Virtualism
Subtitle: a new political economy
By: edited by James G. Carrier and Daniel Miller.
Contributors: Carrier, James G.; Miller, Daniel, 1954-
Publisher: Berg
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
Subjects: Economics.; Abstraction.; Structural adjustment (Economic policy); Economic policy.; Economic development.; Capitalism.; Economic man.
Description: "Globalization, transnational capitalism, structural adjustment programmes and the decay of welfare are all signs of the growing power of economics, one of the most potent forces of recent decades." "This profound and dangerous change in the power of abstract economics to shape the lives of people in rich and poor countries alike is the subject of this interdisciplinary study. Contributors show how economics has come to portray a virtual reality - a world that seems real but is merely a reflection of a neo-classical model - and how governments, the World Bank and the IMF combine to stamp the world with a virtual image that condemns as irrational our local social and cultural arrangements. Further, it is argued that virtualism represents the worrying emergence of new forms of abstraction in the political economy, of which economics is just one example."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Abstraction in western economic practice / James G. Carrier; title: The triumph of economics / Ben Fine; title: Abstraction, reality and the gender of "economic man" / Julie A. Nelson; title: Development and structural adjustment / Philip McMichael; title: Cash for quotas : disputes over the legitimacy of an economic model of fishing in Iceland / Agnar Helgason and Gisli Pálsson; title: The transnational capitalist class / Leslie Sklair; title: A theory of virtualism / Daniel Miller.