Frontiers of Capital

by Fisher, Melissa S.; Downey, Greg

• ISBN13: 9780822337270
• ISBN10: 0822337274
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-30
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

With the NASDAQ having lost 70 percent of its value, the giddy, optimistic belief in perpetual growth that accompanied the economic boom of the 1990s had fizzled by 2002. Yet the advances in information and communication technology, management and production techniques, and global integration that spurred the "New Economy" of the 1990s had triggered profound and lasting changes.Frontiers of Capitalbrings together ethnographies exploring how cultural practices and social relations have been altered by the radical economic and technological innovations of the New Economy. The contributors, most of whom are anthropologists, investigate changes in the practices and interactions of futures traders, Chinese entrepreneurs, residents of French housing projects, women working on Wall Street, cable television programmers, and others.Some contributors highlight how expedited flows of information allow business professionals to develop new knowledge practices. They analyze dynamics ranging from the decision-making processes of the Federal Reserve Board to the legal maneuvering necessary to buttress a nascent Japanese market in over-the-counter derivatives. Others focus on the social consequences of globalization and new modes of communication, evaluating the introduction of new information technologies into African communities and the collaborative practices of open-source computer programmers. Together the essays suggest that social relations, rather than becoming less relevant in the high-tech age, have become more important than ever. This finding dovetails with the thinking of many corporations, which increasingly employ anthropologists to study and explain the "local" cultural practices of their own workers and consumers.Frontiers of Capitalsignals the wide-ranging role of anthropology in explaining the social and cultural contours of the New Economy.Contributors. Jean Comaroff, John L. Comaroff, Greg Downey, Melissa S. Fisher, Douglas R. Holmes, George E. Marcus, Siobhaacute;n Ors"Mahony, Aihwa Ong, Annelise Riles, Saskia Sassen, Paul A. Silverstein, AbdouMaliq Simone, Neil Smith, Caitlin Zaloom

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: The Anthropology of Capital and the Frontiers of Ethnography
Greg Downey and Melissa S. Fisher	1	(32)
I. CIRCUITS OF KNOWLEDGE
Fast Capitalism: Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic Analyst
Douglas R. Holmes and George E. Marcus	33	(25)
Trading on Numbers
Caitlin Zaloom	58	(28)
Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic and Anthropological Knowledge
Annelise Riles	86	(22)
The Information Economy in No-Holds-Barred Fighting
Greg Downey	108	(25)
Intersecting Geographies? ICTS and Other Virtualities in Urban Africa
AbdouMaliq Simone	133	(30)
II. NEW SUBJECTS, NOVEL SOCIALITIES
Corporate Players, New Cosmopolitans, and Guanxi in Shanghai
Aihwa Ong	163	(28)
Gentrification Generalized: From Local Anomaly to Urban "Regeneration" as Global Urban Strategy
Neil Smith	191	(18)
Navigating Wall Street Women's Gendered Networks in the New Economy
Melissa S. Fisher	209	(28)
Developing Community Software in a Commodity World
Siobhán O'Mahony	237	(30)
Reflections on Youth, from the Past to the Postcolony
Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff	267	(15)
Guerrilla Capitalism and Ghettocentric Cosmopolitanism on the French Urban Periphery
Paul A. Silverstein	282
Afterword: Knowledge Practices and Subject Making at the Edge
Saskia Sassen	305	(12)
Bibliography	317	(40)
Contributors	357	(4)
Index	361