Crises Of Imagination Crises Of Power

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine the forces used as weapons against community, solidarity, ecology and life itself? In this stirring call to arms, Max Haiven argues that capitalism has colonized how we all imagine and express what is valuable. Looking at the decline of the public sphere, the corporatization of education, the privatization of creativity, and the power of finance capital in opposition to the power of the imagination and the growth of contemporary social movements, Haiven provides a powerful argument for creating an anti-capitalist commons. Capitalism is not in crisis, it is the crisis, and moving beyond it is the only key to survival. Crucial reading for all those questioning the imposition of austerity and hoping for a fairer future beyond it.

The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination, then, is that spark of difference, desire and discontent that can be fanned into the flames of social change. Yet what precisely is the imagination and what might make it 'radical'? How can it be fostered and cultivated? How can it be studied and what are the possibilities and risks of doing so? This book seeks to answer these questions at a crucial time. As we enter into a new cycle of struggles marked by a worldwide crisis of social reproduction, scholar-activists Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish explore the processes and possibilities for cultivating the radical imagination in dark times. A lively and crucial intervention in radical politics, social research and social change, and the collective visions and cultures that inspire them.

We imagine that art and money are old enemies, but this myth actually reproduces a violent system of global capitalism and prevents us from imagining and building alternatives. From the chaos unleashed by the ‘imaginary’ money in financial markets to the new forms of exploitation enabled by the ‘creative economy’ to the way art has become the plaything of the world’s plutocrats, our era of financialization demands that we question our romantic assumptions about art and money. By exploring the way contemporary artists engage with cash, debt, and credit, Haiven identifies and assesses a range of creative strategies for mocking, sabotaging, exiting, decrypting, and hacking capitalism today. Written for artists, activists, and scholars, this book makes an urgent call to unleash the power of the radical imagination by any media necessary.

Capitalism has become a system of economic revenge, meted out against oppressed populations around the globe.

Emerging from the Radical Imagination Project, a social movement research initiative based in Halifax, Canada, What Moves Us? brings together a diverse group of scholar-activists and movement- based thinkers and practitioners to reflect on the relationship between the radical imagination and radical social change. Combining political biography with movement-based histories, these activists provide critical insights into the opportunities and challenges that confront struggles for social justice today. In original essays and interviews, these radical thinkers from across Canada and beyond contemplate the birth of their own radical consciousness and the political and intellectual commitments that animate their activism.

What does the future hold for the left? How does the left adapt to, and prepare for, the crises of our time? In moments of crisis it is always important to rethink longstanding assumptions, jettison wishful thinking and dated ideas, and recover wisdom from the past. In so doing, we have the opportunity to plot a new way forward. The authors of this edited collection do just this: putting forward a diversity of approaches and issues to strategize for the work that awaits us in the 2020s, particularly in the struggle against capitalism, climate change and the far right. Working within five major thematic areas, the contributors examine how to engage working class people in anti-capitalist struggles, undermine reactionary currents of ethno-nationalism while supporting anti-colonial movements, strategically build power inside and outside the state apparatus, demand new forms of resistance to address environmental crises, and effectively promote solidarity and ecological responsibility. This book provides suggestions for working with popular disaffection, taking the rich, fragmented, conflicted history of refusals and defeats as a starting point for next steps in the struggle against capitalism and the far right, rather than as the basis for more conflict or defeatism.

The “managerial revolution,” or the rise of management as a distinct and vital group in industrial society, might be identified as a major development of the modernization processes, similar to the scientific and industrial revolutions. Studying “transnational” or “global” corporate management at the post-millennium moment provides a suitable focal point from which to investigate globalized (post)modernity and capitalism especially, and as such this book offers an anthropology of global capitalism at its moment of crisis. This study provides ethnographically rich descriptions of managerial practices in a set of international corporate investment projects. Drawing also on historical and statistical data, it renders a comprehensive perspective on management, corporations, and capitalism in the late modern globalized economy. Cross-disciplinary in outlook, the book spans the fields of organization, business, and management, and asserts that now, in this period of financial crisis, is the time for anthropology to yet again engage with political economy.

A deadly pandemic. Civic unrest. Economic uncertainty. The years between the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Elections exposed the vulnerability of our institutions—and ourselves—like never before. In the wake of uncertainty, the authors in this volume offer wisdom to make sense of the changes brought by these past four years. Reflecting how faith and philanthropy converge, they imagine alternative economies for faith communities, academia, and nonprofits, while also marking the unshakable encounter with grief and crisis. Authors linger in the space between what was and what will be to ask: what do we leave behind, what do we bring with us, and what possibilities exist where crisis and care converge? Their words and wisdom kindle philanthropic imagination in this moment of transition and change.