Creditocracy

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Creditocracy

Author : Andrew Ross
Publisher : OR Books
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2014-02-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781939293398

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Creditocracy by Andrew Ross Pdf

It seems like pretty much everybody – homeowners, students, those who are ill and without health insurance, and, of course, credit card holders – is up to their neck in debt that can never be repaid. 77% of US households are seriously indebted and one in seven Americans has been pursued by debt collectors. The major banks are bigger and more profitable than before the 2008 crash, and legislators are all but powerless to bring them to heel. In this forceful, eye-opening survey, Andrew Ross contends that we are in the cruel grip of a creditocracy – where the finance industry commandeers our elected governments and where the citizenry have to take out loans to meet their basic needs. The implications of mass indebtedness for any democracy are profound, and history shows that whenever a creditor class becomes as powerful as Wall Street, the result has been debt bondage for the bulk of the population. Following in the ancient tradition of the jubilee, activists have had some success in repudiating the debts of developing countries. The time is ripe, Ross argues, for a debtors’ movement to use the same kinds of moral and legal arguments to bring relief to household debtors in the North. After examining the varieties of lending that have contributed to the crisis, Ross suggests ways of lifting the burden of illegitimate debts from our backs. Just as important, Creditocracy outlines the kind of alternative economy we need to replace a predatory debt-money system that only benefits the 1%.

The Occupy Movement Explained

Author : Nicholas Smaligo
Publisher : Open Court
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2014-07-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780812698817

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The Occupy Movement Explained by Nicholas Smaligo Pdf

The Occupy Movement Explained is a readable, compact account and analysis of the Occupy protests, by a scholar who participated in several Occupy events. The book is thoroughly researched, painstakingly accurate, and fully documented. It debunks a number of myths and misunderstandings that have become rife. Nicholas Smaligo shows how the movement arose out of radical currents that have been active below the media's radar since the 1970s. Occupiers are not all the same, and the author reviews some of the debates and changes within the movement. The occupations began under a slogan that conjured up a naive sense of unity—"We Are the 99%!" It did not take very long for that sense of unity to give way to an appreciation of just how socially, economically, and ideologically fragmented American society is. For some, this was an excuse to return to their cynicism—for others, it was an invitation to lose their illusions and begin to see the world from the viewpoint of political activists. The Occupy Movement Explained describes this process of education and the lessons learned about "the 99%", the police, direct democracy, political demands, and the intimately related questions of social change, violence and property.

Neoliberalism

Author : Julie Wilson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317224945

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Neoliberalism by Julie Wilson Pdf

Thanks to the rise of neoliberalism over the past several decades, we live in an era of rampant anxiety, insecurity, and inequality. While neoliberalism has become somewhat of an academic buzzword in recent years, this book offers a rich and multilayered introduction to what is arguably the most pressing issue of our times. Engaging with prominent scholarship in media and cultural studies, as well as geography, sociology, economic history, and political theory, author Julie Wilson pushes against easy understandings of neoliberalism as market fundamentalism, rampant consumerism, and/or hyper-individualism. Instead, Wilson invites readers to interrogate neoliberalism in true cultural studies fashion, at once as history, theory, practice, policy, culture, identity, politics, and lived experience. Indeed, the book’s primary aim is to introduce neoliberalism in all of its social complexity, so that readers can see how neoliberalism shapes their own lives, as well as our political horizons, and thereby start to imagine and build alternative worlds.

Geopolitical Economy

Author : Radhika Desai
Publisher : Pluto Press
Page : 240 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2013-02-12
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0745329926

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Geopolitical Economy by Radhika Desai Pdf

Geopolitical Economy radically reinterprets the historical evolution of the world order, as a multi-polar world emerges from the dust of the financial and economic crisis. Radhika Desai offers a radical critique of the theories of US hegemony, globalisation and empire which dominate academic international political economy and international relations, revealing their ideological origins in successive failed US attempts at world dominance through the dollar. Desai revitalizes revolutionary intellectual traditions which combine class and national perspectives on 'the relations of producing nations'. At a time of global upheavals and profound shifts in the distribution of world power, Geopolitical Economy forges a vivid and compelling account of the historical processes which are shaping the contemporary international order.

