Beschreibung
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