Description
Book SynopsisThe struggle against neoliberal order has gained momentum over the last five decades---to the point that economic elites have not only adapted to the Left''s critiques but incorporated them for capitalist expansion. Venture funds expose their ties to slavery and pledge to invest in racial equity. Banks pitch microloans as a path to indigenous self-determination. Fair-trade brands narrate consumption as an act of feminist solidarity with women artisans in the global South. In
Capitalist Humanitarianism Lucia Hulsether examines these projects and the contexts of their emergence. Blending historical and ethnographic styles, and traversing intimate and global scales, Hulsether tracks how neoliberal self-critique creates new institutional hegemonies that, in turn, reproduce racial and neocolonial dispossession. From the archives of Christian fair traders to luxury social entrepreneurship conferences, from US finance offices to Guatemalan towns flooded with their loan products, from s
Trade Review"Hulsether combines reportage, ethnographic research, personal narrative, and social theory to look at the ways in which the 21st-century global economic system has absorbed the very movements that seek to resist it. . . . [A] stance of constant resistance to an unjust system, even in the seeming absence of alternatives, is what Hulsether—who is a union activist as well as a teacher and scholar—calls us to take on. . . . Hulsether’s book models this approach beautifully, urging us to “write a history of the impossible” in which 'survival is not the end.'" -- Jeannine Marie Pitas * Christian Century *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Introduction: Capitalist Humanitarianism 1
Interlude One 19
1. May Analyze like a Capitalist: Fair Trade and Other Histories 25
Interlude Two 49
2. Ethical Vampires: Conscious Capitalism and Its Commodity Enchantments 53
Interlude Three 75
3. Marxists in the Microbank: From Solidarity Movement to Solidarity Lending 80
Interlude Four 102
4. Representing Inclusion: Humans of Capitalist Humanitarianism 106
Interlude Five 128
5. The Hunt for Yes: Archival Management and Manufactured Consent 134
Interlude Six 156
6. Hope for the Future: Reproductive Labor in the Neoliberal Multicultural Family 162
Epilogue 183
Acknowledgments 191
Notes 195
Bibliography 221
Index 239
