Description
Book SynopsisEthnographies exploring how cultural practices and social relations have been altered by the radical economic and technological innovations of the New Economy.
Trade Review“
Frontiers of Capital is a synthetic state-of-the-art account of anthropology’s contribution to thinking about the current economic moment. The essays are—without exception—brilliant ethnographic excursions into the terrain of what the editors call the ‘New Economy.’ Together they enable an understanding of the post–Cold War, neoliberal, information-saturated, finance-capital-dominated world we inhabit.”—Charles Piot, author of
Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa“Capital will go anywhere if there is a profit to be turned or value to be found. That is its nature. This important collection provides a further chapter in this natural history, but one which has a much greater range, not least because it deploys a range of ethnographic techniques which allow it to cover the full spectrum of the ways and wheres in which the global economy works. An important and inspirational book which is willing to tread the delicate dividing line between within and without the system.”—Nigel Thrift, author of
Knowing Capitalism“[A]n interesting and provocative set of chapters. . . . [T]he strength of the collection lies in the ways in which the authors weave clear ethnographic discussions with rich theoretical concerns. Combined ethnography and theory allow us to more clearly understand the give and take that exists between the creators and users of new technologies.” -- Jeffrey H. Cohen * American Anthropologist *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Anthropology of Capital and the Frontiers of Ethnography / Greg Downey and Melissa S. Fisher 1
I. Circuits of Knowledge
Fast Capitalism: Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic Analyst / Douglas R. Holmes and George E. Marcus 33
Trading on Numbers / Caitlin Zaloom 58
Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic and Anthropological Knowledge / Annelise Riles 86
The Information Economy in No-Holds-Barred Fighting / Greg Downey 108
Intersecting Geographies? ICTS and Other Virtualities in Urban Africa / AbdouMaliq Simone 133
II. New Subjects, Novel Socialities
Corporate Players, New Cosmopolitans, and Guanxi in Shanghai / Aihwa Ong 163
Gentrification Generalized: From Local Anomaly to Urban “Regeneration” as Global Urban Strategy / Neil Smith 191
Navigating Wall Street Women’s Gendered Networks in the New Economy / Melissa S. Fisher 209
Developing Community Software in a Commodity World / Siobhán O’Mahony 237
Reflections on Youth, from the Past to the Postcolony / Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff 267
Guerilla Capitalism and Ghettocentric Cosmopolitanism on the French Urban Periphery / Paul A. Silverstein 282
Afterword: Knowledge Practices and Subject Making at the Edge / Saskia Sassen 305
Bibliography 317
Contributors 357
Index 361