Trade Is War

Author : Yash Tandon
Publisher : OR Books
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2015-06-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781939293824

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Trade Is War by Yash Tandon Pdf

"This impressive study focuses on Africa, which has suffered hideous crimes. Yash Tandon’s case is a powerful one, and can be extended: The global class war that is institutionalized in the misnamed 'free trade agreements' is also a war against the traditional victims of class war at home. The resistance, in Africa and elsewhere, which Tandon describes here, is a source of hope for the future." —Noam Chomsky "A necessary and timely contribution which goes to the roots of the deep crises we face as humanity." —Vandana Shiva "... understand that 'trade is war' as Yash Tandon beautifully explains in this important book." —Samir Amin Globalization has reduced many aspects of modern life to little more than commodities controlled by multinational corporations. Everything, from land and water to health and human rights, is today intimately linked to the issue of free trade. Conventional wisdom presents this development as benign, the sole path to progress. Yash Tandon, drawing on decades of on-the-ground experience as a high level negotiator in bodies such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), here challenges this prevailing orthodoxy. He insists that, for the vast majority of people, and especially those in the poorer regions of the world, free trade not only hinders development – it visits relentless waves of violence and impoverishment on their lives. Trade Is War shows how the WTO and the Economic Partnership Agreements like the EU-Africa EPA and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are camouflaged in a rhetoric that hides their primary function as the servants of global business. Their actions are inflaming a crisis that extends beyond the realm of the economic, creating hot wars for markets and resources, fought between proxies in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and now even in Europe. In these pages Tandon suggests an alternative vision to this devastation, one based on self-sustaining, non-violent communities engaging in trade based on the real value of goods and services and the introduction of alternative currencies.

The Weight of All Flesh

Author : Eric L. Santner,Bonnie Honig,Peter Eli Gordon,Hent de Vries
Publisher : Berkeley Tanner Lectures
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2016
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190254087

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The Weight of All Flesh by Eric L. Santner,Bonnie Honig,Peter Eli Gordon,Hent de Vries Pdf

Eric Santner offers a radically new interpretation of Marx's labor theory of value as one concerned with the afterlife of political theology in secular modernity. What Marx characterized as the dual character of the labor embodied in the commodity, he argues, is the doctrine of the King's Two Bodies transferred from the political theology of sovereignty to the realm of political economy. This genealogy, leading from the fetishism of the royal body to the fetishism of the commodity, also suggests a new understanding of the irrational core at the center of economic busyness today, its 24/7 pace. The frenetic negotiations of our busy-bodies continue and translate into the doxology of everyday life the liturgical labor that once sustained the sovereign's glory. Maintaining that an effective critique of capitalist political economy must engage this liturgical dimension, Santner proposes a counter-activity, which he calls paradoxological. With commentaries by Bonnie Honig, Peter Gordon, and Hent de Vries, an introduction by Kevis Goodman, and a response from Santner, this important new book by a leading cultural theorist and scholar of German literature, cinema, and history will interest readers of political theory, literature and literary theory, and religious studies.

Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition

Author : Bruce Burgett,Glenn Hendler
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781479897964

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Keywords for American Cultural Studies, Third Edition by Bruce Burgett,Glenn Hendler Pdf

Introduces key terms, research traditions, debates, and histories for American Studies and Cultural Studies in an updated edition Since its initial publication, scholars and students alike have turned to Keywords for American Cultural Studies as an invaluable resource for understanding key terms and debates in the fields of American studies and cultural studies. As scholarship has continued to evolve, this revised and expanded third edition offers indispensable meditations on new and developing concepts used in American studies, cultural studies, and beyond. Designed as a uniquely print-digital hybrid publication, this Keywords volume collects 114 essays, each focused on a single term such as “America,” “culture,” “diversity,” or “religion.” More than forty of the essays have been significantly revised for this new edition, and there are nineteen completely new keywords, including crucial additions such as “biopolitics,” “data,” “debt,” and “intersectionality.” Throughout the volume, interdisciplinary scholars explore these terms and others as nodal points in many of today’s most dynamic and vexed discussions of political and social life, both inside and outside of the academy. The Keywords website features forty-eight essays not in the print volume; it also provides pedagogical tools for instructors using print and online keywords in their courses. The publication brings together essays by interdisciplinary scholars working in literary studies and political economy, cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, African American history and performance studies, gender studies and political theory. Some entries are explicitly argumentative; others are more descriptive. All are clear, challenging, and critically engaged. As a whole, Keywords for American Cultural Studies provides an accessible A-to-Z survey of prevailing academic buzzwords and a flexible tool for carving out new areas of inquiry.

