Digital Commons Network^™

Neoliberal Fascism As The Endpoint Of Casino Capitalism, Henry Giroux

Fast Capitalism

This article explores neoliberal fascism as a distinctive political formation within the current historical moment. In doing so, it first analyzes neoliberalism as a project that has since the 1970s destroyed all the commanding institutions of democracy while consolidating power in the hands of a financial elite. In addition, it analyzes neoliberalism as a movement, that produces and legitimates massive economic inequality and suffering, privatizes public goods, dismantles essential government agencies, and individualizes all social problems. Under such circumstances, neoliberalism creates the conditions for right wing extremists to mobilize the anger of white disenfranchised working class populations by both appealing …

Micromobility In Nyc: 2025, Mike Owen Benediktsson Phd, Xuemeng Li Phd

Publications and Research

This report offers a statistical snapshot of micromobility across the city over a three-week period in late 2025. Our team of trained researchers systematically observed over 1,700 micromobility vehicles at 155 separate intersections across the five boroughs of New York City. Our primary findings describe overall patterns in the demographics of micromobility and vehicle behavior at city intersections, and show how this behavior is shaped by variations in infrastructure as well as individual-level attributes.

Minding Machines: A Note On Alienation, Sascha Engel

Fast Capitalism

This paper discusses an underrepresented dimension of contemporary alienation: that of machines, and particularly of computing machines. The term 'machine' is understood here in the broadest sense, spanning anything from agricultural harvesters to cars and planes. Likewise, 'computing machine' is understood broadly, from homeostatic machines, such as thermostats, to algorithmic universal machines, such as smartphones. I suggest that a form of alienation manifests in the functionalist use and description of machines in general; that is, in descriptions of machines as mere tools or testaments to human ingenuity. Such descriptions ignore the real and often capricious existence of machines as everyday …

Max Weber's Odyssey: The Wild West, The Frontier, And The Capitalist Spirit, David Norman Smith

Fast Capitalism

This article examines one aspect of Weber's thinking with respect to the United States: his view of frontier regions as new horizons for capitalism. This was not an incidental or side issue for Weber, whose famed analysis of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was only half-finished when he traveled through the United States in 1904. Nor is Weber's outlook on this topic immaterial for contemporary historians, many of whom now affirm quasi-Weberian views under such rubrics as "the New Western" history. A full account of Weber's notion of the frontier would exceed the limits of a journal …

Divining Domination: Steve Bannon As A Political Mystagogue, Tony Allen Feldmann

Fast Capitalism

Right-wing commentators (on tv, radio, newspapers, documentaries, or the internet) are often considered a source of misinformation and radicalization in American politics. Understanding the role of such commentators in the political sphere has taken on new significance since the election of Trump, who regularly takes talking points as well as political advice from prominent figures in right-wing media. The purpose of these political "shock jocks" also extends beyond mere political commentary: They offer their audience a framework for understanding the world. This framework contains certain reified perceptions of society and history. Durkheim and those working in his tradition have long …

Hamlet's Father: Hauntology And The Roots Of The Modern Self, Lukas Szrot

Fast Capitalism

In his 1949 work Hamlet's Ghost, Richard Flatter wrote of the ghost of Hamlet's father that the play ultimately belongs to him, to the ghost.   Modernity, like the play, belongs to its ghosts, to its dead fathers haunting their wayward sons, the metaphysical specters it imperfectly endeavors to exorcise. Critical theory has often focused on the possibility, and the contours, of a utopia populated by liberatory spirit and liberated persons. Less well explored, however, are the implications for tradition, religion, and the transmission of culture at a metaphorical echelon—those ostensibly "pre-modern" ideas which the broader project of Enlightenment liberalism never …

Sociopoetics In The Works Of Shakespeare, Thomas Bechtold

Fast Capitalism

This study is meant to develop an immanent critique following the dialogism of socio-poetics in the literary criticism of Mikhail Bakhtin. Socio-poetics in the reception and composition of Shakespeare's works reflect the first intimations of social and political transformation to a modern nationalized society from a premodern feudal society. This study explores Shakespeare's use of metaphor through his dramatizations and characterizations at the dawn of modernity and the decline of feudalism: identifying contradictions and tensions that intimate this transformation in English society and language, and, providing an approach to this globalizing language that partakes in simultaneous modes of confabulation and …

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves, Mark P. Worrell

Fast Capitalism

Introduction to the Symposium: "Cultural Reflections of Capital."

