Operation Cooperation

Whether in the idioms of corporate profit or national development, joint ventures function as a ubiquitous operator in discourses on international economic cooperation. But unlike the "development" apparatus whose mechanisms of control and object constitution are now being deconstructed, these interorganizational partnerships are so far virtually overlooked in cultural analysis. Extending the deconstruction of development to the realm of joint venture cooperation, Maximillian Martin integrates the two domains in a provocative analysis that inquires into the reorganization of the realities experienced by "knowing subjects" and "knowledgeable objects", as well as the normalization of their practices under different regimes of truth. The author concludes his discussion of the relation between discursive frames and possibilities of agency with an inquiry into the limitations of Foucauldian analysis and the promises of practice theory. This book is an important contribution to our understanding of the present process of globalization, the new geographies of power in the making, and their academic representations. Operation Cooperation will be indispensable to anyone interested in a poststructuralist approach to economic anthropology.

Maximilian Martin is marketing director at J.J. Radike Publishers, Germany