What can comedy tell us about the politics of a nation? In this book, James Brassett builds on his prize-winning research to demonstrate how British comedy can provide intimate and vital understandings of the everyday politics of globalization in Britain. The book explores British comedy and Britain’s global politics from post-war imperial decline through to its awkward embrace of globalization, examining a wide variety of comedic mediums, such as the popular television show The Office and the online satire The Daily Mash. Touching on issues such as empire, the class system and capitalism, the author demonstrates how comedy offers valuable insights on how global market life is experienced, mediated, contested and accommodated.

Market life is increasingly conducted in the shadow of global events like 9/11, the Sub-Prime crisis and Brexit. Within International political economy (IPE) two broad positions can be discerned: either the event is 'just an event', a superficial spectacle in an otherwise straightforward story of power and hierarchy; or the event is large enough to be considered a 'crisis'. While sympathetic to such arguments, this book develops a more performative politics of the global event, arguing that the very idea of the event must be placed in question. How is the event constructed? How are market subjects performed in relation to the event? This book argues that emotional and psychological discourses of 'trauma' and 'resilience' provide an important affective register for understanding how the global event is 'known', how it is governed, and how the affective dimensions of market life might be lived. By identifying the contingent rise of these discourses, the author de-stabilises and re-politicises the apparent existential veracity of the global event. The critical possibilities and limits of the affective turn in market life can then be rendered according to classic questions of IPE: who wins, who loses, and how might it be changed? An important work for advanced scholars and students of international political economy, 'everyday and cultural political economy', crisis and resilience, as well as broader debates on globalisation.

What can comedy tell us about the politics of a nation? In this book, James Brassett builds on his prize-winning research to demonstrate how British comedy can provide intimate and vital understandings of the everyday politics of globalization in Britain. The book explores British comedy and Britain's global politics from post-war imperial decline through to its awkward embrace of globalization, examining a wide variety of comedic mediums, such as the popular television show The Office and the online satire The Daily Mash. Touching on issues such as empire, the class system and capitalism, the author demonstrates how comedy offers valuable insights on how global market life is experienced, mediated, contested and accommodated.

Acknowledgement of the ethical dimension of global finance is commonplace in the wake of financial crises. The sub-prime crisis and ensuing credit crunch are only the latest in a long run of global financial crises that wreak social havoc and force us to consider alternative possibilities for global finance. By defining cosmopolitanism and analysing how cosmopolitan ideas can increasingly provide an account of the governance of global finance, Brassett examines whether global finance can be regulated so as to provide cosmopolitan values like social security, equality and democratic accountability. It suggests that such an exercise is not adequately resourced by existing theoretical approaches to critical IPE and instead develops a new pragmatic approach based on the thought of Richard Rorty. Combining ethical theory with empirical analysis, it focuses on the Tobin Tax - (a proposal to place a small levy on foreign currency transactions to dampen speculation and raise vast revenues) - and explores whether it could underpin more cosmopolitan forms of global financial governance. This book situates cosmopolitan ideas in the extant dilemmas and indeterminacies of global ethics, suggesting alternatives where possible. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international ethics, global governance, global civil, international relations, international political economy, global finance, public policy, critical theory, political theory and philosophy.

Acknowledgement of the ethical dimension of global finance is commonplace in the wake of financial crises. The sub-prime crisis and ensuing credit crunch are only the latest in a long run of global financial crises that wreak social havoc and force us to consider alternative possibilities for global finance.

By defining cosmopolitanism and analysing how cosmopolitan ideas can increasingly provide an account of the governance of global finance, Brassett examines whether global finance can be regulated so as to provide cosmopolitan values like social security, equality and democratic accountability. It suggests that such an exercise is not adequately resourced by existing theoretical approaches to critical IPE and instead develops a new pragmatic approach based on the thought of Richard Rorty. Combining ethical theory with empirical analysis, it focuses on the Tobin Tax ? (a proposal to place a small levy on foreign currency transactions to dampen speculation and raise vast revenues) ? and explores whether it could underpin more cosmopolitan forms of global financial governance.

