It is amazing how quickly the whole notion of ‘The Big Society’ has gone from Conservative Party platform, which was actually treated fairly sceptically during the recent UK elections, to catch-all label which can be ascribed to almost any of the coalition government’s policies. Generally, at least in my read of the situation, the label seems to be applied almost willy-nilly, usually with the intention of succinctly encapsulating a critical position or explanatory frame vis-a-vis one recent policy or another. As a friend commented to me last week, it’s rather like a mini-version of ‘sustainability’ in its amorphousness. Unsurprisingly, many left academics have begun to direct their critical gaze to the idea and practice of this so-called Big Society. In this vein, Clive Barnett has a good post on the enduring desire to see the Big Society (or otherwise the coalition’s wide-ranging spending cuts) as an extension, or otherwise qualified rebirth, of neoliberalism. I think Clive is quite right in arguing – against standard left scholarly rhetoric – that the application of the neoliberalism label tends to rely on an impoverished version of politics. As he remarks:

Perhaps it’s time to recognise that one reason it is so difficult to think about the politics of the current conjuncture is precisely because this style of thinking, which continues to serve as the horizon for these efforts, has never been able to think seriously about politics in anything other than highly scholastic terms: as an effect of policy, an expression of intellectual programmes, or as a process of ideology.

You can read the post in its entirety on Clive’s blog Pop Theory.