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Contentious Politics: Financial Crisis, Political-Economic Conflict, and Collective Struggles–A Commentary

Mew’s commentary highlights the unrelenting and increasingly oligarchic commitment on the part of elite groups to the ideals and practice of neoliberal economics, which has wreaked havoc on earlier forms of liberal capitalism with their notions of social welfarism, social rights, and social justice. She points to the violence associated with the crisis of finance capitalism and the associated crisis of the state. This violence is linked not only to the physical force used by state control agencies, but also to subjective and symbolic forms of violence associated with the lived experience of public-sector cutbacks, unemployment, higher costs of living, and an increased sense of risk and insecurity.

commentary, economic crisis, transnational media

Citation: Social Justice Vol. 39, No. 1 (2012): 98-114