Craig Willse

Neo-liberal biopolitics and the invention of chronic homelessness

Abstract This article explores the emergence of neo-liberal housing policy and programmes in the United States, focusing in particular on the rise of social service initiatives targeting what is known as ‘chronic homelessness’. These initiatives are notable for the ways in which they privilege long-vilified populations for immediate placement into housing with no social or medical services required. While this represents a significant break from social service protocols that previously demanded compliance with service requirements, the article argues that understanding chronic homelessness initiatives as economic rather than social programmes reveals the ways in which they enable the reproduction of the same neo-liberal conditions that produce housing insecurity and deprivation. The article concludes by reframing housing issues in terms of racial subordination, which suggests that, in the neo-liberal context, social abandonment and economic investment may persist side by side.

Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death

Under the auspices of neoliberalism, technical systems of compliance and efficiency have come to underwrite the relations among the state, the economy, and a biopolitics of war, terror, and surveillance. In Beyond Biopolitics , prominent theorists seek to account for and critically engage the tendencies that have informed neoliberal governance in the past and are expressed in its reformulation today. As studies of military occupation, the policing of migration, blood trades, financial markets, the war on terror, media ecologies, and consumer branding, the essays explore the governance of life and death in a near-future, a present emptied of future potentialities. The contributors delve into political and theoretical matters central to projects of neoliberal governance, including states of exception that are not exceptional but foundational; risk analysis applied to the adjudication of “ethical” forms of war, terror, and occupation; racism and the management of the life capacities of populations; the production and circulation of death as political and economic currency; and the potential for critical and aesthetic response. Together, the essays offer ways to conceptualize biopolitics as the ground for today’s reformulation of governance. Contributors. Ann Anagnost, Una Chung, Patricia Ticineto Clough, Steve Goodman, Sora Y. Han, Stefano Harney, May Joseph, Randy Martin, Brian Massumi, Luciana Parisi, Jasbir Puar, Amit S. Rai, Eugene Thacker, Cagatay Topal, Craig Willse

Gendered Security/National Security Political Branding and Population Racism

DOI 10.1215/016424722010010

Smoke and Mirrors: The Politics and Culture of Air PollutionSmoke and Mirrors: The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution, edited by DuPuisE. Melanie. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 360 pp.

ed to edge cities and the newer developments in suburban areas. Chapter 3 discusses the role of immigration in the new globalized cities. Emphasizing the “heterogeneity of the immigrant flow” in the new global cities, the author discusses the distinction between traditional immigrants lacking work skills and the second type of immigrant who is well educated with marketable skills. The discussion about immigrant impacts on global cities covers the area of home country ties and identities, as well as providing a portrait of the exploitation of immigrant women. Illegal entrants are discussed and the issues of smuggling raised, in particular Chinese immigrants. The sex trade and immigrants is covered briefly, in addition to the distinctions between immigrant and enclave locations within global cities. Chapter 4 is a concise description of the locations of both the financial sector and other large multinational corporations and investments within the spread of global cities. The remaining chapters attempt to tackle the difficult issue of social inequality produced by global corporations, as well as the rise of multi-nation culture industries. The latter chapter is an excellent introduction to the global corporate differentiation of culture production from the globalization of movie studios to the spread of recorded music centers around the globe. Unlike many of the more specialized books discussing various aspects of global cities, Abrahamson makes a sincere attempt to cover a much broader swath of territory. While Abrahamson is able to integrate both the political economy and the cultural production of global cities, the book spends far too little time on any one of the topics mentioned. This is especially true for the area of global poverty, the homeless, and other marginalized groups. While the author does acknowledge global capital’s victims, they do not appear as a major part of his analysis. Global Cities remains, in the end, a functional work that requires a larger critical analysis to move beyond its descriptive account. It is an excellent introduction to the topic, but one that should be accompanied by more indepth, critical texts. Smoke and Mirrors: The Politics and Culture of Air Pollution, edited by E. Melanie DuPuis. New York: New York University Press, 2004. 360 pp.

65.00 cloth. 0-8147-1960-0.

65.00 cloth. ISBN: 08147-1960-0.

22.00 paper. 0-8147-1961-9.

22.00 paper. ISBN: 0-8147-19619.