New Times

Cameron McCarthy is Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer is a doctoral candidate in Education Policy and Gender and Women’ Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Robert Mejia is a doctoral candidate in Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

«New media forms, new market practices, and new technologies mean that we are living in New Times. This splendid collection of essays announces the arrival of a new kind of cultural studies scholarship, one that deftly describes and analyzes the links between new forms of culture and commerce and the emergence of new social relations and new social identities. From the performance of masculinity in South Korean cyberspace to the emergence of new teaching practices in Paraguay, from the misrecognition and misrepresentation of Black women with AIDS to the privatization of public housing in Chicago, from transgender longing to the social logic of mobile technologies, New Times gives us new tools for meeting the new challenges we face in our rapidly changing world.» (George Lipsitz, author of ‘How Racism Takes Place’)«This brilliant commentary on late modernity pushes critical/cultural theory to its intellectual maximum. ‘New Times’ finds the micro-histories of media studies, and the macro-theoretical traditions of the philosophy of technology, unable to account for today’s sweeping changes in education, culture and economy. It shows how the new technologies of representation situate the contradicitons of the neoliberal subject and legitimate an enterprise ethics. In its methodological interventions, ‘New Times’ rivals C. Wright Mills’ ‘The Sociological Imagination’ and in its gravitas it equals Zygmunt Bauman. The erudition of ‘New Times’ from beginning to end, of every chapter without exception, is phenomenal. This phosphorescent volume sets the standard for all future work on global neoliberalism.» (Cliff Christians)«Traversing important intellectual territory with regard to critical theory, neo-liberalism, cultural studies, neo-Marxism, critical media studies, and the movements of capital and peoples as linked to the global economy, McCarthy, Greenhalgh-Spencer and Mejia deliver a globally packed intellectual punch that pushes the boundaries of previously established thought. Enabling readers to re-imagine the economy and its linkages to identity, performance, body and history in the twenty-first century digital age, the authors offer a highly provocative set of essays around and through which the lives of twenty-first century subjects can be understood. An important volume, the book constitutes a «must read» for all those interested in the linkages between globalized society and late modernity in «the age of flexible and digital capitalism». ‘New Times: Making Sense of Critical/Cultural Theory in a Digital Age’ deserves to be read and re-read for its important insights in a notable number of important intellectual arenas.» (Lois Weis, State University of New York Distinguished Professor, Author of ‘Class Reunion: The Remaking of the American White Working Class’ and ‘The Way Class Works: Readings on school, family and the economy’)

• Contents: Douglas M. Kellner: Foreword – Cameron McCarthy/Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer/Robert Mejia: Introduction: Mapping the New Terrain – Robert Mejia: Theory through Practice: A History of Cultural Studies – Ergin Bulut: Labor and Totality in «Participatory» Digital Capitalism – Carolyn Randolph: Seeing Red: Ruptured Identity and the Representation of Black American Women Living with HIV and AIDS – Cameron McCarthy: Reconstructing Race and Education in the Class Conquest of the City and the University in the Era of Neoliberalism and Globalization – Matthew Crain: The Cultural Logic of Search and the Myth of Disintermediation – Steven Doran: Freedom Devices: Neoliberalism, Mobile Technologies, and Governance – Stepehn Hocker: Glocal Transgender: Transgender Longing and Belonging in the Shadow of 9/11 – Alice Liao: Re-imagining Harvey Milk: Queering Identity Politics – Jungmin Kwon: From Masculinity to Cybermasculinity: Marginalizing the Other in «DCinside» – Crystal Thomas: Displaced Bodies and Governmentality: Lessons from the CHA Website – Heather Greenhalgh-Spencer: Body/Flesh of the Teacher in the Digital Age – Viviana Pitton: Understanding Neoliberalism and Its Implications for Contemporary Educational Policies – Rodrigo Britez: Traveling Policies: Mobility, Transformations and Continuities in Higher Education Public Policy – James Geary: M: A Critical Analysis of a Cultural Artifact – Michael A. Peters: Afterword: Manifesto for Education in the Age of Cognitive Capitalism.