City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent

by Westbrook,David A.

• ISBN13: 9780415945400
• ISBN10: 0415945402
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2003-11-12
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In City of Gold, David A. Westbrook argues that economic globalization has produced a "City of Gold": a global, cosmopolitan polity constituted by markets, and where capital markets -- not states -- have become the dominant mode of governance. But there are troubling consequences from using markets as the primary political mechanism. Traditional politics have been undermined and an inadequate economic logic rules. Despite the problems inherent in this new political economy, however, Westbrook sees the City as an acceptable response to the crisis of the nation state, and moreover, as a way of life with its own rewards and possibilities. From this basis, Westbrook advocates a political imagination that moves beyond the logic of capitalism yet which acknowledges the continuing centrality of markets -- with all of their profound limitations -- to our lives. Book jacket.

Author Biography

David A. Westbrook is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Buffalo, SUNY, and is a former corporate lawyer.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(20)
Part 1: Desire's Constitution
Chapter I Conception	21	(18)
Chapter II Money as Communication	39	(18)
Chapter III Finance and the War against Time	57	(18)
Chapter IV Urban Renewal	75	(22)
Chapter V Governance	97	(20)
Part 2: Constitutional Critique
Chapter VI Alienation	117	(12)
Chapter VII Inauthenticity	129	(22)
Chapter VIII Identity, Tense	151	(20)
Part 3: Exhausted Philosophies
Chapter IX The Reformation of Economics	171	(14)
Chapter X After Economic Justice	185	(28)
Chapter XI The Disenchantment of Liberalism	213	(24)
Part 4: Toward a Metropolitan Political Economy
Chapter XII True Markets	237	(18)
Chapter XIII Orderly Markets	255	(18)
Chapter XIV Beyond the Market: Authority and Identity	273	(18)
Conclusion: The Possibility of Affection	291	(12)
Afterword on Method: Apology, Essay, Myth	303	(4)
Notes	307	(38)
Index	345