Does neoliberalism create more harmful societies?

近年来，人们对社会伤害概念的兴趣日益浓厚，认为这是一种跨学科的调查形式，可以对资本主义社会中的伤害提供准确和系统的分析。这种方法论的透镜提供了一幅复杂的社会伤害图景，使我们能够理解伤害的相互关联性质、其社会模式以及其影响如何在一个人的一生中累积。这项工作的主要动机是记录自20世纪70年代末以来重塑先进工业化社会的新自由主义重组所造成的所谓危害。社会危害论的一个关键但基本上未经检验的主张是，新自由主义改革削弱了国家监管市场活动的能力，削弱了旨在保护民众免受社会经济危害的公共机构，从而创造了更有害的社会。迄今为止，这一分析仍然是理论性和定性的，这些主张基本上未经检验。一些研究描绘了新自由主义改革的各个方面与不断上升的社会危害之间的关联;然而，这些研究关注的变量数量有限，并利用了无法捕捉这些现象之间因果关系的横截面设计。此外，即使是数量更有限的实验研究，也可以解决新自由主义与可被定义为社会危害的因素之间的因果关系。因此，有一个显着的差距，在文献中需要定量方法能够衡量因果关系之间的多个功能的新自由主义和社会harms. First，本研究项目将解决这一差距作出重大贡献的操作化的社会危害的定义和危害生产的病因模型的发展。它将利用Pemberton对社会危害的三重定义：自主性危害（无法过自己选择的生活;例如贫困，闲暇时间不足），关系危害（无法与他人保持积极的关系;例如社会孤立，错误识别）和身体/心理健康危害（健康不良，例如高血压，抑郁症）。经验的应用将允许进一步完善这些概念，这将提供一个显着的贡献，目前的文献。这项研究的因果模型将建立在现存的政治经济学文献中，这些文献将新自由主义定义为重新安排社会和经济关系，以促进市场和竞争，作为组织社会的最有效手段。其次，本项目将采用多方法研究和纵向准实验研究设计，考察新自由主义的特征是否会造成社会危害，如果会，哪些特征更具危害性。该项目将采用先进的定量方法，并利用由理解协会、EQLS、欧盟统计局、国际劳工组织、经合组织、世界银行等提供的次级纵向数据来执行，该项目还将以实验的形式收集原始数据，旨在确定新自由主义是否造成社会危害。这将通过使用方差分析来确定，并向两组个人提供假设但现实的情景，其中新自由主义特征将在两种情景中进行修改，同时保持其余内容不变。最后，该项目还将调查哪些人口群体遭受新自由主义造成的更多社会危害。这项研究的目的是促进结构性变化-有害特征的识别将告知政策，新自由主义的哪些特征应该从我们的社会中设计出来，以尽量减少社会危害的发生。此外，该研究项目将为政策提供信息，说明哪些人口群体可能需要最多的保护，免受新自由主义造成的社会危害。

In recent years interest has grown in the concept of social harm as a form of interdisciplinary enquiry that can provide accurate and systematic analyses of injury in capitalist societies. This methodological lens offers a sophisticated picture of social injury, enabling us to understand the interrelated nature of harm, its social patterning, and how its impacts accumulate across one's life course. A principal motivation for this work has been to document the purported harms caused by the neoliberal restructuring that has reshaped advanced industrialised societies since the late 1970s. A key - yet largely untested claim of the social harm approach is that neoliberal reforms have eroded the ability of states to regulate market activity and weakened public institutions designed to protect populations from socioeconomic harms - creating more harmful societies.To date, this analysis remains theoretical and qualitative in nature, and these claims are largely untested. A few studies map the association between aspects of neoliberal reform and rising social harms; yet these focus on a limited number of variables and utilise cross-sectional designs that are unable to capture causal links between these phenomena. Moreover, even a more limited number of experimental studies exist that address causal relationships between neoliberalism and factors that could be defined as social harms. Therefore, there is a significant gap in the literature requiring quantitative methods capable of measuring causality between multiple features of neoliberalism and social harms.Firstly, this research project will address this gap by making a significant contribution to the operationalisation of the social harm definition and the development of aetiological models of harm production. It will utilise Pemberton's threefold definition of social harm: autonomy harms (the inability to lead a life of own choosing; e.g. poverty, insufficient leisure time), relational harms (the inability to maintain positive relationships with others; e.g. social isolation, misrecognition) and physical/mental health harms (ill-health, e.g. high blood pressure, depression). The empirical application will allow further refinement of these concepts, which will provide a significant contribution to the current literature. The causal models for this study will be built from the extant political economy literature that defines neoliberalism as the re-ordering of social and economic relationships to promote the market and competition as the most effective means to organise society. Secondly, this project will adopt a multi-method approach and longitudinal quasi-experimental research design to investigate whether features of neoliberalism cause social harms, and if so, which features are more damaging. This will be executed by employing advanced quantitative methods and utilising secondary longitudinal data provided by Understanding Society, EQLS, Eurostat, ILO, OECD, World Bank, etc. This project will also collect primary data in the form of an experiment which will aim to determine whether neoliberalism causes social harms. This will be determined by using analysis of variance and presenting two groups of individuals with hypothetical but realistic scenarios, in which neoliberal features will be modified across two scenarios, whilst maintaining the remaining content constant. Lastly, this project will also investigate which demographic groups experience more social harms caused by neoliberalism. The purpose of this research is to promote a structural change - the identification of harmful features will inform policy on what features of neoliberalism should be designed out of our societies to minimise the occurrence of social harms. Moreover, this research project will inform policy on which demographic groups may require the most protection from the social harms created by neoliberalism.