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' - Karin Knorr Cetina, Professor of Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany 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, Antrhopology and Cultural Economics. |
From inside the book
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... attempts to steer it in certain direc- tions , but they still cannot know what is around the corner , whether it be ... attempt to produce new prac- tices which are resolutely inauthentic . What is clear is that we have reached a point ...
... attempt to engineer new kinds of ' fast ' subject positions which can cope with the disciplines of permanent ... attempted . Further , and crucially , it involves the production of new spaces of intensity in which the new kind of ...
... attempt to produce these possibilities , modelled on the many attempts to use comput- ing in the arts and humanities . For example , take the use of computing in per- formance ( Laurel , 1993 ; Sparacino et al . , 2000 ) . Expressive ...
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements | 8 |
The Cultural Circuit of Capitalism | 11 |
1 | 17 |
Copyright | |
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