characterised by shifting and
often overlapping fragments of various theories, discourses, ideologies and practices,
which people must navigate as they try to make a living and achieve some kind of
security in their lives.

Acknowledgement
Thank you to Carolina Alonso for her help thinking through some of the ideas in
this essay.

Daniel M. Goldstein
Department of Anthropology
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
NJ 08901, USA
dgoldstein@anthropology.rutgers.edu

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