Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism
Edited by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff
The essays in Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism pose a series of related questions: How are we to understand capitalism at the millennium? Is it a singular or polythetic creature? What are we to make of the culture of neoliberalism that appears to accompany it, taking on simultaneously local and translocal forms? To what extent does it make sense to describe the present juncture in world history as an “age of revolution,” one not unlike 1789–1848 in its transformative potential?
In exploring the material and cultural dimensions of
the Age of Millennial Capitalism, the contributors interrogate the
so-called crisis of the nation-state, how the triumph of the free
market obscures rising tides of violence and cultures of exclusion, and
the growth of new forms of identity politics. The collection also
investigates the tendency of neoliberal capitalism to produce a world
of increasing differences in wealth, environmental catastrophes,
heightened flows of people and value across space and time, moral
panics and social impossibilities, bitter generational antagonisms and
gender conflicts, invisible class distinction, and “pariah” forms of
economic activity. In the process, the volume opens up an empirically
grounded, conceptual discussion about the world-at-large at a
particularly momentous historical time—when the social sciences and
humanities are in danger of ceding intellectual initiative to the
masters of the market and the media.
In addition to its crossdisciplinary essays, Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism—originally the third installment of the journal Public Culture’s
“Millennial Quartet”—features several photographic essays. The book
will interest anthropologists, political geographers, economists,
sociologists, and political theorists.
Contributors. Scott Bradwell, Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Fernando Coronil, Peter Geschiere, David Harvey, Luiz Paulo Lima, Caitrin Lynch, Rosalind C. Morris, David G. Nicholls, Francis Nyamnjoh, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Paul Ryer, Allan Sekula, Irene Stengs, Michael Storper, Seamus Walsh, Robert P. Weller, Hylton White, Melissa W. Wright, Jeffrey A. Zimmerman
