Democracy Works: Neoliberalism Featuring Wendy Brown

Jul 19 2019
By Morgan C. Tucker
Topics Politics
Source Woodrow Wilson School

This week’s show is special: We’ve swapped episodes with Democracy Works, a podcast produced by Penn State University’s McCourtney Institute for Democracy. (They ran an episode of ours last week.)

As the definition of neoliberalism contrasts among many individuals, Wendy Brown joins this episode to talk about what neoliberalism is, not only on an economic level, but also on a social and political level. Brown addresses the influence of neoliberalism on democratic societies in her most recent book, “In the Ruins of Neoliberalism,” a follow up to her 2015 book, “Undoing the Demos.”

Democracy Works is hosted by Michael Berkman, professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, along with Christopher Beem, managing director of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy.

Brown is the Class of 1936 First Chair at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also teaches political theory. She received her Ph.D. in political philosophy from Princeton University in 1983. Her research interests include the history of political theory, 19th- and 20th-century Continental theory, critical theory, and theories of contemporary capitalism.

Democracy Works addresses a wide range of issues involving democracy and is meant for “people coming together to build things that are greater than the sum of their parts.” The podcast is recorded at WPSU Penn State, central Pennsylvania’s NPR station.