Necessary Trouble

Author : Sarah Jaffe
Publisher : Bold Type Books
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2016-08-23
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781568585376

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Necessary Trouble by Sarah Jaffe Pdf

Necessary Trouble is the definitive book on the movements that are poised to permanently remake American politics. We are witnessing a moment of unprecedented political turmoil and social activism. Over the last few years, we've seen the growth of the Tea Party, a twenty-first-century black freedom struggle with BlackLivesMatter, Occupy Wall Street, and the grassroots networks supporting presidential candidates in defiance of the traditional party elites. Sarah Jaffe leads readers into the heart of these movements, explaining what has made ordinary Americans become activists. As Jaffe argues, the financial crisis in 2008 was the spark, the moment that crystallized that something was wrong. For years, Jaffe crisscrossed the country, asking people what they were angry about, and what they were doing to take power back. She attended a people's assembly in a church gymnasium in Ferguson, Missouri; walked a picket line at an Atlanta Burger King; rode a bus from New York to Ohio with student organizers; and went door-to-door in Queens days after Hurricane Sandy. From the successful fight for a 15 minimum wage in Seattle and New York to the halting of Shell's Arctic drilling program, Americans are discovering the effectiveness of making good, necessary trouble. Regardless of political alignment, they are boldly challenging who wields power in this country.

Higher Education under Late Capitalism

Author : Jeffrey R. Di Leo
Publisher : Springer
Page : 193 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2017-02-07
Category : Education
ISBN : 9783319498584

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Higher Education under Late Capitalism by Jeffrey R. Di Leo Pdf

This book explores questions concerning personal identity and individual conduct within neoliberal academe. The author suggests that neoliberal academe is normal academe in the new millennium though well aware of its contested nature and destructive capacities. Examining higher education through a number of ideals, such as austerity and transparency, brings readers on a journey into its present as well as its past. If some of these ideals can be identified and critiqued, there is a chance that the foundations of neoliberal academe can be weakened. This book actively pursues pathways out of the neoliberal abyss--and offers that demanding a role for pleasure in higher education may be one of them.

Capitalism, Coronavirus and War

Author : Radhika Desai
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 211 pages
File Size : 48,7 Mb
Release : 2022-12-09
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781000816006

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Capitalism, Coronavirus and War by Radhika Desai Pdf

Capitalism, Coronavirus and War investigates the decay of neoliberal financialised capitalism as revealed in the crisis the novel coronavirus triggered but did not cause, a crisis that has been deepened by the conflict over Ukraine and its repercussions across the globe. Leading domestically to economic and political breakdown, the pandemic accelerated the decline of the US-led capitalist world’s imperial power, intensifying the tendency to lash out with aggression and militarism, as seen in the US-led West’s New Cold War against China and the proxy war against Russia over Ukraine. The geopolitical economy of the decay and crisis of this form of capitalism suggests that the struggle with socialism that has long shaped the fate of capitalism has reached a tipping point. The author argues that mainstream and even many progressive forces take capitalism’s longevity for granted, misunderstand its historical dynamics and deny its formative bond with imperialism. Only a theoretically and historically accurate account of capitalism’s dynamics and historical trajectory, which this book provides, can explain its current failures and predicament. It also reveals why, though the pandemic—by revealing capitalism’s obscene inequality and shocking debility—prompted the most serious critiques of capitalism to emerge in decades, hopes of ‘building back better’ were so quickly dashed. This book sheds searching light on the dominant narratives that have normalised the neoliberal financialised capitalism and the dollar creditocracy dominating the world economy, with even critics unable to link capitalism’s neoliberal turn to its financialisations, historical decay, productive debility and international decline. It contends that only by appreciating the seriousness of the crisis and rectifying our understanding of capitalism can progressive forces thwart a future of chaos and/or authoritarianism and begin the long task of building socialism. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars and researchers of international relations, international political economy, comparative politics and global political sociology. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. Thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched www.knowledgeunlatched.org

After Capitalism

Author : Kennan Ferguson,Patrice Petro
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2016-07-05
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780813584287

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After Capitalism by Kennan Ferguson,Patrice Petro Pdf

