Article in the London Review of Books on the decline of the UK economy as the backdrop to the current Tory leadership election.
‘Stagnation Nation’
‘Destination unknown’
Review of books by Mike Savage, Gurminder Bhambra & John Holmwood and Thomas Piketty, published in the London Review of Books, which considers the relationship between sociology and history in the present global conjuncture.
‘This age of inflation reveals the sickness ailing Britain’s economy: rentier capitalism’
New comment piece in The Guardian on the cost-of-living crisis and how the economy and society has been remade to serve capital at every turn.
‘Where the internet went wrong – and how we can reboot it’
Review essay in The New Statesman, discussing The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is by Justin E. H. Smith and Internet for the People by Ben Tarnoff.
Interview with New Humanist
I discussed our arguments in Unprecedented? with New Humanist.
Extract from Unprecedented?
Unprecedented?: How Covid-19 Revealed the Politics of Our Economy is published this week, co-authored by me and three colleagues in the Department of Politics at Goldsmiths. You can read an extract from the book in the new issue of The New Statesman here.
‘The Problem of Trust in the Digital Public Sphere’
In February I was invited by Marion Fourcade to give a lecture at Social Science Matrix, UC Berkeley. The lecture, based on various recent arguments and pieces of mine on neoliberalism, platforms and the crisis of liberalism, was entitled ‘The Problem of Trust in the Digital Public Sphere’. You can watch it here.
Discussing happiness on KCRW
I was interviewed about my book, The Happiness Industry, on KCRW’s Life Examined show. You can listen to the whole episode here and to my interview here.
‘How many words does it take to make a mistake?’
Article in the London Review of Books, on EdTech, learning during lockdown and the mechanisation of ‘literacy’.
Podcast interview on neoliberalism & post-neoliberalism
I discussed neoliberalism and the recent edition of Theory Culture & Society on ‘Postneoliberalism?’, edited by me and Nick Gane, with Mark Pennington for the KCL Governance Podcast. You can listen here.
‘If Boris Johnson were a stock, canny investors would be looking to unload’
New column for The Guardian, on the “animal spirits” that drove up Johnson’s value, and could quickly abandon him.
‘Theory wars: how postmodernism became weaponised’
Review of Stuart Jeffries new book, Everything All The Time Everywhere: How We Became Postmodern, published in The New Statesman.
‘Post-Neoliberalism?’
Nicholas Gane and I have co-edited a special issue of Theory Culture & Society on the theme of ‘Post-neoliberalism?’. It features articles by Melinda Cooper, Quinn Slobodian, Dorit Geva, Roger Burrows and Harrison Smith, Alan Finlayson, Nicholas Gane and me, on various aspects of the challenges to neoliberalism, especially those from the political Right. The special issue was accepted and the pieces commissioned prior to 2020, so they don’t confront the most recent upheavals and challenges to the political-economic order. However, the Introduction (which is open access) does address the significance of the Covid-19 pandemic, and what it means for the status of ‘neoliberalism’.
William Davies 