Life as Surplus

Life as Surplus PDF

Author: Melinda E. Cooper

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-02-01

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0295990317

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Focusing on the period between the 1970s and the present, Life as Surplus is a pointed and important study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States today. Melinda Cooper demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of free-market capitalism with growing internal contradictions of the commercialized life sciences. The biotech revolution relocated economic production at the genetic, microbial, and cellular level. Taking as her point of departure the assumption that life has been drawn into the circuits of value creation, Cooper underscores the relations between scientific, economic, political, and social practices. In penetrating analyses of Reagan-era science policy, the militarization of the life sciences, HIV politics, pharmaceutical imperialism, tissue engineering, stem cell science, and the pro-life movement, the author examines the speculative impulses that have animated the growth of the bioeconomy. At the very core of the new post-industrial economy is the transformation of biological life into surplus value. Life as Surplus offers a clear assessment of both the transformative, therapeutic dimensions of the contemporary life sciences and the violence, obligation, and debt servitude crystallizing around the emerging bioeconomy.

Nine Lives of Neoliberalism

Nine Lives of Neoliberalism PDF

Author: Dieter Plehwe

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-12

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1788732537

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Untangling the long history of neoliberalism Neoliberalism is dead. Again. Yet the philosophy of the free market and the strong state has an uncanny capacity to survive, and even thrive, in times of crisis. Understanding neoliberalism’s longevity and its latest permutation requires a more detailed understanding of its origins and development. This volume breaks with the caricature of neoliberalism as a simple, unvariegated belief in market fundamentalism and homo economicus. It shows how neoliberal thinkers perceived institutions from the family to the university, disagreed over issues from intellectual property rights and human behavior to social complexity and monetary order, and sought to win consent for their project through the creation of new honors, disciples, and networks. Far from a monolith, neoliberal thought is fractured and, occasionally, even at war with itself. We can begin to make sense of neoliberalism’s nine lives only by understanding its own tangled and complex history.

Neoliberal lives

Neoliberal lives PDF

Author: Robert Chernomas

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2019-07-01

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1526110210

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book is about the transformation of America that has occurred over the past thirty-five years, as capitalist logic has expanded into previously protected spheres of life. This expansion has had devastating effects on the potential for human development. Looking at how human beings create themselves and their worlds on material foundations of health and the natural environment, through work and politics, the book chronicles how neoliberalism has limited human potential. At a time when neoliberalism’s effects are stirring various forms of popular resistance and opposition, this is a manifesto of sorts for the range of processes that need to be confronted if human potential is to be freed from the increasingly cramped quarters to which neoliberalism has confined it.

Life in Debt

Life in Debt PDF

Author: Clara Han

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-06-05

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0520951751

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Chile is widely known as the first experiment in neoliberalism in Latin America, carried out and made possible through state violence. Since the beginning of the transition in 1990, the state has pursued a national project of reconciliation construed as debts owed to the population. The state owed a "social debt" to the poor accrued through inequalities generated by economic liberalization, while society owed a "moral debt" to the victims of human rights violations. Life in Debt invites us into lives and world of a poor urban neighborhood in Santiago. Tracing relations and lives between 1999 and 2010, Clara Han explores how the moral and political subjects imagined and asserted by poverty and mental health policies and reparations for human rights violations are refracted through relational modes and their boundaries. Attending to intimate scenes and neighborhood life, Han reveals the force of relations in the making of selves in a world in which unstable work patterns, illness, and pervasive economic indebtedness are aspects of everyday life. Lucidly written, Life in Debt provides a unique meditation on both the past inhabiting actual life conditions but also on the difficulties of obligation and achievements of responsiveness.

The Neoliberal Age?

The Neoliberal Age? PDF

Author: Aled Davies

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 178735685X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are commonly characterised as an age of ‘neoliberalism’ in which individualism, competition, free markets and privatisation came to dominate Britain’s politics, economy and society. This historical framing has proven highly controversial, within both academia and contemporary political and public debate. Standard accounts of neoliberalism generally focus on the influence of political ideas in reshaping British politics; according to this narrative, neoliberalism was a right-wing ideology, peddled by political economists, think-tanks and politicians from the 1930s onwards, which finally triumphed in the 1970s and 1980s. The Neoliberal Age? suggests this narrative is too simplistic. Where the standard story sees neoliberalism as right-wing, this book points to some left-wing origins, too; where the standard story emphasises the agency of think-tanks and politicians, this book shows that other actors from the business world were also highly significant. Where the standard story can suggest that neoliberalism transformed subjectivities and social lives, this book illuminates other forces which helped make Britain more individualistic in the late twentieth century. The analysis thus takes neoliberalism seriously but also shows that it cannot be the only explanatory framework for understanding contemporary Britain. The book showcases cutting-edge research, making it useful to researchers and students, as well as to those interested in understanding the forces that have shaped our recent past.

