Description
Book SynopsisHow are we to understand capitalism at the millennium? Is it a singular or polythetic creature? What are we to make of the culture of neoliberalism that appears to accompany it, taking on simultaneously local and translocal forms? This title deals with these questions.
Trade Review“In an extrarodinary introduction the editors of this book set out to interrogate the features of capitalism at the millennium, not only its technical but also its messianic and magical manifestations. This makes for an unusual treatment of familiar subjects. . . . [M]ust reading for anyone concerned with transnational processes.”—Saskia Sassen, author of
The Global City“The savvy success of ‘postmodernism,’ that cynical sign of the fin de siecle, has prevented us from re-imagining the present and mapping the future.
Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism steps into the breach and opens up a new chapter in our understanding of a world of contradictory forces and ambivalent affiliations. When the rapid expansion of free markets sends sovereign states into free fall, and the value of citizenship is measured in the currency of consumption, the time is ripe for a radical rethinking of political passion in the public interest. In a fine double act the Comaroffs, and their gifted contributors, provide us with brilliant ethnographic and ethical accounts of a world-system whose emergent structures are both older and newer than the globalizing jargon of our times.”—Homi K. Bhabha, University of Chicago
Table of ContentsMillennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming / John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff
Millennial Transitions / Irene Stengs, Hylton White, Caitrin Lynch, and Jeffrey A. Zimmermann
Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism’s Nature / Fernando Coronil
Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society / Michael Storper
The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women, and Maquiladoreas / Melissa W. Wright
Freeway to China (Version 2, for Liverpool) / Allan Sekula
Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging / Peter Geschiere and Francis Myamnjoh
Millennial Coal Face / Luiz Paulo Lima, Scott Bradwell, and Seamus Walsh
Modernity’s Media and the End of Mediumship? On the Aesthetic Economy of Transparency in Thailand / Rosalind C. Morris
Living at the Edge: Religion, Capitalism, and the End of the Nation-State in Taiwan / Robert P. Weller
Millenniums Past, Cuba’s Future? / Paul Ryer
Consuming
Geist: Popontology and the Spirit of Capital in Indigenous Australia / Elizabeth A. Povinelli
Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils / David Harvey
Contributors
Index