Author Biography

Mark P. Worrell, SUNY Cortland Professor, Retired

Developing Transformative Pilgrimage Tourism: Seeing The Relationship Between Stakeholders In Religion-Based Tourism Practices In Quds, Indonesia, I Nyoman Ruja

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

The growing transformation of the pilgrimage tourism sector worldwide cannot be separated from relations between community groups, pilgrims and the tourism industry. This research analyses the relationships between stakeholders involved in faith-based tourism practices in Quds, Indonesia. Through a qualitative approach, we investigate, in Quds the interactions and relationships of multiple parties involved in the religious tourism industry, including pilgrims, government, local communities and related institutions. This research collects data through in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis. The results show that stakeholder relationships significantly create a sustainable religious tourism experience in Quds. Collaboration between pilgrims, the government and local …

The Correlation Between Spiritual Tourism And Mental Health Of Young People In Binh Duong, Vietnam, Anh Nguyen

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

While researchers are in agreement about the positive relationship between spiritual activities (SAs) and mental health (MH) among the general population, the relationship between spiritual tourism (ST) and MH, particularly among young adults, is yet to be adequately investigated. As such, this research was conducted to determine the contribution of ST towards the MH of the younger generation. The respondents are undergraduate students located in Vietnam’s industrial province of Binh Duong. The findings, from the quantitative research approach, indicate that young people perceive ST mainly as a means for visiting places of worship, with little consideration for the MH benefits …

A Qualitative Examination Of The Motivations For Homeschooling Among Black Americans, Portia J. Witt

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study explored the motivations and lived experiences of African American homeschooling families. Twelve Black parents from multiple states participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed using Moustakas’ (1994) Modified Stevick–Colaizzi–Keen method and coded thematically using NVivo. Nine themes emerged: autonomy, holistic education, community belonging, online networks, public resources, curriculum gaps, personal values, effective learning, and legacy of harm. While racialization in schools—including tracking, microaggressions, and misidentification—contributed to participants’ decisions, motivations also reflected intersectional factors such as faith, disability, mental health needs, giftedness, and a desire for cultural protection and flexible learning. Findings suggest homeschooling serves as a …

Where Do Latinos Live In The New York City Metropolitan Area? Changing Settlement Patterns, 2000 - 2024, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

This report shows that between 2000 and 2024, the Latino population of the New York metropolitan area increased by 48% from 3,592,542 to 5,316,472 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Along with population expansion, there was a decisive change in settlement patterns among all Latinos, which, in fact, began before 2000. This was the decline of New York City as the major area of the Latino population concentration, although there were differentiations by nationality.

In 2000, 60% of all Latinos in the region lived in the City. By 2024, this had declined to 46%. And while the City’s Latino population …

2026, Aca Camp Research Forum Book Of Abstracts, American Camp Association

ACA National Camp Research Forum Abstracts

This book includes 20 abstracts that will be presented at the 2026 American Camp Association (ACA) Research Forum to be held during the ACA annual conference from February 17-20, 2026, in San Diego, California. Abstracts have been grouped into similar areas and will be presented across five verbal sessions (i.e., camper outcomes, specialty programming, camp staffing, camp administration, and medical/health for youth and families) and one poster session.

Assessing Abuse And Neglect In U.S. Nursing Homes: A Comparative Analysis Across Pre-, During, And Post-Pandemic Periods, Katherine Gane

Theses and Dissertations

Nursing homes are among the most closely regulated providers in the U.S. healthcare system, with both federal and state agencies working together to monitor care and help protect residents. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, introduced unprecedented challenges for facilities and survey agencies alike, disrupting normal operations, limiting in-person visits, and temporarily shifting regulatory priorities. The purpose of this study was to examine how these pandemic-related disruptions were reflected in the severity and reporting patterns of substantiated abuse and neglect deficiencies in U.S. nursing homes. Using publicly available data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), this study analyzed 39,607 …

From Bad Apples To Zombies? Walking Dead Leadership In The Contemporary University, Tara Brabazon

Fast Capitalism

Leadership remains an open sewer of assumptions, ego, platitudes and potential. When contextualized within an international university sector struggling and grasping to find a purpose, leadership becomes toxic and dangerous. This article reactivates, challenges and then transforms Ulrich Beck's zombie concept and applies it to university leadership, management and administration. I probe the renegotiation of power and identity, with particular attention to recent scandals and appointments of university ‘leaders.' This article also signals a movement from cosmopolitan sociology to claustropolitan cultural studies, repositioning leadership in universities at the end of the world.

