Tom Conley

Bio: Tom Conley is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Neoliberalism (international relations) & Literature. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 2 publications receiving 1908 citations.

The decline and fall of the Australian automotive industry

Abstract: This article assesses the historical political economy of the Australian automotive industry alongside the paradigmatic policy shift in economic policy away from protection towards neoliberalism and globalisation. It focuses on the politics of policy change and government assistance, providing a detailed historical narrative of the development and decline of the Australian automotive industry. From the mid-1980s to the mid-2010s, policy-makers oversaw the decline and fall of the Australian automotive industry. The process of decline occurred within a long-term cycle of new assistance, declining protection, new investment, inadequate restructuring, weak profitability, declining market share, and new assistance. Each cycle, however, was unable to stave off renewed crisis and eventual demise. Over the same period, Australian policy-makers transformed the economy from one of the most protectionist in the developed world to one of the most open. The article outlines the impact of neoliberalism on the automotive industry and analyses what the decline of the industry tells us about how the neoliberal policy structure operates in the ‘actually existing’ political economy. It argues that while the burgeoning neoliberal policy structure in the 1980s and 1990s acted to restrict the range of policy choices available for restructuring the industry, the domestic politics of industry assistance acted to restrict the neoliberal colonisation of the policy agenda. Neoliberal governance has had to contend with political imperatives for continuing assistance, while, at the same time, those political imperatives have been increasingly shaped by neoliberalism. JEL codes: L50, L62

Editorial Statement

Abstract: Abstract:Deligny's practical theory can be envisioned as a materialism. This materialism is based on the dialectical, conflictual, symbiotic, and bipolar coexistence of the "human" and the "Man-that-we-are," of the innate and the acquired, and of the milieu of the human and that of the animal. It is founded with a view to the space—the conditions and circumstances—that make it so that the individual becomes what they are. In brief his materialism is heir to a thought of the milieu as a determinate dimension of the production of the individual. This article was originally published in French in "Lenine," Actuel Marx, no. 62 (2017): 124–39.

Du Bellay and the Catchword: From L’Olive (1549) to Les Regrets (1558)

Abstract: Joachim Du Bellay, a poet of contradiction, is known in his later verse for mastering a sculpted and “cold” style of writing. This article proposes that in conjunction with a unique typography and formatting of the poems in their first editions, catchwords (or réclames), seemingly isolated and fragmentary marks at the end of gatherings of signatures, punctuate the verse and, now and again, become a function of its force. Appearing as they do and where they do, catchwords invoke what poet René Char called a parole en archipel (words comprising an archipelago and of an originary calling), and what Maurice Blanchot referred to as a parole de fragment (speech of fragment) or a parole morcelée (shattered speech). Of uncommonly modern appeal, catchwords—intermediaries, unique spatial signs—are vital elements in the design, impact, and consequence of collections that run from L’Olive and the Recueil de poesie (1549) to Fédéric Morel’s handsome and carefully formatted editions of Le Premier livre des Antiquitez de Rome and Les Regrets (1558).

Intensities of feeling: towards a spatial politics of affect

Abstract: This paper attempts to take the politics of affect as not just incidental but central to the life of cities, given that cities are thought of as inhuman or transhuman entities and that politics is understood as a process of community without unity. It is in three main parts. The first part sets out the main approaches to affect that conform with this approach. The second part considers the ways in which the systematic engineering of affect has become central to the political life of Euro‐American cities, and why. The third part then sets out the different kinds of progressive politics that might become possible once affect is taken into account. There are some brief conclusions.

Methodological immaturity in childhood research?: Thinking through 'participatory methods'

Abstract: Much of the recent literature on social research with children advocates the use of participatory techniques. This article attempts to rethink such techniques in several ways. The authors argue that participatory approaches, in their insistence that children should take part in research, may in fact involve children in processes that aim to regulate them. Using examples drawn from their own work, the authors question whether participatory methods are necessary for children to exercise agency in research encounters. They conclude by suggesting that researchers working with children might benefit from an attitude of methodological immaturity.

Dead Geographies—And How to Make Them Live

Abstract: In this introductory paper—which follows the course of the papers included in this special issue—we argue that there are currently four main apprehensions of performance. The first of those apprehensions is provided by the work of Judith Butler on performativity. We then move to a second apprehension—the rather more general notion of performance found in nonrepresentational theory, using as an example the work of Gilles Deleuze. The third apprehension of performance is that taken from work found in the discipline of performance itself. Then, the fourth apprehension concerns the reworking of academic practices as performative.

Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth

Abstract: This paper is about the ontology, the materiality and logical structure of art. While I am not trained in the visual arts or architecture, nonetheless I see there are many points of overlap, regions of co-occupation, that concern art and philosophy, and it is these shared concerns that I want to explore. I want to discuss the ‘origins’ of art and architecture, but not the historical, evolutionary or material origins of art – an origin confirmable by some kind of material evidence or research – but rather, the conceptual origins of art, what concepts art entails, assumes and elaborates. These of course are linked to historical, evolutionary and material forces, but are nevertheless conceptually, that is to say, metaphysically or ontologically separable from them. Art, according to Deleuze, does not produce concepts, though it does address problems and provocations. It produces sensations, affects, intensities, as its mode of addressing problems, which sometimes align with and link to concepts, the object of philosophical production, the way philosophy deals with problems. Thus philosophy may have a place, not in assessing art, but in addressing the same provocations or incitements to production as art faces, through different means and with different effects and consequences.

Thinking cities through elsewhere Comparative tactics for a more global urban studies

Abstract: Inspired by postcolonial critiques, urban studies today is characterized by conceptual and methodological experimentation in pursuit of a more global approach to understanding cities. The challenge is to develop methods and theoretical practices which allow conceptual innovation to emerge from any urban situation or urbanization process, sustaining wider conversations while insisting that concepts are open to revision. This maps well on to the core methodological problematic of comparison. Mindful of the strong limits to comparison presented by conventional quasi-scientific methods, this paper sets out the basis for a reformatted comparative method. A new grounding for comparison is proposed, specific to the field of the urban, and a new typology of tactics for undertaking urban comparative research is suggested. The paper weaves together classic approaches and more recent innovations in comparison from within urban studies with a wider philosophical analysis of the issues at stake in reframing the architecture of comparison. The paper stands as an invitation to practise global urban studies differently – comparatively – but also to practise comparison differently, in a way that opens urban studies to a more global repertoire of potential insights. The paper develops this invitation and methodological quest through Marxist political-economy; through actually-existing vernacular comparative practices of urban studies; and through insights gleaned from Gilles Deleuze’s philosophical project. The last section of the paper explains how this new vocabulary of comparative method can be put to work through a review of some recent experiments in the field of global urban studies.