From Thomas Piketty to David Harvey, scholars are increasingly questioning whether we are entering into a post-capitalist era. If so, does this new epoch signal the failure of capitalism and emergence of alternative systems? Or does it mark the ultimate triumph of capitalism as it evolves into an unstoppable entity that takes new forms as it engulfs its opposition? After Capitalism brings together leading scholars from across the academy to offer competing perspectives on capitalism’s past incarnations, present conditions, and possible futures. Some contributors reassess classic theorizations of capitalism in light of recent trends, including real estate bubbles, debt relief protests, and the rise of a global creditocracy. Others examine Marx’s writings, unemployment, hoarding, “capitalist realism,” and coyote (trickster) capitalism, among many other topics. Media and design trends locate the key ideologies of the current economic moment, with authors considering everything from the austerity aesthetics of reality TV to the seductive smoothness of liquid crystal. Even as it draws momentous conclusions about global economic phenomena, After Capitalism also pays close attention to locales as varied as Cuba, India, and Latvia, examining the very different ways that economic conditions have affected the relationship between the state and its citizens. Collectively, these essays raise provocative questions about how we should imagine capitalism in the twenty-first century. Will capitalism, like all economic systems, come to an end, or does there exist in history or elsewhere a hidden world that is already post-capitalist, offering alternative possibilities for thought and action?

The Debt Age

Author : Jeffrey R Di Leo,Peter Hitchcock,Sophia A McClennen
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2018-06-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781351356428

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The Debt Age by Jeffrey R Di Leo,Peter Hitchcock,Sophia A McClennen Pdf

This collection of essays, by some of the most distinguished public intellectuals and cultural critics in America explores various dimensions of what it means live in the age of debt. They ask, what is the debt age? For that matter, what is debt? Is its meaning transhistorical or transcultural? Or is it imbued in ideology and thus historically contingent? What is the relationship between debt and theory? Whose debt is acknowledged and whose is ignored? Who is the paradigmatic subject of debt? How has debt affected contemporary academic culture? Their responses to these and other aspects of debt are sure to become required reading for anyone who wants to understanding what it means to live in The Debt Age.

Bank Job

Author : Hilary Powell,Daniel Edelstyn
Publisher : Chelsea Green Publishing
Page : 224 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2020-09-17
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781603589703

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Bank Job by Hilary Powell,Daniel Edelstyn Pdf

"These art avengers...took on toxic debt culture—and won."—The Guardian "[They] want to blow up the whole financial system."—The New York Times Art hacks life when two filmmakers launch a project to cancel more than £1m of high-interest debt from their local community. Bank Job is a white-knuckle ride into the dark heart of our financial system, in which filmmaker and artist duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn risk their sanity to buy up and abolish debt by printing their own money in a disused bank in Walthamstow, London. Tired of struggling in an economic system that leaves creative people on the fringes, the duo weave a different story, both risky and empowering, of self-education and mutual action. Behind the opaque language and defunct diagrams, they find a system flawed by design but ripe for hacking. This is the inspiring story of how they listen and act upon the widespread desire to change the system to meet the needs of many and not just the few. And for those among us brave enough, they show how we can do this too in our own communities one bank job at a time.

Rated Agency

Author : Michel Feher
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 118 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2021-09-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781942130192

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Rated Agency by Michel Feher Pdf

The hegemony of finance compels a new orientation for everyone and everything: companies care more about the moods of their shareholders than about longstanding commercial success; governments subordinate citizen welfare to appeasing creditors; and individuals are concerned less with immediate income from labor than appreciation of their capital goods, skills, connections, and reputations. That firms, states, and people depend more on their ratings than on the product of their activities also changes how capitalism is resisted. For activists, the focus of grievances shifts from the extraction of profit to the conditions under which financial institutions allocate credit. While the exploitation of employees by their employers has hardly been curbed, the power of investors to select investees — to decide who and what is deemed creditworthy — has become a new site of social struggle. In clear and compelling prose, Michel Feher explains the extraordinary shift in conduct and orientation generated by financialization. Above all, he articulates the new political resistances and aspirations that investees draw from their rated agency.

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power

Author : Max Haiven
Publisher : Zed Books Ltd.
Page : 191 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2014-03-13
Category : Art
ISBN : 9781780329550

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Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power by Max Haiven Pdf

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine the forces used as weapons against community, solidarity, ecology and life itself? In this stirring call to arms, Max Haiven argues that capitalism has colonized how we all imagine and express what is valuable. Looking at the decline of the public sphere, the corporatization of education, the privatization of creativity, and the power of finance capital in opposition to the power of the imagination and the growth of contemporary social movements, Haiven provides a powerful argument for creating an anti-capitalist commons. Capitalism is not in crisis, it is the crisis, and moving beyond it is the only key to survival. Crucial reading for all those questioning the imposition of austerity and hoping for a fairer future beyond it.