Neoliberal lives: Work, politics, nature, and health in the contemporary United States - Paperback

by Robert Chernomas (Author), Ian Hudson (Author), Mark Hudson (Author)

This book is about the transformation of America that has occurred over the past thirty-five years as capitalist logic has expanded into previously protected spheres of life. It exposes the processes that need to be confronted if human potential is to be freed from the increasingly cramped quarters to which neoliberalism has confined it.

Front Jacket

Life in America has been transformed over the past thirty-five years. Using a historical materialist framework, the authors argue that what appear today as fragmented social, economic, environmental, and political problems are all manifestations of neoliberalism - a class-based political project to more favourably position capital in its struggle to preserve the conditions for accumulation. This project reaches deeply into the weave of biological, ecological, and social life. It involves both the increasing role of money and markets in the determination of life chances, and the systematic push of corporations into previously protected spheres of life. Emphasizing Martha Nussbaum's (2011: 32) question "What does a life worthy of human dignity require?" each chapter of this book (covering labour, education, democracy, health, and nature) will analyse a cornerstone of human development that had previously been, to varying degrees, protected from the logic of the capitalist market. This book examines how US business successfully increased control over, privatized or commodified each of these areas, amounting to a neoliberal transformation of lived experience. Neoliberalism has far-reaching and troubling consequences for the potential of people in the US to live a full and flourishing life.

Back Jacket

Life in America has been transformed over the past thirty-five years. Using a historical materialist framework, the authors argue that what appear today as fragmented social, economic, environmental, and political problems are all manifestations of neoliberalism - a class-based political project to more favourably position capital in its struggle to preserve the conditions for accumulation. This project reaches deeply into the weave of biological, ecological, and social life. It involves both the increasing role of money and markets in the determination of life chances, and the systematic push of corporations into previously protected spheres of life.

Emphasizing Martha Nussbaum's (2011: 32) question "What does a life worthy of human dignity require?" each chapter of this book (covering labour, education, democracy, health, and nature) will analyse a cornerstone of human development that had previously been, to varying degrees, protected from the logic of the capitalist market. This book examines how US business successfully increased control over, privatized or commodified each of these areas, amounting to a neoliberal transformation of lived experience. Neoliberalism has far-reaching and troubling consequences for the potential of people in the US to live a full and flourishing life.

Author Biography

Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson are Professors in the Department of Economics at the University of Manitoba
Mark Hudson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manitoba