
How Capitalism Forms Our Lives
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 31. March 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
110 pages
978-0-367-78568-0 (ISBN)
Description
By using the concept of capitalism as a "form of life", the authors in this volume reconceive capitalism, its mechanisms and effects on our bodies and on our common life.
The idea that capitalism is more than a discrete economic system and instead a "form of life" that shapes our relationships with others, our sense of ourselves and our capacities, practices, bodies, and actions in the material world should be rather obvious. Yet efforts - whether through criticism or policy remedies - to redress the vast inequalities, inherent exploitation, alienation, and the manifold destructive effects of capitalism on the environment, typically proceed without grappling fully with the entwinement of the economic with the social and cultural, much less the ethical, ontological, and phenomenological. This volume proposes "form of life" as a heuristic tool, connecting literatures that often remain isolated from one another - the Frankfurt School, neo-materialism, Wittgenstein's philosophy, Foucault's and Agamben's biopolitics, and Marx's discussion of reproduction. In emphasizing economic practices, as opposed to capitalism as a system, they conceive of "the economic" as an integral and integrated dimension of life, and thus develop new possibilities for critique. Viewing human beings as "economic bios," provides a needed alternative to analyses that position neoliberalism as an economic logic imposed upon the social and cultural.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.
The idea that capitalism is more than a discrete economic system and instead a "form of life" that shapes our relationships with others, our sense of ourselves and our capacities, practices, bodies, and actions in the material world should be rather obvious. Yet efforts - whether through criticism or policy remedies - to redress the vast inequalities, inherent exploitation, alienation, and the manifold destructive effects of capitalism on the environment, typically proceed without grappling fully with the entwinement of the economic with the social and cultural, much less the ethical, ontological, and phenomenological. This volume proposes "form of life" as a heuristic tool, connecting literatures that often remain isolated from one another - the Frankfurt School, neo-materialism, Wittgenstein's philosophy, Foucault's and Agamben's biopolitics, and Marx's discussion of reproduction. In emphasizing economic practices, as opposed to capitalism as a system, they conceive of "the economic" as an integral and integrated dimension of life, and thus develop new possibilities for critique. Viewing human beings as "economic bios," provides a needed alternative to analyses that position neoliberalism as an economic logic imposed upon the social and cultural.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal for Cultural Research.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate and Undergraduate
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 170 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
222 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-367-78568-0 (9780367785680)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Alyson Cole | Estelle Ferrarese
How Capitalism Forms Our Lives
E-Book
06/2020
1st Edition
Routledge
€59.49
Available for download

Alyson Cole | Estelle Ferrarese
How Capitalism Forms Our Lives
E-Book
06/2020
1st Edition
Routledge
€59.49
Available for download

Alyson Cole | Estelle Ferrarese
How Capitalism Forms Our Lives
Book
07/2019
1st Edition
Routledge
€179.51
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Alyson Cole is Professor of Political Science, Gender Studies, and American Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY), USA. She is the author of The Cult of True Victimhood: From the War on Welfare to the War on Terror (2007), and co-editor of Michael Paul Rogin: Derangement and Liberalism (2019).
Estelle Ferrarese is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University, France. Her authored and edited books include Vulnerability and Critical Theory (2018), La fragilite du souci des autres: Adorno et le care (2018), The Politics of Vulnerability (2017), and Ethique et politique de l'espace public: Juergen Habermas et la discussion (2015).
Estelle Ferrarese is Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at Picardie-Jules-Verne University, France. Her authored and edited books include Vulnerability and Critical Theory (2018), La fragilite du souci des autres: Adorno et le care (2018), The Politics of Vulnerability (2017), and Ethique et politique de l'espace public: Juergen Habermas et la discussion (2015).
Editor
The City University of New York, USA
Picardie-Jules-Verne University, France
Content
1. How capitalism forms our lives 2. The state of contemporary social philosophy and the tasks of an institute for social research (1931) 3. Economy as social practice 4. The use of bodies. Agamben's idea of a non-capitalist form of life 5. Universal alienation 6. The enduring regulation of the poor 7. Governmentality, subjectivity, and the neoliberal form of life 8. The subject of objects: Marx, new materialism, & queer forms of life 9. The whiteness of capital 10. Beyond the barricades: class interests and actually existing black life 11. The capitalist metabolism: an unachieved subsumption of life under the value-form 12. Vocabularies of vulnerability