Abstraction & Economy


Book Description

Opposing a regime of accumulation and abstraction This anthology explores the tension between abstraction and economics from the perspectives of art, art theory, art history, as well as law, sociology, philosophy, and economics. It poses questions about the current challenges of a global capitalist economy with claims to expansive growth in relation to aesthetics, technology, and democracy. The relationship between abstraction and economics is discussed in a series of theoretical and artistic contributions. The main focus is on the role of art in mediating between the concrete and the abstract, on formalist approaches to art theory, and on the social and economic cues that help us trace the aesthetic regime of capitalism. Ultimately, this book asks, “how can artistic-aesthetic practices counteract the regime of accumulation and abstraction?” The visual arts in a socioeconomic context Reflecting on the relationship between abstraction and economics from capitalist-critical, decolonial, ecological, and queer-feminist perspectives Contributions by Brenna Bhandar, Christina von Braun, Sabeth Buchmann, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Sven Lütticken, R. H. Quaytman, Marina Vishmidt, and others Look inside




Abstract Market Theory


Book Description

Financial markets play a huge role in society but theoretical reflections on what constitutes these markets are scarce. Drawing on sources in philosophy, finance, the history of modern mathematics, sociology and anthropology, Abstract Market Theory elaborates a new philosophy of the market in order to redress this gap between reality and theory.




Anthropology and Economy


Book Description

Offering a uniquely cross-cultural perspective, renowned economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman presents a theory of economic crisis and lessons for its mitigation, in light of the recent global financial crash. This compelling book is richly illustrated with examples from 'strange' small-scale economies as well as developed market economies.




The Ethical Economy of Conflict Prevention And Development


Book Description

Central to the current development debate is the importance of human welfare in the context of group conflict. When considering ethnic, racial and religious conflict, this debate draws us toward a 'political economy' of conflict. Moreover, notions of an economic paradigm have become prominent when international organizations debate conflict prevention. In looking closer at the political economy of conflict, this publication argues the need to assimilate into our thinking distinct social and ethical economies of conflict prevention. A social economy of conflict prevention considers the interplay of economic with structural and cultural factors in conflict, explaining a much neglected category of conflict, i.e. hidden conflict. The ethical economy of conflict prevention considers implicit ethical statements development practitioners use. From these statements arise ethical paradoxes that influence the evolving economic paradigm, in such way as to contradict one of its intrinsic desires, namely, to restrict conflict prevention strategies to effective technical interventions. Eventually, such narrow focus on technical interventions could identify this evolving paradigm as an 'economical' paradigm. In contrast, a rethinking of the ethical economy of conflict prevention provides a useful tool for international organizations when implementing a human rights-based approach to development and long-term conflict prevention.




Scandals and Abstraction


Book Description

The Long 1980s could be summed up handily in the annals of U.S. cultural history with the enduring markers of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, and Dire Straits's hit single "Money for Nothing." Despite their vast differences, each serves to underscore the confidence, jingoism, and optimism that powered the U.S. economy throughout the decade. Mining a wide range of literature, film, and financial print journalism, Scandals and Abstraction chronicles how American society's increasing concern with finance found expression in a large array of cultural materials that ultimately became synonymous with postmodernism. The ever-present credit cards, monetary transactions, and ATMs in Don De Lillo's White Noise open this study as they serve as touchstones for its protagonist's sense of white masculinity and ground the novel's narrative form. Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Oliver Stone's Wall Street animate a subsequent chapter, as each is considered in light of the 1987 stock market crash and held up as a harbinger of a radical new realism that claimed a narrative monopoly on representing an emergent financial era. These works give way to the pornographic excess and violence of Bret Easton Ellis's epochal American Psycho, which is read alongside the popular 1980s genre of the financial autobiography. With a series of trenchant readings, La Berge argues that Ellis's novel can be best understood when examined alongside Ivan Boesky's Merger Mania, Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal, and T. Boone Pickens's Boone. A look at Jane Smiley's Good Faith and its plot surrounding the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, concludes the study, and considers how financial reportage became a template for much of our current writing about of finance. Drawing on a diverse archive of novels, films, autobiographies, and journalism, Scandals and Abstraction provides a timely study of the economy's influence on fiction, and outlines a feedback loop whereby postmodernism became more canonical, realism became more postmodern, and finance became a distinct cultural object.