Author Biography

Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research …

The Politics Of Curiosity, Eva-Maria Swidler

Fast Capitalism

Curiosity, a simultaneously intellectual and emotional phenomenon, is surprisingly unstudied, yet pivotal for social critics and activists to understand. While recognizing curiosity as frequently positive and necessary for creating new solidarities and political movements, it also considers the social and political roots and consequences of incuriosity, apathy, and ignorance, including such topics as willful apathy as cultural resistance and self-defense, ignorance as an ethical choice, incuriosity as arrogance, and the generalized anxiety of neoliberal society and the shrinking of curiosity.

Author Biography

Eva-Maria Swidler, Curtis Institute of Music

Eva Swidler is an environmental historian and political economist with additional interest …

Covid-19 Enters College But To What Degree?, Christopher Willard

Fast Capitalism

This article considers the potential long term implications of university emergency responses to Covid-19. While empathetic responses are important in a time of crisis, emergency measures should not necessarily entail the infringement of or the abandonment of rights articulated in existing policies, procedures, collective agreements, or contracts. Areas of particular vulnerability include academic freedom, faculty workload, and intellectual property rights. The author also suggests that crisis responses by higher education may be seen as more of an intensification of neoliberal pressures than as signaling new pressures from the pandemic alone.

Author Biography

Christopher Willard, Alberta University of the Arts

Christopher …

Was Karl Marx An Ecosocialist?, Carl Boggs

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Carl Boggs, National University

Carl Boggs is the author of many books in the fields of critical social theory, American politics, U.S. foreign policy and military history, film studies, and ecology. After receiving his Ph.D. at U.C., Berkeley he taught at Washington University in St. Louis, Carleton University in Ottawa, UCLA, USC, and U.C., Irvine. He is currently professor of social sciences at National University in Los Angeles. He is a regular contributor to the magazine CounterPunch, is a member of the executive board of the Global Studies Association, and is involved with such journals as Theory …

Panic Learning Off (And On) The Covid Campus, Tara Brabazon, Jamie Quinton, Narelle Hunter

Fast Capitalism

Online learning has been flooded with platitudes, promises and possibilities for twenty years. Oversold and undertheorized, online learning reached its "moment' through the Covid lockdown. Underprepared staff and underfunded universities implemented online learning in a crisis. This was a zombie apocalypse of a context in which to summon innovation. This article activates Paul Virilio's University of Disaster to explore the COVID campus and classroom, entering panic learning.

Author Biographies

Tara Brabazon, Dean of Graduate Research / Professor of Cultural Studies Flinders University

Tara Brabazon is the dean of graduate research and professor of cultural studies at Flinders University, Australia, fellow …

Contemptable Safety: Coronavirus, Neoliberalism, And The Moral Value Of Universities, Mark K. Ryan

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Mary K. Ryan, Washington & Jefferson College

Mary K. Ryan is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Public Policy Program at Washington & Jefferson College. Mary received her Ph.D. in Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought from Virginia Tech. Mary's research on race, inequality, social justice, and democracy includes chapters in Poverty in American Popular Culture (McFarland); Protecting Whiteness: Whitelash and the Rejection of Racial Equality (University of Washington Press); Critical Insights: Civil Rights Literature Past and Present (Salem); Surveillance, Race, Culture (Palgrave Macmillan); and Spaces of Surveillance (Palgrave Macmillan) as well as journal …

The Pandemic Preferred User, Katie Ellis, Kai-Ti Kao, Tim Pitman

Fast Capitalism

As COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, universities acted quickly to move their core business of teaching and research online. Classes shifted to platforms such as Zoom, Webex, Collaborate and Microsoft Teams and teachers and students alike were expected to adapt. And they did. While there has been much discussion of the unpaid labour involved in making this shift and the difficulties inherent in merging work, study and domestic life, there has been little acknowledgement or analysis of inherent notions of the preferred user in this rapid shift to technology.

This paper draws on critical disability studies to offer a conceptual …

On The Current Situation: Normal Violences, Pandemics, Emergencies, Necropolitics, Zombies, And Creepy Treehouses, Jeremy Hunsinger

Fast Capitalism

This paper argues that the university is changing in the pandemic but it is the broader contexts of the university and specifically neoliberal politics that originated the change. It then identified several situations that upon witnessing undermine the neoliberal systems of legitimation.

Author Biography

Jeremy Hunsinger, Wilfrid Laurier University

Jeremy Hunsinger is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He teaches and researches critical internet studies, infrastructure studies, cultural politics, and the politics of knowledge. He has co-edited several volumes including two volumes of the International Handbook of Internet Research.

