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Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order
Both on the continent and off, “Africa” is spoken of in terms of crisis: as a place of failure and seemingly insurmountable problems, as a moral challenge to the international community. What, though, is really at stake in discussions about Africa, its problems, and its place in the world? And what should be the response of those scholars who have sought to understand not the “Africa” portrayed in broad strokes in journalistic accounts and policy papers but rather specific places and social realities within Africa? In Global Shadows the renowned anthropologist James Ferguson moves beyond the traditional anthropological focus on local communities to explore more general questions about Africa and its place in the contemporary world. Ferguson develops his argument through a series of provocative essays which open—as he shows they must—into interrogations of globalization, modernity, worldwide inequality, and social justice. He maintains that Africans in a variety of social and geographical locations increasingly seek to make claims of membership within a global community, claims that contest the marginalization that has so far been the principal fruit of “globalization” for Africa. Ferguson contends that such claims demand new understandings of the global, centered less on transnational flows and images of unfettered connection than on the social relations that selectively constitute global society and on the rights and obligations that characterize it. Ferguson points out that anthropologists and others who have refused the category of Africa as empirically problematic have, in their devotion to particularity, allowed themselves to remain bystanders in the broader conversations about Africa. In Global Shadows, he urges fellow scholars into the arena, encouraging them to find a way to speak beyond the academy about Africa’s position within an egregiously imbalanced world order..
Price: $18.97
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The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology, and Development in American Urbanism
The shift in the ideological winds toward a "free-market" economy has brought profound effects in urban areas. The Neoliberal City presents an overview of the effect of these changes on today's cities. The term "neoliberalism" was originally used in reference to a set of practices that first-world institutions like the IMF and World Bank impose on third-world countries and cities. The support of unimpeded trade and individual freedoms and the discouragement of state regulation and social spending are the putative centerpieces of this vision. More and more, though, people have come to recognize that first-world cities are undergoing the same processes. In The Neoliberal City, Jason Hackworth argues that neoliberal policies are in fact having a profound effect on the nature and direction of urbanization in the United States and other wealthy countries, and that much can be learned from studying its effect. He explores the impact that neoliberalism has had on three aspects of urbanization in the United States: governance, urban form, and social movements. The American inner city is seen as a crucial battle zone for the wider neoliberal transition primarily because it embodies neoliberalism's antithesis, Keynesian egalitarian liberalism. Focusing on issues such as gentrification in New York City; public-housing policy in New York, Chicago, and Seattle; downtown redevelopment in Phoenix; and urban-landscape change in New Brunswick, N.J., Hackworth shows us how material and symbolic changes to institutions, neighborhoods, and entire urban regions can be traced in part to the rise of neoliberalism..
Price: $20.65
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Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City
Arlene Dávila brilliantly considers the cultural politics of urban space in this lively exploration of Puerto Rican and Latino experience in New York, the global center of culture and consumption, where Latinos are now the biggest minority group. Analyzing the simultaneous gentrification and Latinization of what is known as El Barrio or Spanish Harlem, Barrio Dreams makes a compelling case that--despite neoliberalism's race-and ethnicity-free tenets--dreams of economic empowerment are never devoid of distinct racial and ethnic considerations. Dávila scrutinizes dramatic shifts in housing, the growth of charter schools, and the enactment of Empowerment Zone legislation that promises upward mobility and empowerment while shutting out many longtime residents. Foregrounding privatization and consumption, she offers an innovative look at the marketing of Latino space. She emphasizes class among Latinos while touching on black-Latino and Mexican-Puerto Rican relations. Providing a unique multifaceted view of the place of Latinos in the changing urban landscape, Barrio Dreams is one of the most nuanced and original examinations of the complex social and economic forces shaping our cities today..
Price: $15.50
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The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States
The attempt to reduce the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in social spending, deregulation, and privatization—“neoliberalism”—took root in the United States under Ronald Reagan and in Britain under Margaret Thatcher. But why did neoliberal policies gain such prominence in these two countries and not in similarly industrialized Western countries such as France and Germany? In The Politics of Free Markets, a comparative-historical analysis of the development of neoliberal policies in these four countries, Monica Prasad argues that neoliberalism was made possible in the United States and Britain not because the Left in these countries was too weak, but because it was in some respects too strong. At the time of the oil crisis in the 1970s, American and British tax policies were more punitive to business and the wealthy than the tax policies of France and West Germany; American and British industrial policies were more adversarial to business in key domains; and while the British welfare state was the most redistributive of the four, the French welfare state was the least redistributive. Prasad shows that these adversarial structures in the United States and Britain created opportunities for politicians to find and mobilize dissatisfaction with the status quo, while the more progrowth policies of France and West Germany prevented politicians of the Right from anchoring neoliberalism in electoral dissatisfaction. (20050316).
