Melinda Cooper

An investigation of the roots of the alliance between free-market neoliberals and social conservatives.

Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism

Family Values

A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy.

Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance

Counterrevolution

Lisa Adkins

Martijn Konings

Rising inequality is the defining feature of our age. With the lion’s share of wealth growth going to the top, for a growing percentage of society a middle-class existence is out of reach. What exactly are the economic shifts that have driven the social transformations taking place in Anglo-capitalist societies? In this timely book, Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper and Martijn Konings argue that the rise of the asset economy has produced a new logic of inequality. Several decades of property inflation have seen asset ownership overshadow employment as a determinant of class position. Exploring the impact of generational dynamics in this new class landscape, the book advances an original perspective on a range of phenomena that are widely debated but poorly understood – including the growth of wealth inequalities and precarity, the dynamics of urban property inflation, changes in fiscal and monetary policy and the predicament of the “millennial” generation. Despite widespread awareness of the harmful effects of Quantitative Easing and similar asset-supporting measures, we appear to have entered an era of policy “lock-in” that is responsible for a growing disconnect between popular expectations and institutional priorities. The resulting polarization underlies many of the volatile dynamics and rapidly shifting alliances that dominate today’s headlines.

The Asset Economy

Focusing on the period between the 1970s and the present, Life as Surplus is a pointed and important study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States today. Melinda Cooper demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of free-market capitalism with growing internal contradictions of the commercialized life sciences.

Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era

Life as Surplus

A thorough investigation of the current combination of austerity and extravagance that characterizes government spending and central bank monetary policy At the close of the 1970s, government treasuries and central banks took a vow of perpetual self-restraint. To this day, fiscal authorities fret over soaring public debt burdens, while central bankers wring their hands at the slightest sign of rising wages. As the brief reprieve of coronavirus spending made clear, no departure from government austerity will be tolerated without a corresponding act of penance. Yet we misunderstand the scope of neoliberal public finance if we assume austerity to be its sole setting. Beyond the zero-sum game of direct claims on state budgets lies a realm of indirect government spending that escapes the naked eye. Capital gains are multiply subsidized by a tax system that reserves its greatest rewards for financial asset holders. And for all its airs of haughty asceticism, the Federal Reserve has become adept at facilitating the inflation of asset values while ruthlessly suppressing wages. Neoliberalism is as extravagant as it is austere, and this paradox needs to be grasped if we are to challenge its core modus operandi. Melinda Cooper examines the major schools of thought that have shaped neoliberal common sense around public finance. Focusing, in particular, on Virginia school public choice theory and supply-side economics, she shows how these currents produced distinct but ultimately complementary responses to the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. With its intellectual roots in the conservative Southern Democratic tradition, Virginia school public choice theory espoused an austere doctrine of budget balance. The supply-side movement, by contrast, advocated tax cuts without spending restraint and debt issuance without guilt, in an apparent repudiation of austerity. Yet, for all their differences, the two schools converged around the need to rein in the redistributive uses of public spending. Together, they drove a counterrevolution in public finance that deepened the divide between rich and poor and revived the fortunes of dynastic wealth. Far-reaching as the neoliberal counterrevolution has been, Cooper still identifies a counterfactual history of unrealized possibilities in the capitalist crisis of the 1970s. She concludes by inviting us to rethink the concept of revolution and raises the question: Is another politics of extravagance possible?

David Primrose

Damien Cahill

Across seven sections - including Neoliberal Economies, The State and Regulation, and Neoliberalism in Crisis - this resource brings together a global team of experts to explore the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship in the field

The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism

When you need to impress a large group of people and can’t manage to stand in the kitchen for hours, you can easily turn to crock-pot. Crockpot recipes taste amazing regardless of what you are cooking and they do not require your 100% attention all the time. It saves you a whole lot of your time and you can be doing several other tasks while your meal is being prepared. If your family is visiting or you have organized a dinner party, opt for these crock-pot recipes, they are traditional, tasty and super simple to do. In this eBook, you would find: • 15 Tasty veggie crock-pot stew and soups • 13 Amazing Chicken crock-pot stews and soups • 10 Tasty crock-pot beef soup and stews • 7 sea food crock-pot stews and soups These are not the only options available but these are just a selected few that you can try whenever you want. They are super delicious, mouth-watering and irresistibly tasty especially if you follow the recipes carefully. Have an enjoyable crock-pot cooking. Bon appétit!

For All Families

45 Tasty Crock Pot Soups And Stews Recipes

Catherine Waldby

Forms of embodied labor, such as surrogacy and participation in clinical trials, are central to biomedical innovation, but they are rarely considered as labor. Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby take on that project, analyzing what they call "clinical labor," and asking what such an analysis might indicate about the organization of the bioeconomy and the broader organization of labor and value today. At the same time, they reflect on the challenges that clinical labor might pose to some of the founding assumptions of classical, Marxist, and post-Fordist theories of labor. Cooper and Waldby examine the rapidly expanding transnational labor markets surrounding assisted reproduction and experimental drug trials. As they discuss, the pharmaceutical industry demands ever greater numbers of trial subjects to meet its innovation imperatives. The assisted reproductive market grows as more and more households look to third-party providers for fertility services and sectors of the biomedical industry seek reproductive tissues rich in stem cells. Cooper and Waldby trace the historical conditions, political economy, and contemporary trajectory of clinical labor. Ultimately, they reveal clinical labor to be emblematic of labor in twenty-first-century neoliberal economies.

Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy

Clinical Labor

Over the last two decades, ‘neoliberalism’ has emerged as a key concept within a range of social science disciplines including sociology, political science, human geography, anthropology, political economy, and cultural studies. The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism showcases the cutting edge of contemporary scholarship in this field by bringing together a team of global experts. Across seven key sections, the handbook explores the different ways in which neoliberalism has been understood and the key questions about the nature of neoliberalism: Part 1: Perspectives Part 2: Sources Part 3: Variations and Diffusions Part 4: The State Part 5: Social and Economic Restructuring Part 6: Cultural Dimensions Part 7: Neoliberalism and Beyond This handbook is the key reference text for scholars and graduate students engaged in the growing field of neoliberalism.

Melinda Cooper

Books

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