Introduction: Neoliberal Globalization, Urban Privatization, and Resistance

INCREASED ECONOMIC TIES BETWEEN NATIONS OFFER MANY POTENTIAL BENEFITS, SUCH as expanding availability of goods and services and employment opportunities available to people and their communities. The expansion of economic ties between nations, however, has resulted in emergence of a neoliberal model of global capitalism that serves to enrich powerful corporations at expense of workers and ordinary citizens, while increasing social, political, and economic inequalities between nations. Although neoliberal model has been embraced by political and economic elites in global North and South, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank have often externally imposed it in South as a condition for obtaining a loan. In a previous special issue of Social Justice, Justice for Workers in Global Economy (Vol. 31, No. 3,2004), we explored how and why neoliberal globalization has unleashed a national race to bottom, resulted in diminishing of workers' employment opportunities and erosion of working conditions for workers, and made it more difficult for workers to organize in a variety of national contexts. In this issue, we continue to explore danger of neoliberal globalization regarding such social issues as privatization of housing, economic welfare, security, and delivery of goods and services. The articles in this special issue grew out of a research workshop organized by members of International Network for Urban Research and Action (INURA) during organization's annual conference held in Berlin, Germany, in 2003. The thematic focus of articles in this issue was explored more fully at an international conference, Urbanization and Privatization: A Transnational Research Project Workshop, organized by Dr. Roger Keil and other INURA members and held at York University in Toronto, Canada, in 2004. Many of articles in this issue are written by participants in two conferences. Neoliberal Ideology Proponents of neoliberal ideology argue that open, competitive, and unregulated markets, liberated from all forms of state interference, represent optimal mechanism for economic development (Brenner and Theodore, 2002: 2). Yet, while neoliberal ideology criticizes state intervention, actual neoliberal policies and practices involve coercive, disciplinary forms of state intervention in order to impose market rule upon all aspects of social life (Ibid.: 5). Such policies and practices are complex, contradictory, and contested, and operate at multiple levels of governance. In an effort to clarify how neoliberal policy has developed, Peck and Tickell (2002) identify two interrelated phases or processes: roll-back neoliberalism and roll-out neoliberalism. Roll-back neoliberalism refers to the active destruction or discreditation of Keynesian-welfarist and social-collectivist institutions (broadly defined) (Ibid.: 37). This process involves retreat from previous governmental control of resources and state regulations, including public services, nationalized industries, and labor and social rights. Also known as privatization, it is sharing or delegating of authority to non-governmental agents (Handler, 1996: 78-80). Privatization takes many forms, including sale of public assets, voucher programs, deregulation, cutbacks in public services, and contracting out of those services to for-profit and nonprofit agencies. The second neoliberal process, roll-out neoliberalism, refers to the purposeful construction and consolidation of neoliberalized state forms, modes of governance, and regulatory relations (Peck and Tickell, 2002: 37). Roll-out neoliberalism involves creation of new trade and financial regulations by international governance institutions, such as World Trade Organization and IME It also involves socially interventionist policies and public-private initiatives that are paternalistic and punitive, such as anti-panhandling ordinances, militarization of U. …

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