Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy

391 Pages·2006·1.457 MB·English

by  Melissa S. Fisher, Greg Downey

frontiers of capital

frontiers of capital
ethnographic reflections on the new economy
melissa s. fisher greg downey
Edited by and
Duke University Press Durham and London 2006
∫ 2006 Duke University Press
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contents
Acknowledgments | vii
Introduction: The Anthropology of Capital and the Frontiers
of Ethnography | Greg Downey and Melissa S. Fisher 1
i. circuits of knowledge
Fast Capitalism: Para-Ethnography and the Rise of the Symbolic
Analyst | Douglas R. Holmes and George E. Marcus 33
Trading on Numbers | Caitlin Zaloom 58
Real Time: Unwinding Technocratic and Anthropological
Knowledge | Annelise Riles 86
The Information Economy in No-Holds-Barred Fighting |
Greg Downey 108
Intersecting Geographies? icts and Other Virtualities in
Urban Africa | AbdouMaliq Simone 133
ii. new subjects, novel socialities
Corporate Players, New Cosmopolitans, and Guanxi in
Shanghai | Aihwa Ong 163
Gentrification Generalized: From Local Anomaly to Urban
‘‘Regeneration’’ as Global Urban Strategy | Neil Smith 191
Navigating Wall Street Women’s Gendered Networks in the
New Economy | Melissa S. Fisher 209
Developing Community Software in a Commodity World |
Siobhán O’Mahony 237
Reflections on Youth, from the Past to the Postcolony |
Jean Comaro√ and John Comaro√ 267
Guerrilla Capitalism and Ghettocentric Cosmopolitanism on
the French Urban Periphery | Paul A. Silverstein 282
Afterword: Knowledge Practices and Subject Making at the
Edge | Saskia Sassen 305
Bibliography | 317
Contributors | 357
Index | 361
vi Contents
acknowledgments
The editors would first like to acknowledge one another’s e√ort in working
on the volume. We would also like to acknowledge the Program on the
Corporation as a Social Institution at the Social Science Research Council
(ssrc, with funds provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation) and the
Business Institutions Initiative, also of the ssrc, for funding the 2001 Work-
shop on the New Global Economy. In particular, we owe special thanks to
Craig Calhoun, president of the ssrc and professor of sociology at New York
University, and Doug Guthrie, program director of the Corporation as a
Social Institution at ssrc and professor of sociology and management at
nyu, for their enthusiastic support of the workshop. The conference was
graciously hosted by the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. In
addition, Ken Wissoker, our editor, and Courtney Berger, both of Duke
University Press, have each had an important hand in the volume’s develop-
ment, for which we are very grateful.
Siobhán O’Mahony, Paul Silverstein, Daniel Walkowitz, and two anony-
mous reviewers all o√ered insightful suggestions for the introduction. We are
grateful to all the authors for their contribution to the anthropology of the
New Economy. In addition, Melissa wishes to thank Sherry Ortner, Alice
Kessler-Harris, Wendy Mackenzie, Saskia Sassen, and Daniel Walkowitz for
their support. She also wishes to acknowledge the support of the Department
of Sociology and Anthropology at Georgetown University. Greg wishes to
acknowledge the research and technical assistance of Jake Weiler and the sup-
port of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame.

Greg Downey and Melissa S. Fisher
introduction: the anthropology
of capital and the frontiers of
ethnography
For a brief moment in the late 1990s, journalists, business gurus, politicians
in the United States, and even sober observers abroad talked enthusiasti-
cally about a ‘‘New Economy.’’ Advances in information and communication
technology (ict), management and production techniques, and global inte-
gration, some proponents alleged, had irrevocably changed fundamental
economic dynamics. Workplace models emphasizing flat corporate struc-
tures and a bohemian approach to work became the hallmark of start-up
companies created by the new digital economy (Ross, 2003). In the hal-
cyon days of the New Economy, optimists contemplated a world without
business cycles, where technology, ever-increasing productivity, and globali-
zation were to usher in unprecedented prosperity and unrelenting expansion.
At the very least, venture capitalists, start-up entrepreneurs, and other inves-
tors began to think that the numbers would always go their way: the indexes
would continually rise in defiance of old rules for stock valuation. To be fair,
careful observers always noted countervailing trends, and pessimists pointed
to cracks in the consensus, immiseration in the midst of the boom, and
rumblings of crises brewing around the world. However, the robustness of
the U.S. economy and the excitement generated by the Internet helped to
drive the global expansion of ict as well as the spread of the ‘‘Washington
consensus’’ of neoliberal economic policies.
In January 2000, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a peak of
11,723, in spite of some troubling indicators; by October 2002, the average had
fallen to 7,286—losing about 38 percent—the slide dashing exuberant dreams
of the Dow vaulting over 30,000. The correction of the nasdaq average,