Despite the reversal of America’s fortune from the triumphalism of the Roaring Nineties to the gloom of the lost decade and the Great Depression, theoretical conceptions of US capitalism have remained surprisingly unchanged. In fact, if the crisis questioned the sustainability of the US capitalist paradigm, it did not fundamentally challenge academic theorization of American political economy. This book departs from the American political economy literature to identify three common myths that have shaped our conceptualization of US capitalism: its reduction to a state-market dyad dis-embedded from societal factors; the illusion of a weak state and the synchronic conception of the US variety of capitalism. To remedy these pitfalls, the authors propose a civilizational approach to American political economy at the crossroads between cultural studies, history, sociology and political science. Drawing together contributions from a rich variety of fields (from geography to cultural studies, political science and sociology) this work sheds a new light on America’s "cultural political economy" combining theoretical reflection with empirical data and offering innovative perspectives on the crisis and renewal of American capitalism.

Despite the reversal of America’s fortune from the triumphalism of the Roaring Nineties to the gloom of the lost decade and the Great Depression, theoretical conceptions of US capitalism have remained surprisingly unchanged. In fact, if the crisis questioned the sustainability of the US capitalist paradigm, it did not fundamentally challenge academic theorization of American political economy. This book departs from the American political economy literature to identify three common myths that have shaped our conceptualization of US capitalism: its reduction to a state-market dyad dis-embedded from societal factors; the illusion of a weak state and the synchronic conception of the US variety of capitalism. To remedy these pitfalls, the authors propose a civilizational approach to American political economy at the crossroads between cultural studies, history, sociology and political science. Drawing together contributions from a rich variety of fields (from geography to cultural studies, political science and sociology) this work sheds a new light on America’s "cultural political economy" combining theoretical reflection with empirical data and offering innovative perspectives on the crisis and renewal of American capitalism.

The Fictions of American Capitalism: Working Fictions and the Economic Novel introduces a new way of thinking about fiction in connection with capitalism, especially American capitalism. These essays demonstrate how fiction fulfills a major function of the American capitalist engine, presenting various formulations of American capitalism from the perspective of economists, social scientists, and literary critics. Focusing on three narratives—fictitious capital, working fictions, and the economic novel—the volume questions whether these three types of fiction can be linked under the sign of capitalism. This collection seeks to illustrate the American economy’s dependence on fictitiousness, America’s ideological fictions, and the nation’s creative literary fiction. In relation to what the credit and banking crisis of 2007–2008 exposed about the “unreal” base of the economy, the volume concludes with a call to recognize the economic humanities, arguing that American fiction and American literary studies can provide a useful mirror for economists.

The book provides a theoretically and historically informed analysis of the global economic crisis. It makes original contributions to theories of value, of crisis and of the state and uses these to develop a rich empirical study of the changing character of capitalism in the twentieth century and beyond. It defends, uses and develops Marxist theory while arguing particularly against jumping too quickly from abstract concepts to a concrete understanding of the crisis. Instead, it uses what Marx described in his notebooks as an ‘obvious’ analytical ordering to progress from a general analysis of economy and society to a discussion of recent economic transformations and the specifics of the crisis and its aftermath.Dunn argues that appropriately reconceived, a critical Marxism can incorporate and enrich rather than rejecting insights from other traditions. He disputes general characterisations of capitalism to the crisis and theories which see finance and the contemporary financial crises as largely detached from other aspects of the economy and society. Providing a thoroughly socialised and historically based account, this book will be vital reading for students and scholars of political economy, international political economy, Marxism, sociology, geography and development studies.

This book argues that we are undergoing a transition from industrial capitalism to a new form of capitalism - what the author calls & lsquo; cognitive capitalism & rsquo;

Despite the reversal of America's fortune from the triumphalism of the Roaring Nineties to the gloom of the lost decade and the Great Depression, theoretical conceptions of US capitalism have remained surprisingly unchanged. This book departs from the American political economy literature to identify three common myths that have shaped our conceptualization of US capitalism: its reduction to a state-market dyad dis-embedded from societal factors; the illusion of a weak state and the synchronic conception of the US variety of capitalism. To remedy these pitfalls, the authors propose a civilizational approach to American political economy at the crossroads between cultural studies, history, sociology and political science. Drawing together contributions from a rich variety of fields (from geography to cultural studies, political science and sociology) this work sheds a new light on America's "cultural political economy" combining theoretical reflection with empirical data and offering innovative perspectives on the crisis and renewal of American capitalism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the dynamics of capitalism and its societal ramifications beyond economics. The multidisciplinary nature of this book also makes it a useful learning tool for students working in American politics, comparative political economy and urban sociology and capitalism and society.

The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.