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Accepted Paper:

Ageing and neoliberal morality in unfamiliar places  
Andrew Dawson (University of Melbourne)

Paper short abstract:

Through an ethnography of older people in post-industrial England, a cohort that in unexpectedly large numbers voted for the United Kingdom Independence Party in the recent General Election, this paper explores the moral dimensions of neoliberalism as an hegemonic project in erstwhile socialist heartlands.

Paper long abstract:

The 2015 General Election in Britain saw a dramatic rise in votes for The United Kingdom Independence Party, an erstwhile fringe political party devoted principally to withdrawal from the European Union, more stringent controls on immigration and cuts in government expenditure, especially on welfare provision. An entirely expected feature of the UKIP voting demographic was its relatively advanced age. An unexpected phenomenon however, was the success of UKIP in the Labour Party's traditional heartlands in post-industrial northeast England, where in many constituencies it became the second largest party. Based on research on a former coal-mining town in Northumberland this paper unpacks a common shared narrative amongst older UKIP voters. The central substantive foci of the narrative are fears about the demise of traditional extended and nuclear families and the socialisation of children. And its explanatory essence is that collapse of the local coal industry has undermined the material foundations of distinctively local forms of communality and morality. Furthermore, and in contrast to traditional labourist ideals, it is framed by the idea that welfarism can only embed further these problems. More broadly, the paper contributes to calls, especially from within neo-Gramscian scholarship by the likes of Jessop and Hall for example, for understanding of the moral dimensions of neoliberalism as a hegemonic project, an aim that hitherto has not been adequately ethnographically explored.

Panel Hier01
Horizons of life, morals of age
  Session 1