Rudy Leyva shows, in a model of cumulative scholarship, that watching programmes glorifying materialism and the rich makes people more selfish, less critical of inequality, more punitive in their attitudes to welfare and less concerned with hyper-consumption. A fearless, crucially important and scary book lucid and engagingly written too.
Ian Gough, Visiting Professor, CASE, LSE, UK; author of Heat, Greed and Human Need
Brains, Media, and Politics
Following the 20072008 global financial crisis, a number of prominent academics, journalists, and activists were quick to pronounce the demise of neoliberal capitalism and governance. This rather optimistic prediction, however, underestimated the extent to which neoliberalism has shaped the 21st-century world order and become entrenched in our sociopolitical and cognitive fabric. Indeed, 11 years after the crisis, and in spite of the significant levels of socio-economic inequality, psychological distress, and environmental destruction generated by neoliberal policies and corresponding business and cultural practices, the ideological hegemony of neoliberalism has not been supplanted, nor has it really faced any serious unsettling. How, then, has neoliberalism inflected and shaped our common-sense understandings of what is politically, economically, and culturally viable? To help answer this question, this book combines leading theories from sociology, media-communication research, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, and draws on primary evidence from a unique mix of ethnographic, survey, and experimental studies of young peoples leisure practices and educational experiences, of young adults political socialisation processes in relation to exposure to social networking sites, and of the effects of commercial media viewing on material values and support for social welfare. In doing so, it provides a nuanced and robustly empirically tested account of how the conscious and non-conscious cognitive dimensions of peoples subjectivities and everyday social practices become interpellated through and reproductive of neoliberal ideology. As such, this book will appeal to scholars across the social and behavioural sciences with interests in neoliberalism, political engagement, enculturation, social reproduction, and media effects.
Rodolfo Leyva is a fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
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Brains, Media and Politics
Generating Neoliberal Subjects
Rodolfo Leyva
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/RSPS
Brains, Media, and Politics
Generating Neoliberal Subjects
Rodolfo Leyva
First published 2020
by Routledge
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2020 Rodolfo Leyva
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leyva, Rodolfo, author.
Title: Brains, media and politics: generating neoliberal subjects / Rodolfo Leyva.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge studies in political sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019033581 (print) | LCCN 2019033582 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367030339 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429019975 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: NeoliberalismSocial aspects. | NeoliberalismPsychological aspects. | YouthPolitical activity. | Mass media and youth.
Classification: LCC HB95 .L49 2020 (print) | LCC HB95 (ebook) | DDC 320.51/3dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033581
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033582
ISBN: 978-0-367-03033-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-01997-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
First and foremost, I sincerely thank all my research participants for their time and insights.
Additionally, this book would not have been completed or likely even started without the kind support, education, and friendship of the following people and organisations.
I am very grateful for and fortunate to have had the amazing Professors Sharon Gewirtz and Meg Maguire supervise my doctoral research. Their wisdom, graceful guidance, stern but constructive criticism, and non-authoritarian pedagogy along with their exemplary scholarship, have helped me to develop my critical faculties and research skills, as well as to gain a strong appreciation for nuance, context, and precision in academic thinking, research, and writing.
Thanks very much to Neil Jordan for taking a chance on this book, and to Alice Salt, Jayanthi Chander and the Routledge production team for their great editing and guidance.
Thanks to Dr Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington, Professor Francesca Carpentier, and the anonymous peer-reviewers from the journals Media Psychology , the European Journal of Social Theory , and Social Science Computer Review for their invaluable reviewing of most of the research in this book, and for helping me to improve my application of statistical analyses.
Thanks to Professor Tim Kasser, Dr Diana Coben, and Dr Anwar Tlili for helping me to develop some of the key theoretical constructs and arguments of this book.
I am also thankful to my Santa Monica Community College professors Guido Davis Del Piccolo, Christina Preciado, and Robert Massey, and my UC Santa Cruz professors Dr Fransesca Guerra, Professor Andrew Szasz, and Dr Dard Neuman for introducing me to the fields of sociology and cultural studies.
To my Santa Monica Community College English professor Shant Shahoian for teaching me how to use, as well as enlightening me on the importance of, textual evidence.
To my high-school teachers Jerald Kress, Lee McManus, and Mike Winnie; my middle-school teachers Mr Hayes and Mr Terastvadsadrian; and my elementary school teachers Mr Labeck and Mr Ruiz for their kindness, teaching, and infinite patience.
