ÌÇÐÄTV

University of ÌÇÐÄTV

10am-6.30pm

Room S0.21

Neoliberalism is commonly identified as a belief in the self-regulating powers of markets, especially financial markets. Markets, from this perspective, are powerful information-processors, which are uniquely capable of governing complex societies while preserving liberty. In recent decades, financial institutions have added further computational power, which, among other things, has led to the automation of trading and the calculation and simulation of market scenarios to manage risk. The financial crisis has been perceived by some as the outcome of this collision between markets and increasingly ‘performative’ economics.

But where does this leave neoliberalism and its technical ideal of freedom? Does it simply require more markets or greater computational power to prevent future crises? Or are we witnessing the emergence of a different neoliberalism, based on different technologies and ideologies of liberty, in appeals to ‘Big Data’ and ‘openness’? Might software and ‘open data’ usurp the primacy of the price system in the neoliberal imagination, as tools of governance in complex modern societies? To what extent are the political desires of the digital elite – from Hackers to Silicon Valley – amenable to the neoliberal project?

This one-day conference will address these questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives, including software studies, history of economics, political theory, media studies, international political economy and economic sociology.

Speakers

• , University of Notre Dame
• , University of ÌÇÐÄTV - 'Unpaid work and depletion in neoliberal times'
• , University of Westminster - 'The Californian Ideology Revisited'
• , New School for Social Research - 'The Infrastructure of Neo-liberalism? Cybernetics, Design, and Urbanism circa 1970'
• , Swansea University - 'Coding Neoliberalism: Algorithms, Markets and Computational Imaginaries'
• , Université Paris-Est/Écoles des Ponts - 'Automating Amateurs: the cunning of instrumental reason'
• , University of ÌÇÐÄTV - 'The Revenge of the Social: Neoliberalism between "socialist calculation" and "social analytics"'
• , University of ÌÇÐÄTV - 'The Data Signal'

Conference themes

• Neoliberal responses to financial crisis
• The invention and reinvention of 'competition'
• The philosophy and techniques of 'openness'
• The persistence and reinvention of the market
• The intersections between neoliberalism and cybernetics
• The significance of data and 'Big Data' to the evolution of neoliberalism
• The role of specific devices in visions of freedom
• The political lineages of 'hackers'

Attendance

The conference is free to attend, but registration is essential. To register .

Room S0.21 is in the Social Sciences block. A campus map is available . All details on how to get to ÌÇÐÄTV University are available .

Please send any enquiries regarding the conference to Will Davies at William.j.davies@warwick.ac.uk