Morality within Neoliberalism

Research Results

This joint research was extended for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, every research presentation was able to be delivered at the National Museum of Ethnology in person, and the researchers were able to spend sufficient time discussing the differences in one another’s fields and understanding of terminology. Unfortunately, all three panels for academic conference in and outside Japan were held online, but this meant that more people were able to hear our presentations of works-in-progress.
The word “neo-liberalism” suggests principle of economic efficiency that enforce the existing hierarchy., which at some point it came to be used in anthropology as a word critiquing systems. In contrast to the terms “globalism” and “late capitalism” which express a comparatively neutral state, neoliberalism can be said to include the perspective that politico-economic inequality resulting from neoliberalism is a “problem” rather than “order”. Therefore, there were not a few research papers and publications using the word that take an “anti-neoliberalism” stance. This workshop strove to ascertain neoliberal political and economic conditions based on ethnographic facts while making an effort to suspend value judgments. As a result, we found that there were considerable differences even in neighboring regions, including differences in gender, sexuality norms, occupations and labor, and norms regarding redistribution. Depending on such social norms, and how governance and uncertainty in states, NGOs, and other entities are viewed under the influence of said norms, neoliberalism manifests differently even when the criteria is socio-economic efficiency. The fact that the steady work of reinterpreting neoliberalism based on detailed ethnographic facts has taken several years can be said to be an activity that is unintentionally counter to the recent trend in academia of seeking quick results.
The researchers in this joint research effort who were in their 30s and 40s when the project was planned and the research objective was written are now in their 40s and 50s. Those who had been hired on fixed-term contracts have obtained tenure. While they are in a fortunate position considering that part-time employment has become more widespread at universities and research institutes across the globe, they can also be said to have been in the unfortunate position of experiencing the “employment ice age” when they graduated university. Reinterpreting this as the object of research while sharing the experience of becoming teachers in view of this positionality was a valuable experience.