John David Jordan's 'Hayek's Maze'

John David Jordan, a third year PhD candidate and part-time tutor in the Department of Sociology, has published his third peer-reviewed academic paper. Hayek’s Maze: The Ideological Construction of “Workfare”, and Other Members of Late Capitalism’s “Problem Family” is published in the prestigious New York based international journal Science and Society.

John’s article was praised by one peer reviewer for its “brilliant” adaptation of the cultural theories of Frederic Jameson.

Hayek’s Maze presents the radical and innovative argument that five key contemporary macro-social theoretical concepts, namely ‘neoliberalism’, ‘globalisation’, ‘the underclass’, ‘workfare’ and Bourdieusian ‘capitals’, encourage the adoption of a peculiarly late-capitalist ontology. John argues that it can be no coincidence that these concepts so closely mirror Marx’s key analytic terrains of capitalist (re)production, the world-market, the proletariat, poor-law systems, and actual capital.

Focusing primarily on workfare, neoliberalism and the underclass, John’s paper explores and highlights the rhetorical stages via which many critical scholars find themselves unwittingly replicating the ideologies that they are seeking to challenge. John’s description of this process as an “academic Stockholm Syndrome” was praised by another reviewer as a critical and timely commentary on the worryingly compromised direction of much current macro-social theory. In conclusion, John argues for the need to return to sociological analysis based on systemic and historically integrated approaches.

Science and Society is one of world’s oldest critical journals, boasting both an international base and also a reputation for cutting-edge radical theory.

John is a third year PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology (supervisors: Dr Susie Jacobs, Dr Kathryn Chadwick, Dr Chris Porter). He has a BA (Hons) Sociology and Modern Studies from MMU, and achieved a double-first equivalent pass for his Master’s degree – MA Sociology and Global Transformations (also from MMU) - for which he also won the Programme Leader’s Award and the Head of Department’s Prize.

John can be contacted at: j.jordan@mmu.ac.uk