Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism

One of the best books I have read in years about what it means to engage neoliberalism through a critical framework that highlights those narratives and stories that affirm both our humanity and our longing for justice. It should be read by everyone concerned with what it might mean to not only dream about democracy but to engage it as a lived experience and political possibility. - Henry Giroux, McMaster University "An important and original book that offers a fresh critique of neoliberalism and its contribution to the contemporary crisis of ‘voice’. Couldry’s own voice is clear and impassioned - an urgent must-read." - Rosalind Gill, King’s College London For more than thirty years neoliberalism has declared that market functioning trumps all other social, political and economic values. In this book, Nick Couldry passionately argues for voice, the effective opportunity for people to speak and be heard on what affects their lives, as the only value that can truly challenge neoliberal politics. But having voice is not enough: we need to know our voice matters. Insisting that the answer goes much deeper than simply calling for ′more voices′, whether on the streets or in the media, Couldry presents a dazzling range of analysis from the real world of Blair and Obama to the social theory of Judith Butler and Amartya Sen. Why Voice Matters breaks open the contradictions in neoliberal thought and shows how the mainstream media not only fails to provide the means for people to give an account of themselves, but also reinforces neoliberal values. Moving beyond the despair common to much of today′s analysis, Couldry shows us a vision of a democracy based on social cooperation and offers the resources we need to build a new post-neoliberal politics.

Table of Contents:
Voice as Value The Crisis of Neo-Liberal Economics Neo-Liberal Democracy: An Oxymoron Media and the Amplification of Neo-Liberal Values Philosophies of Voice Sociologies of Voice Towards a Post-Neo-Liberal Politics

About the Author :
Nick Couldry is a sociologist of media and culture. He is Professor of Media Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and from 2017 has been a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. He is the co-founder of a website which encourages dialogue on data colonialism with scholars and activists from Latin America. He jointly led, with Clemencia Rodriguez, the chapter on media and communications in the 22 chapter 2018 report of the International Panel on social Progress. He is the author or editor of fifteen books including The Mediated Construction of Reality (with Andreas Hepp, Polity, 2016), Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice (Polity 2012) and Why Voice Matters (Sage 2010). His latest books are The Costs of Connection (with Ulises Ali Mejias, Stanford UP 2019), Media: Why It Matters (Polity 2019), and Media Voice Space and Power: Essays of Refraction (Routledge 2020).  

Review :
Nick Couldry has emerged as one of the most brilliant critics we have of neoliberalism and its assault on almost every aspect of public life. What is unique about this book is that it not only understands neoliberalism as an economic discourse but also, if not more importantly, as a profound and powerful mode of cultural politics. This is one of the best books I have read in years about what it means to engage neoliberalism through a critical framework that highlights those narratives and stories that affirm both our humanity and our longing for justice. This book should be read by everyone concerned with what it might mean to not only dream about democracy but to engage it as a lived experience and political possibility An important and original book that offers a fresh critique of neoliberalism and its contribution to the contemporary crisis of ‘voice’. Couldry’s own voice is clear and impassioned - an urgent ‘must-read’. Nick Couldry sets out a provocative critique of the democratic shortcomings of the neoliberal social order, while offering some compellingly radical arguments for the role of the media in creating new spaces of citizen-government relations. This is an important book... In focusing our attention on the importance of voice, in putting it at the heart of contemporary political and economic change, and in summoning an array of contrasting services, Couldry has done us a very valuable service. A valuable contribution to the field... Resisting a familiar tendency of scholarship in which a critique of neoliberalism is paired either with Utopian thought experiments [or] with an ennui toward practical action, Couldry′s work is refreshingly productive in its scope. The author not only skilfully outlines the problems that are present in the age of neoliberalism, but offers a platform to discuss how scholars and citizens can spur shifts in values in order to move forward towards a more democratic post-neoliberal world today and into the future... Why Voice Matters is a grounded, imaginative and valuable piece of writing that will appeal to a broad-based audience of scholars in the field of communication and beyond. "Nick Couldry gives a very interesting analysis of the challenge of ′voice′ in our times."