Price: $14.98
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The Age of Oprah: Cultural Icon for the Neoliberal Era (Media and Power)
Over the last two decades Oprah Winfrey's journey has taken her from talk show queen to, as Time Magazine has asserted, one of the most important figures in popular culture. Through her talk show, magazine, website, seminars, charity work, and public appearances, her influence in the social, economic, and political arenas of American life is considerable and until now, largely unexamined. In The Age of Oprah, media scholar and journalist Janice Peck traces Winfrey's growing cultural impact and illustrates the fascinating parallels between her road to fame and fortune and the political-economic rise of neoliberalism in this country. While seeking to understand Oprah's ascent to near iconic status that she enjoys today, Peck's book provides a fascinating window into the intersection of American politics and culture over the past quarter century..
Price: $15.57
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Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology
Evolutionary psychology claims to be the authoritative science of "human nature." Its chief architects, including Stephen Pinker and David Buss, have managed to reach well beyond the ivory tower to win large audiences and influence public discourse. But do the answers that evolutionary psychologists provide about language, sex, and social relations add up? Susan McKinnon thinks not. Far from being an account of evolution and social relations that has historical and cross-cultural validity, evolutionary psychology is a stunning example of a "science" that twists evolutionary genetics into a myth of human origins. As McKinnon shows, that myth is shaped by neo-liberal economic values and relies on ethnocentric understandings of sex, gender, kinship, and social relations. She also explores the implications for public policy of the moral tales that are told by evolutionary psychologists in the guise of "scientific" inquiry. Drawing widely from the anthropological record, Neo-liberal Genetics offers a sustained and accessible critique of the myths of human nature fabricated by evolutionary psychologists. (01/01/2007).
Price: $7.25
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After Revolution: Mapping Gender and Cultural Politics in Neoliberal Nicaragua
"This will be a very significant contribution to gender studies, the literature on social movements, and our understanding of post-socialist societies. . . . Its clear and sensitive writing style makes it very valuable for classes and a broad audience, while its sophisticated understanding of contemporary theory on development, social movements, and discourse analysis makes it useful for more specialized readers." —Frances Rothstein, Professor of Anthropology, Towson University
Nicaragua's Sandinista revolution (1979-1990) initiated a broad program of social transformation to improve the situation of the working class and poor, women, and other non-elite groups through agrarian reform, restructured urban employment, and wide access to health care, education, and social services. This book explores how Nicaragua's least powerful citizens have fared in the years since the Sandinista revolution, as neoliberal governments have rolled back these state-supported reforms and introduced measures to promote the development of a market-driven economy. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted throughout the 1990s, Florence Babb describes the negative consequences that have followed the return to a capitalist path, especially for women and low-income citizens. In addition, she charts the growth of women's and other social movements (neighborhood, lesbian and gay, indigenous, youth, peace, and environmental) that have taken advantage of new openings for political mobilization. Her ethnographic portraits of a low-income barrio and of women's craft cooperatives powerfully link local, cultural responses to national and global processes. .
Price: $24.95
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Utopian Pedagogy: Radical Experiments Against Neoliberal Globalization (Cultural Spaces)
Utopian Pedagogy is a critical exploration of educational struggles within and against neoliberalism. Editors Mark Coté, Richard J.F. Day, and Greig de Peuter, along with a number of innovative voices from a variety of different academic fields and political movements, examine three key themes: the university as a contested institution, the role of the politically engaged intellectual, and experiments in alternative education. The collection contributes to the debates on the neoliberal transformation of higher education, and to the diffusion of social movements that insist it is possible to create workable alternatives to the current world order. This critical examination of the educational dimension of social and political struggles is presented by both professional academics and activists, many of whom are directly involved in the very experiments they discuss. Rescuing and revaluing the concept of utopia, the editors and their international contributors propose that utopian theory and practice acquire a new relevance in light of the hyper-inclusive logic of neoliberalism. Utopian Pedagogy is a challenge to the developing world order that will stimulate debate in the fields of education and beyond, and encourage the development of socially sustainable alternatives. Contributors:
Michael Albert
Brian Alleyne
Ian Angus
Allan Antliff
Franco Berardi
MarkEdelman Boren
Guido Borio
Enda Brophy
Colectivo Situaciones
Mark Coté
Mariarosa DallaCosta
Richard J.F. Day
Greig de Peuter
Nick DyerWitheford
Henry Giroux
Stuart Hall
Kelly HarrisMartin
Imran Munir
Francesca Pozzi
Gigi Roggero
Shveta Sarda
Sarita Srivastava
Richard Toews
Carlos Alberto Torres
Sebastian Touza
Jerry Zaslove
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Price: $28.01
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