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This volume addresses the fraught relationship between market and society in times of social and economic crisis, exploring how they interact in key social, cultural, and political arenas on a global scale. The contributors examine the neoliberal market in anthropological and ethnographic terms to question whether "market logic" has won out against social aspects of human existence in a framework of minimal state protection and the devaluation of human labor. Fruitfully combining empirical data and theoretical approaches, the volume investigates the extent to which ordinary people accept unequal allocations of resources and examines their sense of belonging in an expansive neoliberal economy.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Economy and Society: Neoliberal Reform and Economic Deviance.- 3. The Root of All Evil. Money, Markets, and the Prospects of Rewriting the Rules of the Game.- 4. Managing Against the Odds. Economic Crisis, Bad Governance and Grassroots Entrepreneurialism in Naples.- 5. From Nationalization to Neoliberalism. Territorial Development and City Marketing in Brindisi.- 6. Relations with the Market. On Cosmologies of Capitalism in Greece.- 7. 'We are all socialists'. Greek Crisis and Precarization.- 8. 'De proletarios a propietarios...'. Neoliberal Hegemony, Labor Commodification and Family Relationships in a 'Petty' Steel Workers' Firm.- 9. At the Periphery of Development. Scenarios and Actors of an Industrial Settlement Experiment and its Crisis in the Case of FIAT-SATA in Melfi.- 10. Workers' Committees in Israel in the Heyday of Neoliberalism. From Consent to Professionalization to Alternative Solutions.- 11. Sport, the Market and Society. Contrasting the Rhetoricand Reality of Sport as a Growth Catalyst.- 12. Autonomy and Adaptivity. Farmer's Work in France.- 13. Economic Rationality and Human Experience. Global Agrifood Chains from the Perspective of Social Anthropology.- 14. Neoliberal Agrarian Policies and its Effects. Labor Flexibility and Regimentation in Mexico's Export Agricultural Industry.- 15. The Renegotiation of Identity and Alterity in an Economically and Spatially Changing Context. The Case of a Former Industrial and Mining District of Saint-Etienne (France).- 16. 'Weak Heritage' and Neighbourhood in Contemporary Cities. Capitalism and Memories of Urban Utopias.- 17. Anthropology in a Neoliberal World.
About the author
Manos Spyridakis is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the Peloponnese, Greece.
Summary
This volume addresses the fraught relationship between market and society in times of social and economic crisis, exploring how they interact in key social, cultural, and political arenas on a global scale. The contributors examine the neoliberal market in anthropological and ethnographic terms to question whether “market logic” has won out against social aspects of human existence in a framework of minimal state protection and the devaluation of human labor. Fruitfully combining empirical data and theoretical approaches, the volume investigates the extent to which ordinary people accept unequal allocations of resources and examines their sense of belonging in an expansive neoliberal economy.
