Knowing Capitalism′This is an ambitious, original, and complex treatment of key aspects of contemporary capitalism. It makes a major contribution because it profoundly destabilizes the scholarship on globalization, the so-called new economy, information technology, distinct contemporary business cultures and practices′ - Saskia Sassen, author of Globalization and its Discontents ′Nigel Thrift offers us the sort of cultural analysis of global capitalism that has long been needed - one that emphasizes the innovative energy of global capitalism. The book avoids stale denouncements and offers instead a view of capitalism as a form of practice′ Capitalism is well known for producing a form of existence where `everything solid melts into air′. But what happens when capitalism develops theories about itself? Are we moving into a condition in which capitalism can be said to possess a brain? These questions are pursued in this sparkling and thought-provoking book. Thrift looks at what he calls ′the cultural circuit of capitalism′, the mechanism for generating new theories of capitalism. The book traces the rise of this circuit back to the 1960s when a series of institutions locked together to interrogate capitalism, to the present day, when these institutions are moving out to the Pacific basin and beyond. What have these theories produced? How have they been implicated in the speculative bubbles that characterized the late twentieth century? What part have they played in developing our understanding of human relations? Building on an inter-disciplinary approach which embraces the core social sciences, Thrift outlines an exciting new theory for understanding capitalism. His book is of interest to readers in geography, social theory, anthropology and cultural economics. |
From inside the book
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... become common linguisticcurrency, making it increasingly difficult to conceive of the worldin any terms except thoseofa calculus ofsupply and demand. Then,itisa factthat capitalists and anticapitalists alike often share many ofthe same ...
... become ubiquitous, ambient presences in our lives (Bolter andGrusin, 1999; McCarthy, 2001), always present, alwayson ... become moreinteractive – thoughthrough the auspicesof Internet and wireless technologies, consumersand producers now ...
... become secondnature to us. What is interestingaboutthe present conjunction is thewayin whichanew battery of concepts, percepts and affects isnowbeing inventedwhich are boosting old reactions and adding a layer ofnew ones. Inparticular ...
... become increasingly scepticalofthis terminology of late, most especially because it seemstome to be unableto easily dealwithshifts in the natureof materiality. What seemscertain to meisthat we need apolitics whichcan measure up to these ...
... become disconnected from thevery entity wewish to critique. The chapters in this book, though oftenfoiled by circumstance,11 were attemptstodo precisely this. The book issplitinto two parts. The first part chartstheriseof an agency ...
Contents
The Globalization of Reflexive Business | |
Reengineering the SoulofCapitalism | |
Coauthor Kris Olds Part II The New Economy | |
The Automatic Production of Space | |
Closer to the Machine? Intelligent Environments New Forms | |
New ModelsofEveryday | |
Remembering the Technological Unconscious by Foregrounding | |
Index | |