Praxiologies and the Philosophy of Economics


Book Description

This breakthrough volume integrates European, British, and American scholarship in advanced areas of philosophy and decision theory. Contributions cover a broad area of economics--from criticism of institutional economics to examination of the role of induction in economic forecasting.




How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now


Book Description

Since the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the notion that capitalism has become too abstract for all but the most rarefied specialists to understand has been widely presupposed. Yet even in academic circles, the question of abstraction itself – of what exactly abstraction is, and does, under financialisation – seems to have gone largely unexplored – or has it? By putting the question of abstraction centre stage, How Abstract Is It? Thinking Capital Now offers an indispensable counterpoint to the ‘economic turn’ in the humanities, bringing together leading literary and cultural critics in order to propose that we may know far more about capital’s myriad abstractions than we typically think we do. Through in-depth engagement with classic and cutting-edge theorists, agile analyses of recent Hollywood films, groundbreaking readings of David Foster Wallace’s sprawling, unfinished novel, The Pale King, and even original poems, the contributors here suggest that the machinations and costs of finance – as well as alternatives to it – may already be hiding in plain sight. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.




The Limits of the Green Economy


Book Description

Projecting win-win situations, new economic opportunities, green growth and innovative partnerships, the green economy discourse has quickly gained centre stage in international environmental governance and policymaking. Its underlying message is attractive and optimistic: if the market can become the tool for tackling climate change and other major ecological crises, the fight against these crises can also be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. But how ‘green’ is the green economy? And how social or democratic can it be? This book examines how the emergence of this new discourse has fundamentally modified the terms of the environmental debate. Interpreting the rise of green economy discourse as an attempt to re-invent capitalism, it unravels the different dimensions of the green economy and its limits: from pricing carbon to emissions trading, from sustainable consumption to technological innovation. The book uses the innovative concept of post-politics to provide a critical perspective on the way green economy discourse represents nature and society (and their interaction) and forecloses the imagination of alternative socio-ecological possibilities. As a way of repoliticising the debate, the book advocates the construction of new political faultlines based on the demands for climate justice and democratic commons. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental politics, political ecology, human geography, human ecology, political theory, philosophy and political economy. Includes a foreword written by Erik Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography, Manchester University).




Dialectics and Deconstruction in Political Economy


Book Description

Robert Albritton offers the most authoritative reassessment of Marxist political economy since Althusser. Original reinterpretations of thinkers including Hegel, Weber, Althusser, Derrida and Adorno cast new light on heated battles between Hegelian dialectics and deconstructivist criticism. The book makes accessible the sometimes daunting thought associated with both dialectics and deconstruction drawing upon insights from philosophy, sociology, political science and critical theory. Finding a non-essentialist way of using the immense cognitive power of dialectics - accepting a limited deconstruction but challenging further deconstructionist directions - represents a major breakthrough for political economy.




The Economics of Identity and Creativity


Book Description

The Economics of Identity and Creativity aims to sythesize naturalistic evolutionary theory while discussing new developments in economics. The author's approach reexamines fundamental assumptions about how a capitalist economy works, from the relation between producers and consumers to the functioning of intellectual property rights. In the creative economy, the author argues, identities merge with the flow of creative action. To explain these changes, he draws upon a range of theories from analytical philosophy to biology, and from economics to sociology. The first part of the book examines the role of language in the naturalistic approach to cultural science. Hermann-Pillath draws on Darwinian evolutionary theory to map a concept of knowledge. Part Two offers a systematic approach to creativity and identity from the naturalistic point of view developed in Part One. Here the author builds a theory of creativity from the ideas of conceptual blending in the cognitive sciences. Herrmann-Pillath presents a theory of identity based on analytical philosophy, and looks at the problems in fixing the boundaries of an individual identity both in biological evolutionary theory and brain sciences. He takes the concept of identity through the current economic approaches, examining the distinction between social and personal identity. This fascinating interdisciplinary work provides a precise argument that the foundations of economics can be found in cultural science, and it has evolved to become the cultural institution at the core of the modern economy.