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The enchantments of mammon : how capitalism became the religion of modernity / created by Eugene McCarraher

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019Copyright date: ©2019Description: xii, 799 pages ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780674271098
Subject(s): LOC classification:
  • HB501 MCC
Contents:
The dearest freshness deep down things: Capitalist enchantment in Europe, 1600-1914 A hundred dollars, a hundred devils: Mammon in America, 1492-1870 The mystical body of business: the corporate reconstruction of Capitalist enchantment, 1870-1920 The beloved Commonwealth: visions of cooperative enchantment, 1870-1920 The heavenly city of Fordism: enchantment in the Machine Age, 1920-1945 Predicaments of human divinity: critics of Fordist enchantment, 1920-1945 One vast and ecumenical holding company: the prehistory of neoliberal enchantment, 1945-1975
Summary: If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand. Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of "the market." Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. In this impassioned challenge, McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls
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Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode
Book Book Main Library Open Shelf HB501 MCC (Browse shelf(Opens below)) 158698 Available BK146466

Includes bibliographical references and index

The dearest freshness deep down things: Capitalist enchantment in Europe, 1600-1914
A hundred dollars, a hundred devils: Mammon in America, 1492-1870
The mystical body of business: the corporate reconstruction of Capitalist enchantment, 1870-1920
The beloved Commonwealth: visions of cooperative enchantment, 1870-1920
The heavenly city of Fordism: enchantment in the Machine Age, 1920-1945
Predicaments of human divinity: critics of Fordist enchantment, 1920-1945
One vast and ecumenical holding company: the prehistory of neoliberal enchantment, 1945-1975

If socialists and Wall Street bankers can agree on anything, it is the extreme rationalism of capital. At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the "disenchantment" of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and sacredness. Ignoring the motive force of the spirit, capitalism rejects the awe-inspiring divine for the economics of supply and demand. Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether or not it is acknowledged. Capitalist enchantment first flowered in the fields and factories of England and was brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit. Later, the corporation was mystically animated with human personhood, to preside over the Fordist endeavor to build a heavenly city of mechanized production and communion. By the twenty-first century, capitalism has become thoroughly enchanted by the neoliberal deification of "the market." Informed by cultural history and theology as well as economics, management theory, and marketing, The Enchantments of Mammon looks not to Marx and progressivism but to nineteenth-century Romantics for salvation. The Romantic imagination favors craft, the commons, and sensitivity to natural wonder. It promotes labor that, for the sake of the person, combines reason, creativity, and mutual aid. In this impassioned challenge, McCarraher makes the case that capitalism has hijacked and redirected our intrinsic longing for divinity--and urges us to break its hold on our souls

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