Best practices normalize existing market arrangements as the reality principle

Evidence

As they neutralize or obscure contested or conflicting ends, best practices codify existing market norms and features as the reality principle. Thus, while it is certainly possible to imagine more ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable practices for Iraqi agriculture, these would be at odds with global markets and competition, intellectual property rights, and new financing conventions, not to mention modernized agricultural techniques. Farming practices that are organic, biodiverse, small scale, cooperative, free of debt financing, and aimed at generating “food sovereignty” for the nation might be sensible from the perspective of how Iraqi wheat production could draw on past knowledge, materials, and techniques for a sustainable future. But insofar as they would make Iraq an outlier in the global economy, they could not qualify as best practices. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 293

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘best practices’ as a neutral-sounding device that silently codifies market norms and forecloses alternatives that don’t fit global competition.
• DEEPTHINKING: The move — that the very category of the ‘best’ is pre-loaded to exclude anything outside world-market integration — is a subtle, durable insight about how technocratic language smuggles in value commitments.
• XREF: connects to: Best practices absorb political concerns into markets, eliminating the need for state interference. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 271