Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naive question is at the heart of Frédéric Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a 'Spinozist…
Thomas Frank coined the term 'the conquest of cool'. This book shows how this conquest is at the heart of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism. Jim McGuigan argues that 'cool capitalism' incorporates disaffection into capitalism itself, absorbing rebellion and thereby neutral…
"Since 2008, we have found ourselves confronted by an historic financial holocaust that world leaders have struggled to come to terms with. As explained by Harry Shutt--who was almost alone in foreseeing such a disaster a decade before it happened [in the 1990s (in The Trouble w…
"At the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. In Between Slavery and Capitalism, Martin Ruef examines how this institutional change affected individuals, organizations, and …
With the NASDAQ having lost 70 percent of its value, the giddy, optimistic belief in perpetual growth that accompanied the economic boom of the 1990s had fizzled by 2002. Yet the advances in information and communication technology, management and production techniques, and glob…
"With the NASDAQ having lost 70 percent of its value, the giddy, optimistic belief in perpetual growth that accompanied the economic boom of the 1990s had fizzled by 2002. Yet the advances in information and communication technology, management and production techniques, and glo…
Ethnographies exploring how cultural practices and social relations have been altered by the radical economic and technological innovations of the New Economy.
"Soaring income inequality and unemployment, expanding populations of the displaced and imprisoned, accelerating destruction of land and water bodies: today's socioeconomic and environmental dislocations cannot be fully understood in the usual terms of poverty and injustice, acc…
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, one economic model emerged triumphant. Capitalism-spanning a spectrum from laissez faire to authoritarian-shapes the market economies of all the wealthiest and fastest-growing nations. But trouble is cracking its shiny veneer. In the U.S., Europ…
There was once a time when 'work' was inextricably linked to survival. But what was once an integral part of life has slowly morphed into a painful and meaningless routine, colonising almost every part of our lives. As our society is transformed into a factory that never sleeps,…
"Can capital be seen? Cartographies of the Absolute surveys the disparate answers to this question offered by artists, film-makers, writers and theorists over the past few decades. It zones in on the crises of representation that have accompanied the enduring crisis of capitalis…
