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
Results 1-5 of 31
... Virtual Capitalism: The Globalization of Reflexive Business Knowledge 5 Cultures on the Brink: Reengineering the SoulofCapitalism on a Global Scale Coauthor Kris Olds Part II The New Economy 6 'It's the Romance,Not the Finance, that ...
... Virtual capitalism: some proposals', in J.Carrierand D. Miller (eds), Virtualism: The New Political Economy. pp.161186. Blackwell Publishing, Chapter 5: Thrift, N.J. and Olds, K. (2004) 'Cultureson thebrink: reengineering the soulof ...
... virtual notions (network, the knowledge economy, the new economy,community ofpractice) are able to takeon flesh as, increasingly, the world is made in thesenotions'likeness throughthe power of consulting solutions –what Miller(1998) and ...
... virtual corporationthe disappearing actis complete.(Goffee and Hunt,1996,p. 3) It is nosurprise,then, that managersandworkers presented with these new discourses showsome considerable ambiguity (Martin, 1994). Second, the discourse is ...
... virtual' or even 'poststructuralist' organization,a looser form of business whichcan act like a netfloating on an ocean,able to ridetheswell and still go forward(Drucker, 1988; Heckscherand Donnellon, 1994; Ecclesand Nohria, 1990). The ...
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 | |