Individualisation Discourses in Global Neoliberal Governance and their Role in Subjectivity Production: The Case of World Development Reports

The research will be guided by the question to what extent individualisation discourse is present in global governance and to what degree and in which ways this discourse presents an expression and construction of the "neoliberal"? The answer is suggested by the hypothesis that individualisation discourse constitutes a cornerstone of global neoliberal governance by underlying but also remaining concealed by superficial discourses directly informing policies regarded as neoliberal. As such, individualisation discourse enables "governing without government" through production of individuals as "atomised subjects of neoliberal thought" (Paterson and Stripple 2010 p.355).

The research attempt to empirically identify individualisation discourse in the rhetoric of World Bank - an institution of global neoliberal governance - and uncover how the hidden individualisation narrative fosters internalisation of "neoliberal" agendas by individuals making them subjects of neoliberalism in the Foucauldian sense of "governmentality". Despite ambiguity of the concept of "neoliberalism" and existence of varying theoretical perspectives of what it entails, there is some convergence that neoliberalism represents a mode of governance through discursive subjectivity production. Various studies have been devoted to analysing neoliberal discourses in global governance (Peet 2002). However, a serious gap within this area exists that needs to be addressed.

There is an insufficient discussion on what exactly constitutes a neoliberal discourse and how it is expressed. There is an unfortunate tendency within the literature to link neoliberal discourse to particular late-capitalist policies or beliefs, instead of analysing it as a subjectivity formation in governance leading to the construction and internalisation of these policies or policy rhetorics. As a result, the literature on neoliberal discourse remains fragmented with different studies focusing on different aspects of such discourse depending on the context. There is a failure to identify a universal element that makes different discourses "neoliberal". The research will address this problem by suggesting that the discourse of individualisation constitutes the "discourse behind discourses" - a unifying factor that makes lower-level policy-related discourses "neoliberal" thorough enabling their internalisation by individuals. This way the research will address the issue of fragmentation of the empirically-oriented literature on neoliberal discourses, opening up pathways for better informed holistic analyses of neoliberal discourses in different contexts. Furthermore, by concentrating on the construction of subjective neoliberal consciousness through individualisation, the research will be relevant in bridging the neglected gap between sociological and political-economic accounts on individualisation and establishing interdisciplinary links for multidimensional understanding of neoliberalism. Finally, the project will contribute to the understanding of the World Bank's development agenda and shed light on development-policy related problems. Particularly, it will attribute those to the inability of internalisation of individualisation discourses by certain communities and cultures. The research will be both theoretical and empirical in nature. The theoretical part will build upon literature within critical IPE, Governance studies and sociology towards establishing conceptual frameworks for the empirical CDA analysis of the World Development Reports. Precise theoretical objectives and methods are defined as follows:
1) Arriving at a conceptualisation of neoliberalism as a mode of governance through discourse, while recognising its links to particular policies.
2) Developing a framework conceptualising individualisation as a part of "neoliberal" and for identifying it as a "discourse within discourses" in neoliberal governance.