Journal ArticleDOI
CONSUMING CLASS: Multilevel Marketers in Neoliberal Mexico
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TLDR
The authors argue that some non-elite sectors of society avidly welcome the reign of the free market and that the middle class looks to neoliberalism to ensure access to the material markers of class status.Abstract:
Since the 1980s, Mexican leaders have followed other Latin American countries in pursuing neoliberal economic policies designed to stimulate foreign investment, reduce public spending, and promote free trade. Recent studies of indigenous movements and popular protests challenge the idea that these market-based economic reforms enjoy a broad consensus and suggest that elites impose them by force. By turning the focus to middle-class Mexicans, I argue that some nonelite sectors of society avidly welcome the reign of the free market. Although they do not profit directly from unregulated capitalism, the middle class looks to neoliberalism to ensure access to the material markers of class status. The rising popularity of multilevel marketing companies in Mexico, which glorify consumption and celebrate the possibilities of entrepreneurship, demonstrates the appeal of neoliberalism to citizens fearful of diminished purchasing power. By tying consumption to globalized free markets, neoliberalism does not need coercion to win acceptance.read more
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Spiritual Economies: Islam and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia
TL;DR: This paper argued that the convergence of religious ethics and business management knowledge illustrate the formation of what are termed spiritual economies, which conceptualize how economic reform and neoliberal restructuring are conceived of and acted on as matters of religious piety and spiritual virtue.
MonographDOI
The Weight of Obesity: Hunger and Global Health in Postwar Guatemala
TL;DR: Anthropologist Emily Yates-Doerr challenges the widespread view that health can be measured in calories and pounds, offering an innovative understanding of what it means to be healthy in postcolonial Latin America.
Journal ArticleDOI
FLEXIBLE CITIZENSHIP IN DUBAI: Neoliberal Subjectivity in the Emerging “City‐Corporation”
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address subjectivity in the context of the emergence of neoliberalism in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and analyze the ways flexible citizens appropriate neoliberal discourses to mediate local ambiguities and tensions of social and gender identity.
Journal ArticleDOI
SYMPTOMS OF ANOTHER LIFE: Time, Possibility, and Domestic Relations in Chile's Credit Economy
TL;DR: A study of care in relation to the credit economy may offer other analytic perspectives on discourses of individualism, consumerism, and cost-effectiveness accompanying the expansion of consumer credit as they are absorbed into the everyday.
Journal ArticleDOI
Fields of dreams, fields of schemes: ponzi finance and multi-level marketing in south africa
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show how many of these discourses reflect some of the conditions of contemporary capitalism: citizens are expected to be active investors, active entrepreneurs and hard workers who are able to work from home and without a boss.
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Journal ArticleDOI
Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming
Jean Comaroff,John L. Comaroff +1 more
TL;DR: The second coming of capitalism raises a number of conundrums for our understanding of history at the end of the century as discussed by the authors, and some of its corollaries have been the subject of clamorous debate.
Journal ArticleDOI
Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America
TL;DR: The emergence of indigenous organizations, politicization of indigenous identities, and demand for indigenous rights over the past two decades challenge historical norms and scholarly conclusions about the politicisation of ethnic cleavages in Latin America as discussed by the authors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Conforming Disconformity: “Mestizaje,” Hybridity, and the Aesthetics of Mexican Nationalism
TL;DR: The authors traces the genealogy of mestizo nationalism in post-revolutionary 20th-century Mexico and traces some of the links in the genealogies of Mexican nationalism in the 20th century.
Journal ArticleDOI
Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society
TL;DR: In the real world, however, people do not seem very upset about income inequality, and even less over their relationship to globalization as discussed by the authors. Yet their connections remain obscure, and it is difficult to confront these associations in any structured way because the phenomena they refer to remain the preserves of specialized academic fields.
Journal ArticleDOI
Notes on the Anthropology of Neoliberalism
TL;DR: In this article, a series of commentaries on the anthropology of global production is presented, focusing on the new languages of protest and activism in response to neoliberalism, and new categories of identity have emerged as a result of neoliberal policies.