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Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest

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BOOK REVIEW: Harvey, David. 2010. The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism. New York,. NY: Oxford University Press. ISBN13: 9780199758715David Harvey, a public intellectual and Marxist geographer published, The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism in 2010. While particularly relevant directly following the United States' Great Recession, this book is an academic tour de force that continues to be an essential read for anyone interested in the historical expansion of the economic crisis and the global social response, including the Occupy Wall Street Movement. The book is built upon identifying what capital is and how instability is inherently part of capitalism; this idea is what Harvey identifies as the 'crisis -prone' nature of the system. Often noted for his public discourse, Harvey has written this book to be accessible to a broad audience, providing an interesting read for both academics and laymen unfamiliar with Marxism, neoliberalism and related concepts. In The Enigma of Capital, audiences will not only find detailed critical and historical analyses of the movement of capital, but will also find fresh descriptions and innovative examples of the process.Those who know of Harvey's work may be most familiar with The Limits to Capital (1982), often noted as Harvey's magnum opus, which provides the theoretical foundations to many of his subsequent texts. The Enigma of Capital differs significantly from The Limits to Capital in a number of ways. Most importantly, The Enigma of Capital was written and published during an economic crisis. Harvey uses this juncture of crisis to identify the historical trends in the political economy that led to its current state. The organization of the book is reminiscent of A Brief History of Neoliberalism as published in 2005, in which Harvey not only defines neoliberalism as, "a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade" (p. 2), but also identifies the global adoption of neoliberalism from the 1960s forward. In The Limits to Capital, Harvey asserts that capitalism may not have a limit because of technological innovations; however, he revises this claim in The Enigma of Capital, proposing the "3 percent compound thesis". The thesis argues that in order for capitalism to produce acceptable returns, it must grow by three percent per annum. The compounded nature of this growth implies that raw growth is perpetually needed. Harvey contends that, "compound growth forever is not possible and the troubles that have beset the world these last thirty years signal that the limit is looming to continuous capital accumulation that cannot be transcended except by creating fictions that cannot last" (p. 227-228).In support of his thesis, Harvey uses a systems approach to identify seven dialectally interrelated parts of capitalism or what he terms "activity spheres": technologies and organizational forms, social relations, institutional and administrative arrangements, production and labor processes, relations to nature, the reproduction of daily life and the species and 'mental conceptions of the world'. These seven dimensions co-evolve in history, where capital and the accumulation of capital arises from movement within and between these spheres. Sources of crises are found in the barriers to capital movement and accumulation within and between these spheres. …

The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis of Capitalism

Since the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media, a particularly toxic brand of antifeminism has become evident across a range of online networks and platforms. Despite multiple internal conflicts and contradictions, these diverse assemblages are generally united in their adherence to Red Pill “philosophy,” which purports to liberate men from a life of feminist delusion. This loose confederacy of interest groups, broadly known as the manosphere, has become the dominant arena for the communication of men’s rights in Western culture. This article identifies the key categories and features of the manosphere and subsequently seeks to theorize the masculinities that characterize this discursive space. The analysis reveals that, while there are some continuities with older variants of antifeminism, many of these new toxic assemblages appear to complicate the orthodox alignment of power and dominance with hegemonic masculinity by operationalizing tropes of victimhood, “beta masculinity,” and involuntary celibacy ...

Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere

The Moynihan Report and the Politics of Controversy

T he historical development of modern men’s sport has been closely intertwined with the consumption of alcohol and with the financial promotion and sponsorship provided by beer and liquor producers and distributors, as well as pubs and bars (Collins and Vamplew 2002). The beer and liquor industry plays a key economic role in commercialized college and professional sports (Zimbalist 1999; Sperber 2000). Liquor industry advertisements heavily influence the images of masculinity promoted in sports broadcasts and magazines (Wenner 1991). Alcohol consumption is also often a key aspect of the more dangerous and violent dynamics at the heart of male sport cultures (Curry 2000; Sabo, Gray, and Moore 2000). By itself, alcohol does not “cause” men’s violence against women or against other men; however, it is commonly one of a cluster of factors that facilitate violence (Koss and Gaines 1993; Leichliter et al. 1998). In short, beer and liquor are central players in “a high holy trinity of alcohol, sports, and hegemonic masculinity” (Wenner 1998). This article examines beer and liquor advertisements in two “mega sports media events” consumed by large numbers of boys and men—the 2002 and 2003 Super Bowls and the 2002 and 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. Our goal is to illuminate tropes of masculinity that prevail in those ads. We see these ads as establishing a pedagogy of youthful masculinity that does not passively teach male consumers about the qualities of their products so much as it encourages consumers to think of their products as essential to creating a stylish and desirable lifestyle. These ads do more than just dupe consumers into product loyalty; they also work with consumers to construct a consumption-based masculine identity

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/427523

The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events

The “muscle gap” was a period of Cold War anxiety projected onto the bodies of young, white males that produced a discourse fixated on their perceived softness and openness to communist penetration. The underlying anxiety was that youth would be unable to uphold the “national heritage” of expansionism built by the hard (white) men of previous generations. Looking at cultural citizenship as a process of subject-formation sheds light on how a racial project can simultaneously be a gender project that (re)produces a racial-gender order where whiteness and hegemonic masculinity are markers and repositories of superiority, domination, and privilege.

“As Our Muscles Get Softer, Our Missile Race Becomes Harder”: Cultural Citizenship and the “Muscle Gap”

This article examines how 32 mostly white university students understand the NFL players’ protests. We argue students processed the protests (and protesters) through a racialized lens of whiteness that led to two modes of interpreting the protests: the protests are unpatriotic and the protests are patriotic. These categories are primarily based on how students account for African-American NFL players’ resistance to white supremacy and their own whiteness. We propose these student’s responses demonstrate a denial and avoidance of race, which many understand as a personal experience with racism, even when discussing a racially charged protest movement. Further, competing discourses of patriotism animate their positions on the protests, but also limit their understandings of the protests and the operation of white supremacy.

Avoiding the Issue: University Students’ Reponses to NFL Players’ National Anthem Protests

This article looks at the Hollywood “blockbuster” movie The Blind Side (2009) to explore intersections of race, class, and gender in a significant neoliberal, cultural commodity Animating the production and, apparently, the consumption of the film is the “inspiring” story of Michael Oher, an impoverished young African American man who was adopted by a wealthy white family and rose to success in the National Football League in the United States The film mobilizes postracial and postfeminist discourses to tell a story of redemption and how private charity can overcome social problems that the state cannot Ultimately, charity operates as a signifying act of whiteness that obscures the social relations of domination that not only make charity possible but also creates an urban underclass in need of charity

White domestic goddess on a postmodern plantation: charity and commodity racism in The Blind Side.

This article traces debates about African American professional football players’ protests during the national anthem. After reviewing over 400 media texts, we found that each side operates from mi...

Jeffrey Montez de Oca

Papers

The Male Consumer as Loser: Beer and Liquor Ads in Mega Sports Media Events

“As Our Muscles Get Softer, Our Missile Race Becomes Harder”: Cultural Citizenship and the “Muscle Gap”

Avoiding the Issue: University Students’ Reponses to NFL Players’ National Anthem Protests

White domestic goddess on a postmodern plantation: charity and commodity racism in The Blind Side.

Ethics of patriotism: NFL players' protests against Police violence.