Who Wouldn't Get The Joke?: Vile Sovereignty, Vanishing Mediators, And Trump, Simon Orpana, Evan Mauro

Fast Capitalism

This article considers Trump as an example of "vile sovereignty," a concept Michel Foucault put forward in the mid 1970s to describe "the exercise of power through the explicit disqualification of the person who wields it" (2003b: 35)—a "childish discourse" that disqualifies the speaker at the very moment that they are being appealed to as a figure of authority (36). We argue that this concept helps illuminate contemporary US politics, where Trump's carnivalesque flaunting of political decorum and morality paradoxically seem to buttress the power of his Republican Party. Building upon our theorization of the role vile sovereignty has played …

Capitalism, Racism, And Trumpism: Whitelash And The Politics Of Oppression, David G. Embrick, J. Scott Carter, Cameron Lippard, Bhoomi K. Thakore

Fast Capitalism

That the rising tide of fascism, headwinds of neoliberalism, or persistence of racism in the United States is institutional, systemic, and part of a long history of oppression towards various groups is not new news. The bigger question is how we got to a point in which overt manifestations of racism, sexism, faux democracy, and other forms of illegality and authoritarianism has once again become normalized. What does it mean when a sitting President claims that Mexican immigrants are rapists, criminals, and drug runners? How did we get to a point where we, collectively, are not as outraged as we …

The Death Of Neoliberal Realism?, Zachariah William Wheeler

Fast Capitalism

Post-punk theorist Mark Fisher (d. 2017) shows how neoliberalism relies on a "reflexive impudence" imposed on politics and culture by the necessity of "realism." Neoliberalism puts fixed limits on how we can imagine the future, and what degree of deviation can be expected from participating in the political process. This paper takes seriously Fisher's perspective, analyzing recent political events in the U.S. as they relate to the use of neoliberalism as a deflationary political tactic. My analysis expands on how two different figures, Trump and Sanders, politicize discourse and develop consciousness outside of this pre-approved realism enforced by neoliberalism. Figures …

The Frailty Of The Strong Executive, Peter D. Ore, Andrew Paul Davis

Fast Capitalism

This essay reflects on the contemporaneous empowerment of the executive branch under the Trump administration with regard to other branches of government, as well as the disempowerment of the nation's bureacracy. We argue that this combination leads to a simultaneously unfettered, yet feeble executive that has little oversight, yet is routinely ineffective. We explore how tensions in organizational and political theory with regard to private and public governance have presaged this administrative move. This essay concludes by discussing why elite actors might support such an unencumbered, yet ineffective executive.

Author Biographies

Peter D. Ore, University of Arizona

Peter Ore is …

The United States Of Trump Corp.: The 'Not Normal/New Normal' Governing Style Of A Personal Brand, Steven Alfonso Panageotou, Joel M. Crombez

Fast Capitalism

Mired in inconsistency, contradiction, and scandal, Donald J. Trump's presidency appears to be anything but normal. This has prompted a great deal of searching among social scientists and journalists to understand what exactly is behind Trump's erratic governing style. These narratives center the new normal of American presidential politics on the extreme form of Trump's narcissistic behavior and his flagrant commitment to ethno-nationalist, authoritarian, and neoliberal practices. However, because these narratives rely on traditional political strategies and theories, they do not fully capture the most novel aspects of the Trump mode of governance. What is "not normal" about President Donald …

Introduction To "This Is Not Normal", David M. Arditi, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

Author Biographies

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

David Arditi is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he serves as Director of the Center for Theory. He researches the impact of digital technology on society. His forthcoming book, Getting Signed: Record Contracts, Musicians and Power in Society, explores the way musicians' dreams become their source of exploitation.

Timothy W. Luke, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Timothy W. Luke is a University Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science. Luke's areas of research specialization include environmental and cultural studies …

Review; Rural Education And Queer Identities: Rural And (Out)Rooted, Sara Hall

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This book review examines Rural Education and Queer Identities: Rural and (Out)Rooted, edited by Clint Whitten and Amy Price Azano, an interdisciplinary collection that reconceives rural education as a site of queer worldmaking rather than marginalization. Organized around the metaphors of taproots, root systems, and aerial roots, the collection brings together scholarly essays, creative nonfiction, and poetry to challenge dominant narratives that position queerness as incompatible with rural life. The review considers the collection’s implications for pedagogy and place-based education while noting opportunities for further engagement.

Teacher Representation In Film And Television, Kailey Deweever

Impact: A Journal of Community and Cultural Inquiry in Education

This article explores teacher representation in film and television, highlighting four main archetypes. It discusses how positive portrayals improve public perceptions and teacher self-image, while negative depictions harm both. Additionally, it critiques how infrequent depictions of actual teaching often trivialize the complexity of the profession.

Keywords: Teacher self-image, popular culture, teacher archetypes, teacher representation, film, television