Neoliberal Subjectivities and the Development of the Night-Time Economy in British Cities

Abstract

This article provides a review of the academic literature on the night-time economy (NTE) of British cities. The first half of the article concentrates on the development of the contemporary NTE by academics in the 1990s, showing how such ideas were translated to policy makers through their concomitance with other policies such as urban entrepreneurialism and market liberalization which fitted into neoliberal policy trends. The second half of the article discusses the subsequent academic critique of NTE. Although this has focused on the regulatory practices of neoliberalism, showing how these have lead to large concentrations of bars which promote unhealthy drinking practices, there has been a move in recent work to also consider the subjectivities which have developed in the neoliberal NTE. I suggest that an understanding of subjectivities informed by theoretical work of Deleuze and Guattari and non-representational theories, which see subjectivities as trans-personal assemblages which emerge through dispersed interactions between bodies and affects, can develop these insights. This moves research into neoliberal subjectivities in the NTE towards a research agenda in which the processes of the emergence of subjectivities are investigated and which thus responds to some of the recent critiques made of regulatory-focused approaches.