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FAIR PLAY: ART, PERFORMANCE AND NEOLIBERALISM. By Jen Harvie. Performance Interventions series. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; pp. 256.
Fair Play is a bold and confident book, its argument incisive yet hopeful. As author len Harvie explains, her project seeks to contextualize "socially engaged art and performance practices in broader social and material contexts in order to consider not only what kinds of opportunities for what qualitative experiences of participation the art practices 'themselves' offer audiences, but also, importantly, how those opportunities are affected by the practices' social and material contexts" (10). The rich range of examples that the chapters explore-organized as interrogations of labor, entrepreneurialism, location, and economics-are drawn chiefly from London, but her concerns about the incursions of neoliberal capitalism speak to us all.
The introduction provides an ably argued and useful account of specific UK government philosophies and practices that affect the availability of, and access to, "social engagement in contemporary culture, including in participatory art and performance but also apparently 'beyond' it, in cultural policy, social policy and economic conditions" (17). Harvie's analysis of how these British policies inhibit art and sociability sets a depressingly bleak scene. Her willingness, however, to find in many of her case studies "subtle, partial and effective responses to neoliberal capitalism's support for selfinterested individualism" that have the capacity to show us "models of fairness and constructive social engagement" (25) gives this book a more auspicious perspective.
The first chapter explores...