The Hokum of Neo-Liberalism: Revisiting Sivanandan’s Political Economy | SOAS University of London
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 27/11/2020

The Hokum of Neo-Liberalism: Revisiting Sivanandan’s Political Economy was recorded on the 4th of November 2020 with speaker Dr John Narayan (King's College London). Find out more at: http://bit.ly/3mhki7g

In 1990 Ambalavaner Sivanandan published an essay entitled ‘The Hokum of New Times’, which took aim at Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques’ theorisation of Thatcherism and the neo-liberal revolution. Central to this criticism was Sivanandan’s decade long tracing of the ‘new circuits of imperialism’ engendered by a new global division of labour and hierarchies of production, technological change and the domestic fall-out of such processes through deindustrialisation, state racism and racialised forms of super-exploitation. Yet, outside of anti-racist scholarship Sivanandan’s political economy has largely been neglected. This talk will examine Sivanandan’s political economy and highlight its linking of racism and imperialism to the neo-liberal order in Britain. Moreover, the talk will highlight how Sivanandan’s political economy can help us understand calls for racial justice in contemporary Britain and in turn how Sivanandan’s work calls for political economy to be at the heart of such contemporary anti-racism.