This book situates cosmopolitan ideas in the extant dilemmas and indeterminacies of global ethics, suggesting alternatives where possible. It will be of interest to students and scholars of international ethics, global governance, global civil, international relations, international political economy, global finance, public policy, critical theory, political theory and philosophy.

Market life is increasingly conducted in the shadow of global events like 9/11, the Sub-Prime crisis and Brexit. Within International political economy (IPE) two broad positions can be discerned: either the event is 'just an event', a superficial spectacle in an otherwise straightforward story of power and hierarchy; or the event is large enough to be considered a 'crisis'. While sympathetic to such arguments, this book develops a more performative politics of the global event, arguing that the very idea of the event must be placed in question. How is the event constructed? How are market subjects performed in relation to the event? This book argues that emotional and psychological discourses of 'trauma' and 'resilience' provide an important affective register for understanding how the global event is 'known', how it is governed, and how the affective dimensions of market life might be lived. By identifying the contingent rise of these discourses, the author de-stabilises and re-politicises the apparent existential veracity of the global event. The critical possibilities and limits of the affective turn in market life can then be rendered according to classic questions of IPE: who wins, who loses, and how might it be changed? An important work for advanced scholars and students of international political economy, 'everyday and cultural political economy', crisis and resilience, as well as broader debates on globalisation.

This edited volume brings together scholars of comedy to assess how political comedy encounters neoliberal themes in contemporary media. Central to this task is the notion of genre; under neoliberal conditions (where market logics motivate most actions) genre becomes "mixed." Once stable, discreet categories such as comedy, horror, drama and news and entertainment have become blurred so as to be indistinguishable. The classic modern paradigm of comedy/tragedy no longer holds, if it ever did. Moreover, as politics becomes more economic and less moral or normative under neoliberalism, we are able to see new resistance to comedic genres that support neoliberal strategies to hide racial and gender injustice such as unlaughter, ambiguity, and anti-comedy. There is also an increasing interest with comedy as a form of entertainment on the political right following both Brexit in the UK and the election of Trump in the U.S. Several essays confront this conservative comedy and place it in context of the larger humor history of these debates over free speech and political correctness. For comedians too, entry into popular media now follows the familiar neoliberal script of the celebration of self-help with the increasing admonishment of those who fail to win in market terms. Laughter plays an important role in shaming and valorizing (often at the same time!) the precarious subject in the aftermath of global recession. Doubling down on austerity, self-help policies and equivocation in the face of extremist challenges (right and left), politics foils the critical comedian's attempt to satirize and parody its object. Characterized by ambiguity, mixed genre and the increasing use of anti-humor, political comedy mirrors the social and political world it mocks, parodies and celebrates often with lackluster results suggesting that the joke might be on us, as audiences.

* Do we work for social media? * Why do we go into debt? * How is desire manufactured in fast fashion? * How are our diets governed? * Who owns what in the sharing economy? I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life provides a new introduction to the field of IPE by locating it in our daily experiences. By using topics such as social media, debt, food, and clothes as thematic entry points, this textbook shows how concepts from IPE can be used to understand and question the world around us. Eight core chapters each start with a discussion of an everyday object or practice linked to that topic, including social media influencing, student debt, chocolate, and fast fashion. From there the chapters open out to discuss broader questions that speak to the core themes of IPE and its study of power, wealth, and global capitalism. Each chapter ends with a pair of learning activities, such as creating your own meme (chapter 8, Humour), to help apply what you have read. These are accompanied by student-voice podcasts, in which current IPE students discuss how they approached the activity. Developed by the creators of the popular teaching tool www.i-peel.org: I-PEEL: The International Political Economy of Everyday Life is a ground-breaking, exciting, and engaging new approach to IPE that places you at the centre of knowledge production. The first edition includes a wealth of embedded digital resources, which are accessible through the enhanced e-book, and are viewable in a university's VLE. The online student resources include: - Videos from the authors introducing the I-PEEL approach - Quickfire quiz questions - Author chapter-introduction podcasts - Reflective multiple-choice questions - Support for tackling the chapter's learning activities - Student reflection podcasts - Web links to relevant blogs, debates, and videos - An interactive flashcard glossary The online digital lecturer resources include: - A guide to the I-PEEL approach - Customisable PowerPoint slides