Impressively nuanced and ambitious, Disability and Neoliberal State Formations aims to make contributions to critical disability studies, workfare studies, and policy analysis through the study of how the (Australian) state has reconstituted disability to fit the agendas of the neoliberal workfare regime. As such, the book covers important and timely issues that are of central importance to anyone interested in welfare retrenchment, neoliberalism, the welfare state, workfare, employment, and disablism. The book addresses these issues with a carefully crafted intersectional lens, not only addressing issues of disability but also incorporating, for example, Indigeneity, gender, and class into the frame of analysis. It investigates this topic using numerous sources and methods to empirically ground its debates and findings. The result is a theoretically impressive, carefully crafted piece of work that is clearly set to bring a significant contribution to the discipline of disability studies and to the understanding of neoliberalism more broadly. Given the amount of academic ink that has been spent discussing, defining, and debating the utility of neoliberalism as a concept, this is a significant achievement. For disability scholars in particular, Soldatic’s claim that ‘“disability” is a classed, gendered and racialised category and that macrostructural processes of social stratification are systems of interlocking power’ (17) is an important one.
The book is structured around six chapters. The first chapter sets out the general framework of the project, detailing the importance of the disability category to the foundation of the Australian (welfare) state. One of the important things that the book does here is point to the eugenic project at the foundation of the Australian state and how it not only marked the construction of disability but also the construction of whiteness. The second chapter is entitled ‘Technologies of Disability Reclassification’ and focuses on the emergent forms of neoliberal technologies of reclassification embedded in normalising the disability workfare project in Australia. This chapter shows how not only practices but also information become distorted or even lost to suit neoliberal agendas. This leads to misrepresentations of welfare ‘reforms’ by the state and, while there might be subtle differences between political parties, the reinforcement and support of the workfare regime has remained consistent over the period of time that the book covers. The third chapter is entitled ‘Moralising the Disabled Subject’ and explores the affective dimensions of neoliberal moral economies and how the emotions of resentment, disgust, and shame have been utilised to mobilise a popular consensus around the neoliberal workfare agenda. This results in the denial of structural inequality and shows that those included in the (neoliberal) moral community are able-bodied whites. The shaming of those who do not fit these criteria is framed as forms of state violence. ‘Neoliberalising Disability Temporal Relations’ is the fourth chapter in the book. This chapter outlines how time has become a mechanism of domination where time is used as a way to categorise and differentiate bodies with regards to disability. The temporal dimensions of neoliberal welfare retrenchment are interesting and offered me a new perspective, which resulted in a very thought-provoking read. To me, however, the standout chapter of this book is the fifth chapter entitled ‘Indigenous Disability in Regional Australia’. This chapter makes a significant contribution in demonstrating how the neoliberal alteration of disability income regimes ‘sustains long-standing systems of colonial management and rule’ and how the two distinct forms of biopower emerged at the creation of the Australian state – one to control, contain, and confine Aboriginal people; and the other focused on disabled people (96–97). This chapter offers many important insights, but one which stands out is that while welfare retrenchment efforts often appear to be ‘neutral’, they can in actuality be imbued with racialised moralisation, penalising disabled Indigenous people by framing the structural oppression that they face as merely the result of ‘bad choices’. Wrapping up the book, the conclusion summarises the book’s main arguments and offers a lot of thought for scholarship moving forward. For those outside the discipline of disability studies, the book is important as it highlights the importance of disability to understanding neoliberalism. Another noteworthy reflection is that even the Keynesian welfare state is riddled with issues as the primary benefactors of that system were white able-bodied people.
Disability and Neoliberal State Formations is so theoretically skilful and nuanced that there is probably something in there for everyone. The book is very readable and could be suitable for a wide range of audiences. While the theoretical aspects might be more in line with academic debates, the data is rich and handled with significant reflexivity throughout, making the book also a compelling read for people outside those academic theoretical debates. If you are interested in nuanced, intersectional research and theory that includes disability, this is the book for you. Overall, the book was a very enjoyable read and will undoubtedly make significant contributions in all of the fields in which it locates itself and beyond.
The Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research, The University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
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