CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 3,906Globalization and political ideologiesAnthropological Studies and InsightsFoucault, Power, and Ethics

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty

Ong, Aihwa·2006·Duke University Press eBooks
DOI 10.1215/9780822387879
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Neoliberalism is commonly viewed as an economic doctrine that seeks to limit the scope of government. Some consider it a form of predatory capitalism with adverse effects on the Global South. In this groundbreaking work, Aihwa Ong offers an alternative view of neoliberalism as an extraordinarily malleable technology of governing that is taken up in different ways by different regimes, be they authoritarian, democratic, or communist. Ong shows how East and Southeast Asian states are making exceptions to their usual practices of governing in order to position themselves to compete in the global economy. As she demonstrates, a variety of neoliberal strategies of governing are re-engineering political spaces and populations. Ong’s ethnographic case studies illuminate experiments and developments such as China’s creation of special market zones within its socialist economy; pro-capitalist Islam and women’s rights in Malaysia; Singapore’s repositioning as a hub of scientific expertise; and flexible labor and knowledge regimes that span the Pacific. Ong traces how these and other neoliberal exceptions to business as usual are reconfiguring relationships between governing and the governed, power and knowledge, and sovereignty and territoriality. She argues that an interactive mode of citizenship is emerging, one that organizes people—and distributes rights and benefits to them—according to their marketable skills rather than according to their membership within nation-states. Those whose knowledge and skills are not assigned significant market value—such as migrant women working as domestic maids in many Asian cities—are denied citizenship. Nevertheless, Ong suggests that as the seam between sovereignty and citizenship is pried apart, a new space is emerging for NGOs to advocate for the human rights of those excluded by neoliberal measures of human worthiness.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1215/9780822387879

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 701–800 of 1,000

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Ong, A.
Corresponding author
Ong, Aihwa
Venue
Duke University Press eBooks
Publisher
Duke University Press
Published
2006
DOI
10.1215/9780822387879
OpenAlex
W630475953
Cited by
3,906
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 125 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 81 · 2023: 76 · 2022: 81 · 2021: 222 · 2020: 285 · 2019: 269 · 2018: 242 · 2017: 240 · 2016: 260 · 2015: 271 · 2014: 298 · 2013: 358 · 2012: 271
FWCI
161.72
Type
book
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Duke University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Globalization and political ideologies
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Anthropological Studies and Insights
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Foucault, Power, and Ethics
Keywords
neoliberalism, neoliberal governance, exception, East Asia, Southeast Asia, women's rights, flexible labor, knowledge regimes, citizenship, sovereignty, territoriality, migrant domestic workers, non-governmental organizations, human rights advocacy, authoritarianism, communism, global economy

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review