Identity and Capitalism

Identity and Capitalism PDF

Author: Marie Moran

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2014-11-13

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1473911079

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"This is a splendid book that dispels myths about 'identity' and presents a cultural-materialist case for the study of such keywords and their preoccupations under the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism." - Professor Jim McGuigan, Loughborough University 'Identity’, particularly as it is elaborated in the associated categories of ‘personal’ and ‘social’ identity, is a relatively novel concept in western thought, politics and culture. The explosion of interest in the notion of identity across popular, political and academic domains of practice since the 1960s does not represent the simple popularisation of an older term, as is widely assumed, but rather, the invention of an idea. Identity and Capitalism explores the emergence and evolution of the idea of identity in the cultural, political and social contexts of contemporary capitalist societies. Against the common supposition that identity always mattered, this book shows that what we now think of routinely as ‘personal identity’ actually only emerged with the explosion of consumption in the late-twentieth century. It also makes the case that what we now think of as different social and political ‘identities’ only came to be framed as such with the emergence of identity politics and new social movements in the political landscapes of capitalist societies in the 60s and 70s. Marie Moran provides an important new exploration of the articulation of the idea of identity to the social logic of capitalism, from the ‘organised capitalism’ of the mid-twentieth century, up to and including the neoliberal capitalism that prevails today. Drawing on the work of Raymond Williams, the cultural materialist approach developed here provides an original means of addressing the political debates about the value of identity in contemporary capitalist societies.

Identity Capitalists

Identity Capitalists PDF

Author: Nancy Leong

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2021-02-09

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1503614271

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Nancy Leong reveals how powerful people and institutions use diversity to their own advantage and how the rest of us can respond—and do better. Why do people accused of racism defend themselves by pointing to their black friends? Why do men accused of sexism inevitably talk about how they love their wife and daughters? Why do colleges and corporations alike photoshop people of color into their websites and promotional materials? And why do companies selling everything from cereal to sneakers go out of their way to include a token woman or person of color in their advertisements? In this groundbreaking book, Nancy Leong coins the term "identity capitalist" to label the powerful insiders who eke out social and economic value from people of color, women, LGBTQ people, the poor, and other outgroups. Leong deftly uncovers the rules that govern a system in which all Americans must survive: the identity marketplace. She contends that the national preoccupation with diversity has, counterintuitively, allowed identity capitalists to infiltrate the legal system, educational institutions, the workplace, and the media. Using examples from law to literature, from politics to pop culture, Leong takes readers on a journey through the hidden agendas and surprising incentives of various ingroup actors. She also uncovers a dire dilemma for outgroup members: do they play along and let their identity be used by others, or do they protest and risk the wrath of the powerful? Arming readers with the tools to recognize and mitigate the harms of exploitation, Identity Capitalists reveals what happens when we prioritize diversity over equality.

Profit and Pleasure

Profit and Pleasure PDF

Author: Rosemary Hennessy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-06

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1135960984

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Drawing on an international range of examples, from Che Guevarra to "The Crying Game," Profit and Pleasure leads the discussion of sexuality to a consideration of material reality and the substance of men and women's everyday lives.

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism PDF

Author: Jonathan Tran

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-11-09

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0197587909

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Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. The current emphasis on racial identity obscures the political economic basis that makes racialized life in America legible. This is especially true when it comes to Asian Americans. This book reframes the conversation in terms of what has been called ""racial capitalism"" and utilizes two extended case studies to show how Asian Americans perpetuate and resist its political economy.

Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors

Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors PDF

Author: John Mackey

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2014-01-07

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1625271751

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The bestselling book, now with a new preface by the authors At once a bold defense and reimagining of capitalism and a blueprint for a new system for doing business, Conscious Capitalism is for anyone hoping to build a more cooperative, humane, and positive future. Whole Foods Market cofounder John Mackey and professor and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. cofounder Raj Sisodia argue that both business and capitalism are inherently good, and they use some of today’s best-known and most successful companies to illustrate their point. From Southwest Airlines, UPS, and Tata to Costco, Panera, Google, the Container Store, and Amazon, today’s organizations are creating value for all stakeholders—including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment. Read this book and you’ll better understand how four specific tenets—higher purpose, stakeholder integration, conscious leadership, and conscious culture and management—can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

Universality and Identity Politics

Universality and Identity Politics PDF

Author: Todd McGowan

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 0231552300

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The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Left has grown suspicious of such aspirations. Critics see the invocation of universality as a form of domination or a way of speaking for others, and have come to favor a politics of particularism—often derided as “identity politics.” Others, both centrists and conservatives, associate universalism with twentieth-century totalitarianism and hold that it is bound to lead to catastrophe. This book develops a new conception of universality that helps us rethink political thought and action. Todd McGowan argues that universals such as equality and freedom are not imposed on us. They emerge from our shared experience of their absence and our struggle to attain them. McGowan reconsiders the history of Nazism and Stalinism and reclaims the universalism of movements fighting racism, sexism, and homophobia. He demonstrates that the divide between Right and Left comes down to particularity versus universality. Despite the accusation of identity politics directed against leftists, every emancipatory political project is fundamentally a universal one—and the real proponents of identity politics are the right wing. Through a wide range of examples in contemporary politics, film, and history, Universality and Identity Politics offers an antidote to the impasses of identity and an inspiring vision of twenty-first-century collective struggle.

