Celebrating a million downloads by seeking the origins of our Disorder in neo-liberalism!
And in the connections btw Syria and Sweden
Today, exactly 11 months after the launch of our Disorder Podcast, we celebrate its millionth download — (In reality we crossed this threshold a couple of weeks ago, but there is a lag in how Spotify and Apple Podcasts provide the numbers.)
For this celebration we try to take a step back and look at what we’ve achieved as a podcast and what vantage point it has given us on the world. Jason is joined by his good friend Karl Karim Zakhour, lecturer at the Swedish Defence College (aka the Försvarshögskolan hahahhaha). During their wide-ranging discussion (listen here), Jason and Karim bring out the interesting and often unexpected connections and similarities between two seemingly disparate places: Syria and Sweden. What connects the two countries, besides the beauty of their landscapes, the richness of their traditional culture, and the splendor of their women, goes under the name of neoliberalism.
Neoliberalism is a term that's been used so often that its meaning has become unclear and sometimes confusing. Neoliberalism can refer to specific policies, especially the controversial Structural Adjustment Programs promoted by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 90s. It also describes a broader shift from welfare-focused capitalism (think Northern Europe during the middle of the Cold War) to a more market-driven and austerity-focused approach, inspired by thinkers like Frederick Hayek and implemented by Milton Friedman and his followers starting in the late 1970s. According to philosopher Wendy Brown the implementation of Neo-liberalism is an even more diffuse process, a “governing rationality, neoliberalism transmogrifies every human domain and endeavor, along with humans themselves, according to a specific image of the economic.”
Research on these ‘neoliberal’ economic changes often highlights how vulnerable groups in society have been hit the hardest, as access to basic public services increasingly depends on financial resources or personal connections. The privatization of state functions deepens inequalities and embeds corruption in economic systems in problematic ways. It is also part and parcel of how the enduring disorder rippled outward from the collapse and neoliberal privatization of the Soviet economy.
Jason and Karim’s discussion on the pod (listen here) exemplifies these troubling aspects of neoliberalism and show how it gives rise to new opportunities for patronage, whether when building new hospitals in Stockholm or setting up telecom networks in Damascus. It gets at how the broader phenomenon of how the broader package of neoliberal reforms indirectly lead to the decline of state capacity globally and the inability of governments to coordinate to solve pressing collective action challenges, hence ushering in the Enduring Disorder.
They also point to promising ways forward, calling for increased state capacity and coordinated action as well as more bottom-up organization. I think you’ll really enjoy this very special episode so I hope you give it a listen..
For more on Neoliberalism and Karim’s work:
The Origins of AGE: From States and Markets to Scientific Methods (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-13722-8_23)
What will the world look like in a hundred years? What will the study of international relations be like? This article lays out a vision of the future, at once familiar and unexpected.
Entrepreneurs of desperation: Young men and migration in interior Tunisia (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003353232-11/entrepreneurs-desperation-karim-zakhour)
The article looks at how young men in Tunisia try to navigate around harsh economic realities and dream of better lives.
While We Wait: Democratization, State and Citizenship among Young Men in Tunisia's Interior Regions
(https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1456250&dswid=5417)
Why did the Tunisian democratic experiment fail? Based on a year of fieldwork this PhD thesis argues that democratization creates both opportunities and deep uncertainties that are amplified by economic failures and thus creates its own authoritarian reaction.
How to Support Disorder
Lastly, despite hitting a million downloads the Disorder pod is not profitable (far from it sadly), it is a very very expensive endeavour for Global Disorder LTD and Goalhanger to produce it and despite our increasing ad revenue we are not close to breaking even… Hence, we are both cash flow negative each month and have not started on the process towards recouping my large investment in this project. If you would like to help us do so please subscribed to a paid version of this substack and share it with your friends. I would be terrible grateful.