Neoliberalism or the return to free-market ideology initiated in the 80s under the Reagan-Thatcher regimes was formally installed in India, under IMF and World Bank supervision, as the policy of “structural adjustment” in 1991. In fact, the entire South Asia region can serve as a vantage point from where neoliberalism may be observed. Put succinctly, neoliberalism is the intensification of capitalism: its relations of exploitation, underdevelopment, commodification, and abstraction. Its features are: a state fully committed to facilitating the movement and profit-making of global capital; deregulation and privatization of public assets and services; steady erosion of labor laws; and a commitment to free-market ideology. In this special issue we are interested in the human consequences and cultural politics of neoliberalism; in how its relations are rehearsed and revisited in culture

We welcome essays that address the relation between the production of culture and political economy; the nature of neoliberal subjectivities and cinema; textual analyses of particular texts or genres that have contested or reinforced neoliberalism; the anxieties around public and private spaces as they are played out nationally and globally in cinematic texts; labor and capital in the production of cinema and media; and questions of caste, gender, and sexuality in relation to neoliberalism; political organizing and online communities; the generational politics of neoliberalism; reality TV and neoliberal subjectivities. We are also interested in essays that discuss South Asian cinemas and/or media culture in a global or comparative perspective. We are looking for essays on media genres that have emerged in the wake of neoliberalism such as: Reality TV, makeover and extreme cultures, new kinds of advertisements in which the new subjectivities are forged, and the new media/cinema object in the context of the changing sites and modes of its circulation- namely, the multiplex, the internet.

Dates and Submissions policy
Submissions should not exceed 8,000 words and should be sent for consideration to (jkapur@siu.edu or pramodknayar@gmail.com). We welcome queries and abstracts. Please discuss your project with the editors before submitting the first draft. The deadline for the first draft is September 15th 2012 and final submissions will be due October 30th , 2012.