Elite Capture

Elite Capture PDF

Author: Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2022-05-03

Total Pages: 111

ISBN-13: 1642597147

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“Identity politics” is everywhere, polarizing discourse from the campaign trail to the classroom and amplifying antagonisms in the media, both online and off. But the compulsively referenced phrase bears little resemblance to the concept as first introduced by the radical Black feminist Combahee River Collective. While the Collective articulated a political viewpoint grounded in their own position as Black lesbians with the explicit aim of building solidarity across lines of difference, identity politics is now frequently weaponized as a means of closing ranks around ever-narrower conceptions of group interests. But the trouble, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò deftly argues, is not with identity politics itself. Through a substantive engagement with the global Black radical tradition and a critical understanding of racial capitalism, Táíwò identifies the process by which a radical concept can be stripped of its political substance and liberatory potential by becoming the victim of elite capture—deployed by political, social, and economic elites in the service of their own interests. Táíwò’s crucial intervention both elucidates this complex process and helps us move beyond a binary of “class” vs. “race.” By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, he advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.

Capitalism and Desire

Capitalism and Desire PDF

Author: Todd McGowan

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2016-09-20

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0231542216

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Despite creating vast inequalities and propping up reactionary world regimes, capitalism has many passionate defenders—but not because of what it withholds from some and gives to others. Capitalism dominates, Todd McGowan argues, because it mimics the structure of our desire while hiding the trauma that the system inflicts upon it. People from all backgrounds enjoy what capitalism provides, but at the same time are told more and better is yet to come. Capitalism traps us through an incomplete satisfaction that compels us after the new, the better, and the more. Capitalism's parasitic relationship to our desires gives it the illusion of corresponding to our natural impulses, which is how capitalism's defenders characterize it. By understanding this psychic strategy, McGowan hopes to divest us of our addiction to capitalist enrichment and help us rediscover enjoyment as we actually experienced it. By locating it in the present, McGowan frees us from our attachment to a better future and the belief that capitalism is an essential outgrowth of human nature. From this perspective, our economic, social, and political worlds open up to real political change. Eloquent and enlivened by examples from film, television, consumer culture, and everyday life, Capitalism and Desire brings a new, psychoanalytically grounded approach to political and social theory.

Locating Capitalism in Time and Space

Locating Capitalism in Time and Space PDF

Author: David Nugent

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780804742382

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The last several decades have witnessed major restructurings--economic, political, and cultural--in the international arena. The depth and scope of these changes have prompted anthropologists to rethink many of their most basic assumptions, to problematize issues that have long gone unexamined, and to grapple with new and unique problems. Doing so has left the discipline profoundly unsettled. Existing standards of scholarship and research methodologies have come under attack, key conceptual categories have been called into question, and truths once considered secure have been subjected to severe scrutiny and even ridicule. Seizing upon the opportunity afforded by the contemporary conjuncture of disciplinary crisis and redefinition, this book raises questions about two interrelated aspects of historical process and academic production. The volume contributes to ongoing debates about the degree to which the developments of recent decades represent the advent of a new historical era, a rupture with the past that requires new conceptualizations and logics in order to be understood. In confronting this question, the contributors to this volume have assembled a range of materials that place the present period of reconstruction in the context of a broader history and geography of other, related restructurings. Locating Capitalism in Time and Space also raises questions about the degree to which the scholarship of recent decades represents a qualitative break with that of the past. At issue here is whether one understands the history of academic production as a linear process of intellectual growth punctuated by major breakthroughs in understanding, or as a political process structured by the same kinds of inequalities and struggles that characterize the social worlds that are the object of anthropological analysis.

Trajectories and Themes in World Popular Music

Trajectories and Themes in World Popular Music PDF

Author: Simone Krüger Bridge

Publisher: Equinox Publishing (UK)

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781781796214

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This book traces the trajectories of modern globalization since the late nineteenth century, and considers hegemonic cultural beliefs and practices during the various phases of the history of capitalism. It offers a way to study world popular music from the perspective of critical social theory. Moving chronologically, the book adopts the three phases in the history of capitalist hegemony since the nineteenth century--liberal, organized, and neoliberal capitalism--to consider world popular music in each of these cultural contexts. While capitalism is now everywhere, its history has been one borne out of racism and masculine hegemony. Early Europeanization and globalization have had a major impact upon western race/gender/sexuality/capitalist hegemony, while nascent technologies of capital have led to a renewed reification and exploitation of racialized, sexualized, and classed populations. This book offers a critique of the relationship between emergent capitalist formations and culture over the past hundred years. It explores the way that world popular music mediates economic, cultural, and ideological conditions, through which capitalism has been created in multiple and heterogeneous ways, understanding world popular music as the production of meaning through language and representation. The various dimensions considered in the book are the work of critical social science--a critique of capitalism's impact upon popular music in historical and world perspective. This book provides a powerful contemporary framework for contemporary popular music studies with a distinctive global and interdisciplinary awareness, covering empirical research from across the world in addition to well-established and newer theory from the music disciplines, social sciences, and humanities. It offers fresh conceptualizations about world popular music seen within the context of globalization, capitalism, and identity.