Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (a Public Culture book)

A special issue of PUBLIC CULTURE, this collection of essays forms an empirically grounded, conceptual discussion that posits global millennial capitalism as a historical formation. 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 Millennial capitalism: first thoughts on a second coming / Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff -- Millennial transitions / Irene Stengs ... [et al.] -- Toward a critique of globalcentrism: speculations on capitalism's nature / Fernando Coronil -- Lived effects of the contemporary economy: globalization, inequality, and consumer society / Michael Storper -- The dialectics of still life: murder, women, and maquiladoras / Melissa W. Wright -- Freeway to China (version 2, for Liverpool) / Allan Sekula -- Capitalism and autochthony: the seesaw of mobility and belonging / Peter Geschiere and Francis Nyamnjoh -- Millennial coal face / Luiz Paulo Lima, Scott Bradwell, and Seamus Walsh -- Modernity's media and the end of mediumship? On the aesthetic economy of transparency in Thailand / Rosalind C. Morris -- Living at the edge: religion, capitalism, and the end of the nation-state in Taiwan / Robert P. Weller -- Millenniums past, Cuba's future? / Paul Ryer -- Consuming Geist: popontology and the spirit of capital in indigenous Australia / Elizabeth A. Povinelli -- Cosmopolitanism and the banality of geographical evils / David Harvey.