Cultural Political Economy

The global political economy is inescapably cultural. Whether we talk about the economic dimensions of the "war on terror", the sub-prime crisis and its aftermath, or the ways in which new information technology has altered practices of production and consumption, it has become increasingly clear that these processes cannot be fully captured by the hyper-rational analysis of economists or the slogans of class conflict. This book argues that culture is a concept that can be used to develop more subtle and fruitful analyses of the dynamics and problems of the global political economy. Rediscovering the unacknowledged role of culture in the writings of classical political economists, the contributors to this volume reveal its central place in the historical evolution of post-war capitalism, exploring its continued role in contemporary economic processes that range from the commercialization of security practices to the development of ethical tourism. The book shows that culture plays a role in both constituting different forms of economic life and in shaping the diverse ways that capitalism has developed historically – from its earliest moments to its most recent challenges. Providing valuable insights to a wide range of disciplines, this volume will be of vital interest to students and scholars of International Political Economy, Cultural and Economic Geography and Sociology, and International Relations.

This fascinating volume offers a critique of recent institutional and cultural turns in heterodox economics and political economy. Using seven case studies as examples, the authors explore how research on sense- and meaning-making can deepen critical s

“This masterful collection illuminates many of the all-important interfaces between culture and economy. . . . These insights have never been more important.” —W. Lance Bennett, author of News: The Politics of Illusion The backlash against globalization and the rise of cultural anxiety has led to considerable rethinking among social scientists. This book provides multiple theoretical, historical, and methodological orientations to examine these issues. While addressing the rise of populism worldwide, the volume provides explanations that cover periods of both cultural turbulence and stability. Issues addressed include populism and cultural anxiety, class, religion, arts and cultural diversity, global environment norms, international trade, and soft power. The interdisciplinary scholarship from well-known contributors questions the oft-made assumption in political economy that holds culture “constant,” which in practice means marginalizing it in the explanation. The volume conceptualizes culture as a repertoire of values and alternatives. Locating human interests in underlying cultural values does not make political economy’s strategic or instrumental calculations of interests redundant: The instrumental logic follows a social context and a distribution of cultural values, while locating forms of decision-making that may not be rational.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007-08 the question of the aims of schooling have assumed greater importance. There has been no ‘return to normal’, yet young people are encouraged to ‘Keep calm and go to university’. Culture and the Political Economy of Schooling explores the possibilities for the emergence of a progressive agenda for schooling. Culture and the Political Economy of Schooling provides educators and social scientists with the essential background required to understand changes in schooling since the Second World War. It introduces theories of the economic crisis, and explores their educational implications, before going on to provide accounts of how politics and culture have shaped debates about schooling. This cultural political economy approach is applied to issues such as social class, race, the brave new worlds of work, the dangerous rise of creative education, and the increasingly urgent question of inequality. The final parts of the book explore the educational challenges of the Anthropocene and the changing conceptions of knowledge in schools and finally consider alternatives to contemporary schooling. The students in our schools today will face a future framed by the twin crises of economy and environment, prompting an urgent rethink of education. Written in an accessible and engaging manner, this book is an essential guide for thinking about the past, present and futures of education. It will be of great interest to researchers and graduate students of education studies, curriculum studies, sociology of education, education politics and education policy.

This book addresses the notorious split between the two fields of cultural studies and political economy. Drawing on the works of Harold Innis, Theodor Adorno, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and other major theorists in the two fields, Robert E. Babe shows that political economy can be reconciled to certain aspects of cultural studies, particularly with regards to cultural materialism. Uniting the two fields has proven to be a complex undertaking though it makes practical sense, given the close interaction between political economy and cultural studies. Babe examines the evolution of cultural studies over time and its changing relationship with political economy. The intersections between the two fields center around three subjects: the cultural biases of money, the time/space dialectic, and the dialectic of information.

This book addresses the recent impact of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ as an economic ‘imaginary’ and as a set of real economic developments on education, and especially higher education in Europe, including educational strategies and policies such as those of the Bologna process on a European scale.

The rise of corporate capitalism was a cultural revolution as well as an economic event, according to James Livingston. That revolution resides, he argues, in the fundamental reconstruction of selfhood, or subjectivity, that attends the advent of an 'age of surplus' under corporate auspices. From this standpoint, consumer culture represents a transition to a society in which identities as well as incomes are not necessarily derived from the possession of productive labor or property. From the same standpoint, pragmatism and literary naturalism become ways of accommodating the new forms of solidarity and subjectivity enabled by the emergence of corporate capitalism. So conceived, they become ways of articulating alternatives to modern, possessive individualism. Livingston argues accordingly that the flight from pragmatism led by Lewis Mumford was an attempt to refurbish a romantic version of modern, possessive individualism. This attempt still shapes our reading of pragmatism, Livingston claims, and will continue to do so until we understand that William James was not merely a well-meaning middleman between Charles Peirce and John Dewey and that James's pragmatism was both a working model of postmodern subjectivity and a novel critique of capitalism.

In August 2005 the nation watched as Hurricane Katrina pummelled the Gulf Coast. Residents did not just suffer the personal costs of a home that had been severely damaged or destroyed; frequently they also lost their entire neighbourhood and the social systems that under normal circumstances made their lives "work". Katrina raised the questions of whether and how communities could solve the complex social coordination problems catastrophic disaster poses, and what inhibits them from doing so? Professor Chamlee-Wright investigates not only the nature of post-disaster recovery, but the nature of the social order itself – how societies are able to achieve a level of complex social coordination that far exceeds our ability to design. By deploying the tools of both political economy and cultural economy, the book contributes to the bourgeoning literature on the social, political and economic impact of Hurricane Katrina. Through a selection of case studies, the author argues that post-disaster resilience depends crucially upon the discovery that unfolds within commercial and civil society. The book will be of particular interest to postgraduate students and researchers in economics, sociology and anthropology as well as disaster specialists.

This book sheds new light on the socio-economic impact of multinational corporations. Combining Cultural Studies and International Political Economy, it provides a revealing analysis of the Walt Disney Company, and by extension the wider Hollywood studio system. It does so by examining the cultural and economic forces powering the industry's expansion, the 'civilisation' that Disney disseminates, and the various ways that societies beyond the USA have adopted facets of the Hollywood productions to which they are exposed. Identifying both the strengths and the weaknesses of these transnational firms, it demonstrates the significance of their contribution to American power and predominance.

A/Moral Economics is an interdisciplinary historical study that examines the ways which social "science" of economics emerged through the discourse of the literary, namely the dominant moral and fictional narrative genres of early and mid-Victorian England. In particular, this book argues that the classical economic theory of early-nineteenth-century England gained its broad cultural authority not directly, through the well- known texts of such canonical economic theorists as David Ricardo, but indirectly through the narratives constructed by Ricardo's popularizers John Ramsey McCulloch and Harriet Martineau. By reexamining the rhetorical and institutional contexts of classical political economy in the nineteenth century, A/Moral Economics repositions the popular writings of both supporters and detractors of political economy as central to early political economists' bids for a cultural voice. The now marginalized economic writings of McCulloch, Martineau, Henry Mayhew, and John Ruskin, as well as the texts of Charles Dickens and J. S. Mill, must be read as constituting in part the entities they have been read as merely criticizing. It is this repressed moral logic that resurfaces in a range of textual contradictions--not only in the writings of Ricardo's supporters, but, ironically, in those of his critics as well.