Neoliberalism is activated from below by social actors, not merely imposed from above

Evidence

Obviously, the strategies of financialized “resistance” through finance outlined here, and to which we can today add micro-finance schemes as well, were and are Pyrrhic, if not utterly disastrous. And they stretch the definition of “resistance” almost to the breaking point, given that IMF/WB loans, sub-prime mortgages, consumer credit and the like were actively advertised and encouraged by the powers-that-be. But, as Aihwa Ong (2006) and others have recently pointed out, we do a disservice to people’s agency and intelligence when we imagine neoliberalism is merely imposed from above. It is, in fact, activated from below, enacted and performed by social actors as they contend with and respond to material conditions. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 530

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core mechanism claim connecting to deWaard’s cultural argument — financialization works through people’s everyday agency and desires, which is precisely how it colonizes culture and imagination. — connects to: Neoliberalism emerged from practical business advocacy, not abstract theory — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 119; Neoliberalism rose to hegemony through transnational networks of scholars and allies — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 81; Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210 (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The move of reconciling agency with domination — resistance through complicity — is a genuinely dense theoretical knot worth sitting with.
• QUESTION: If neoliberalism is ‘activated from below,’ where does that leave the boundary between consent and coercion in debt markets?

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism rose to hegemony through transnational networks of scholars and allies #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 81