Description
Book SynopsisWe live in an era of economic fabling where often fantastic representations of economic life in popular culture sit uncomfortably alongside a neoliberal capitalist fairy tale that the Earth's resources can continue to be exploited into an indefinite future. This book examines a variety of animated movies, TV shows, written fictions, adventure travelogues, Paleo archeologies (and diets) to suggest that popular culture poses a multiform challenge to the failing theories and practices of neoclassical economics. Popular Culture and Political Economic Thought: Fables of Commonwealth contends that it does so most successfully by implementing older formations of political economic thought: stages theory, bioeconomics, and a robust discourse on commonwealth. An era of eco-crisis demands a new economics. It therefore also requires a new appraisal of the popular imaginary and its potential for leveraging alternative conceptions of economic and political relations. This book begins that conversation.
Table of ContentsChapter 1: The Political Economy of Potato Farming on Mars in Andy Weir’s The Martian
Chapter 2: Virtual Commonwealths of the Great Recession: The Obamas’ Garden and Farm Management Games
Chapter 3: Life in the Wilds: Plots of Polity in Harriet Martineau and Survivor
Chapter 4: Challenging the Privilege of Again: Recursive Plots of Polity in Octavia Butler’s Dawn and Nalo Hopkinson’s MidnightRobber
Chapter 5: “Should’ve kept better care of her”: The Political Economy of Joss Whedon’s Firefly
Chapter 6: Feast Fables: The Bioeconomics of Turkeys and Roast Beast
Chapter 7: Yak Burgers and Black Tea: Consumption, Deprivation, and the Literature of Himalayan Adventure Travel
Chapter 8: Histories, Hedgestories, and Herdstories: Beast Fables and Paleo Polities in Recent Animated Movies
