Description
Book SynopsisAnalyzes the role of the state's 'prerogative power' in creating and sustaining a condition of severe inequality for some of the most marginalized sectors of our population in the United States.
Trade Review“Kathleen Arnold boldly and convincingly takes on social analysts who contend that the state plays a diminished role in the ‘flattened world’ of global capitalism. Rather, she demonstrates that the United States has deployed state power to deregulate, privatize, and weaken public provision while utilizing new forms of bureaucratic ‘prerogative power’ to ‘ascetically discipline’ a new working class of vulnerable, low-wage workers.”
—Joseph Schwartz,Temple University
“Arnold is a political theorist who understands the relevance and necessity of normative theory in addressing social and political inequalities. Fortunately for the reader, she is well equipped to undertake this task.”
—M. T. Kenney Choice
“Arnold gives a compelling account of the contradictions and strange paradoxes of contemporary politics and unmasks the brutal forms of power concealed by the modern state that have intensified poverty, exploitation, dehumanization, racism, and sexism.”
—William W. Sokoloff Theory and Event
“This ambitious book successfully weaves together labor studies, political philosophy, and the literature on globalization. It is therefore accessible to Americanists as much as to those in political theory and international relations.”
—Margaret Gray Political Science Quarterly
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Globalization, Prerogative Power, and the New Working Class
1. Asceticism, Biopower, and the Poor
2. Domestic War: Locke’s Concept of Prerogative
3. Exploitation and the New Working Class
4. Antagonism and Exploitation: The Importance of Biopower
5. War and “Love”
Index
