Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street - Karen Ho
“A brilliant and deeply ethical rumination on the emancipatory potential and limitations of ethnographic critiques of capitalism, this searing ethnography delves into the very making of landscapes of exploitation and subordination. It is a theoretically and methodologically breathtaking investigation into the conditions of possibility that allow global capitalism to self-represent as ‘aboveboard’ and ‘transparent.’ By delving into the muck of what constitutes ‘the licit’ in the architecture of capitalism, Hannah Appel notices and refuses ‘comp-licit’ normative assumptions. The Licit Life of Capitalism thus achieves what few ethnographies have: it shows how capitalist abstractions are culturally deliberate and painstakingly reproduced.”
How Would You like to Pay?: How Technology is Changing the Future of Money - Bill Maurer
“In this compelling and engaging work Hannah Appel ethnographically captures a big thing: capitalism as a project. Asking after the fulsomeness with which capitalism powerfully does all the things it is supposed to do, Appel sets out a new path for grappling with this dominant force in contemporary politics and economics. Her book exemplifies the best critical writing on the workings of capitalism in anthropology, geography, sociology, and allied fields.”