Happiness as Enterprise

Happiness as Enterprise PDF

Author: Sam Binkley

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2014-03-01

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1438449836

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Examines the contemporary discourse on happiness through the lens of governmentality theory. Recent decades have seen an explosion of interest in the phenomenon of happiness, as evidenced by self-help books, talk shows, spiritual mentoring, business management, and relationship counseling. At the center of this development is the expanding influence of “positive psychology,” which places the concern with happiness in a new position of professional respectability, while opening it to institutional applications. In settings as diverse as college education, business, military training, family, and financial planning, happiness has appeared as the object of a new technology of emotional self-optimization. As such, happiness has come to define a new mentality of self-government—or a “governmentality” as the concept is developed in the work of Michel Foucault—one that Sam Binkley demonstrates is aligned closely with economic neoliberalism. Happiness as Enterprise blends theoretical argumentation and empirical description in an engaging and accessible analysis that brings governmentality theory into contact with sociological theories of practice and temporality, particularly in the work of Pierre Bourdieu. This book invites readers not only to consider the new discourse on happiness for its relation to contemporary formations of power, but to rethink many of the assumptions of governmentality theory in a manner sensitive to the mundane practices and everyday agencies of government, and the unique and specific temporalities these practices imply.

Nine Lives of Neoliberalism

Nine Lives of Neoliberalism PDF

Author: Dieter Plehwe

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1788732545

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Neoliberalism is dead. Again. After the election of Trump and the victory of Brexit in 2016, many diagnosed the demise of the ideology of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Augusto Pinochet, and the WTO. Yet the philosophy of the free market and the strong state has an uncanny capacity to survive and even thrive in crisis. Understanding neoliberalism's longevity and its latest permutation requires a more detailed understanding of its origins and its varieties. This volume breaks with the caricature of neoliberalism as a simple belief in market fundamentalism and homo economicus to show how neoliberal thinkers perceived institutions from the family to the university, disagreed over issues from intellectual property rights and human behavior to social complexity and monetary order, and sought to win consent for their project through the creation of new honors, disciples, and networks. Far from a monolith, neoliberal thought is fractured and, occasionally, even at war with itself. We can begin by making sense of neoliberalism's nine lives by sorting out its own tangled histories.

Neoliberal Culture

Neoliberal Culture PDF

Author: Patricia Ventura

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-22

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1317089073

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Departing from the conventional understanding of neoliberalism as a set of economic and political policies favoring free markets, Neoliberal Culture presents a framework for analyzing neoliberalism in the United States as a culture-or structure of feeling- which shapes American everyday life. The book proposes five 'components' as the keys to any study of American neoliberal culture: biopower, corporatocracy, globalization, the erosion of welfare-state society, and hyperlegality, these five components enabling rich analyses of key artifacts of the neoliberal era, including the Iraq War, Las Vegas, welfare reform, Walmart, and Oprah's Book Club. Carefully organized according to its central themes and adopting a case study approach in order to allow for thorough, illustrated analyses, this book is an important tool for scholars and students of contemporary cultural studies, popular culture, American Studies, and sociology.

Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era

Social Resilience in the Neoliberal Era PDF

Author: Peter A. Hall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 1107034973

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

What is the impact of three decades of neoliberal narratives and policies on communities and individual lives? What are the sources of social resilience? This book offers a sweeping assessment of the effects of neoliberalism, the dominant feature of our times. It analyzes the ideology in unusually wide-ranging terms as a movement that not only opened markets but also introduced new logics into social life, integrating macro-level analyses of the ways in which neoliberal narratives made their way into international policy regimes with micro-level analyses of the ways in which individuals responded to the challenges of the neoliberal era. The product of ten years of collaboration among a distinguished group of scholars, it integrates institutional and cultural analysis in new ways to understand neoliberalism as a syncretic social process and to explore the sources of social resilience across communities in the developed and developing worlds.

Neoliberalism and Everyday Life

Neoliberalism and Everyday Life PDF

Author: Susan Braedley

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2010-03-19

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0773581065

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Illuminating the ways in which neoliberal policies - such as the deregulation of economies and the transfer of governmental responsibilities to the private sector - have been implemented on a global scale, the contributors show how neoliberalism has seeped into our social and political fabric and affected our daily lives. Drawing attention to the most visible elements of neoliberalism in business, government, and personal life, reveal the ways in which policies designed to ensure market expansion also inevitably expand social inequalities of gender, race, class, and ability. Using a variety of methods, contributors discuss a range of topics, including globalization, privatization, health care, and the welfare state. An intelligent and informative collection that explains and challenges neoliberal policies, Neoliberalism and Everyday Life is an important assessment of a political system that makes profit easier and people's lives more difficult.