Digital Commons Network^™

To Family, Friends, And Colleagues Of The Late Dr. Ben Agger, Jason E. Shelton

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

In Memory Of Ben Agger, Bob Kunovich

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Dr. Ben Agger: Colleague And Friend, Robert L. Bing Iii

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Short Tribute To Ben Agger, Elisabeth Chaves

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Fast Capitalism 14.1, Timothy W. Luke

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

The Antinomies Of Brexit, Paul Smith

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Paul Smith, George Mason University

Paul Smith was educated at Cambridge and at the University of Kent in the UK and has a PhD in American Studies. Most of his working life has been spent in the US, including posts at Miami University OH, and Carnegie Mellon before his appointment to George Mason University in 1996. Between 1999 and 2002 he was chaired Professor and department head of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK. At Mason he has been director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and currently teaches …

Abject Futures: The (Re)Negotiation Of Nafta And The Canadian Power Elite, Dean Ray

Fast Capitalism

This paper draws upon the critical political economy tradition in Canada to examine the renegotiation of NAFTA and the class interests at work in the final agreement. It draws on a range of ethnographic and media sources in its argumentation. The paper provides a comprehensive review of Canadian Political Economy before it turns to the negotiation and the actions of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland. It is argued that Freeland was adept at appearance management and manipulating media presentations of herself to make the negotiation seem more laboured then it was. In the end, the agreement protected Canada's crown jewel, …

Taking Back Control Of Nothing: Elites Denouncing Elites To Mobilize Populism In The Service Of Power - From Nafta To Trump, Brexit And The Eu, Christian Garland

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Christian Garland

Christian Garland teaches precariously at Queen Mary, University of London and has degrees in Philosophy and Politics from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Social and Political Thought from the University of Sussex. He has research interests include Marx and Frankfurt School Critical Theory especially applying this to the rapidly changing nature of work and how this can be said to embody social relations of atomization and individualization: the re-composition and restructuring of the Capital-labor relation itself.

Neoliberalism, Nafta, And Dehumanization: The Case Of Femicides In Ciudad Juárez, Denisa Krasna, Sagar Deva

Fast Capitalism

The overarching focus of this paper is on the way in which the neoliberalism inherent in the international institutional order produces dehumanisation in the third world and the way in which this dehumanisation manifests itself in direct loss of human life through exploitation and even murder. This paper is split into two main parts, the first of which gives a theoretical and general overview of how neoliberalism has both dominated and dehumanised the international institutional order and the second part of the paper gives a more in-depth case study of this phenomena, focusing on how NAFTA has engendered femicides in …

Twenty-Five Years And Still Recovering: A Brief Reflection On Nafta's Impact On Southside, Virginia, Sandra Via

Fast Capitalism

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has had a detrimental effect on Southside, Virginia. Southside, Virginia, particularly Martinsville, VA and Henry County, VA served as a hub for the furniture and textile industries, such as Bassett Furniture and Bassett-Walker Apparel, in the United States. After NAFTA's implementation, these companies eliminated jobs and moved manufacturing overseas to China or across the border to Mexico where they could exploit low wage workers. Neglecting the social responsibility that these corporations had to the workers that had built their companies and made their products world renown, manufacturers closed their doors leaving workers without …

Introduction: The Contradictions Of Opposition To Free Trade, David M. Arditi

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

David M. Arditi, University of Texas Arlington

David Arditi is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. His research addresses the impact of digital technology on society and culture with a specific focus on music. Arditi is author of iTake-Over: The Recording Industry in the digital era. Arditi serves as Editor of Fast Capitalism. In 2016, he developed MusicDetour, a local music archive available for everyone to stream free music.

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 …

About The Authors, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Full Issue, Fast Capitalism Editorial Team

Fast Capitalism

No abstract provided.

Pandemic Mask Mandates And Closures Were Linked To Increased Gun Violence, Douglas A. Wolf, Emily W. Wiemers, Iliya Gutin, Jennifer Karas Montez, Shannon M. Monnat

Population Health Research Brief Series

Gun violence worsened substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. This brief summarizes findings from a study using weekly gun violence casualty data from 2016-2021 for 304 U.S. counties from the Gun Violence Archive and COVID-19 policy data from county-level measures of activity restrictions and masking requirements. The authors find that policies requiring masking and activity restrictions were associated with significant increases in gun violence. Indoor masking requirements were linked to a 28% increase in gun violence, while activity restrictions were associated with a 4.2% increase.

Atlanta '96: The Games And The South, Beau Bowden

ETDs from 2020-2029

The Centennial Olympiad, hosted by Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996, demonstrated key principles of the postsouthern mindset, a movement typically associated with literary criticism that, if applied to historiographic methods, offers valuable insights into how Atlantans confronted competing identities of being a modern international city hailed as the Black Mecca, and a city forever linked to the Lost Cause, Ku Klux Klan, and racial inequality. During the Opening Ceremonies, specifically, Olympic organizers curated a celebration touting the city’s and region’s multiculturalism and corporate might, as described by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympics (ACOG), the body responsible for organizing the games, …

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.

Development And Validation Of A Theoretically Informed Instrument To Measure The Antecedents Of Microbreaking Intentions (I-Mami) Of Procedural Healthcare Workers, Robin Riddle

ETDs from 2020-2029

ABSTRACT Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSD) affect 77% of nurses and 60% of surgeons, exceeding rates in other occupational sectors and threatening healthcare workforce sustainability. Microbreaking is brief, strategic pause of 20 seconds to five minutes performed every 20 to 40 minutes during medical procedures. It has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing fatigue, improving accuracy, and lowering physiological stress markers without extending medical procedure duration. Despite this evidence, adoption remains limited, and no theoretically informed instruments exist to measure the behavioral determinants of microbreaking intentions among procedural healthcare workers. Investigators of this three-manuscript dissertation developed and established content and construct validity as …

Hard Hats And Second Chances: A Phenomenological Study Of Employer Support In Construction-Based Reintegration, Christofer M. Pacheco

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative phenomenological study examines how formerly incarcerated individuals perceive and experience employer support during workplace reintegration in the construction industry. Although employment is widely recognized as a protective factor against recidivism, post-hire experiences from the perspective of justice-involved employees remain underexplored. Grounded in an interpretivist paradigm and informed by Social Support, Social Learning, and Identity perspectives, the study investigated how structure, self, and environment interact to influence retention, growth, and desistance.

Nineteen interviews were completed with six construction workers in New Mexico who had maintained employment for at least one year following incarceration. Through the use of Seidman’s three-interview …

Liturgies Of The Self: Contemporary American Cult Fiction, Identity, And Narrative Evangelism, Kerry Hillis Goff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

“Liturgies of the Self: Contemporary American Cult Fiction, Identity, and Narrative Evangelism,” examines how American novels from 1980 to the present stage cultic logic as a cultural grammar of belonging. Across two cohorts—1980–2000 and 2001–present—the project demonstrates how narratives of consumerism, violence, embodiment, race, and simulation reveal identity as liturgical performance rather than autonomous selfhood. The first cohort—Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985), Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club (1996), Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (1991), Douglas Coupland’s Generation X (1991), and Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love (1989)—dramatizes cultic rituals through spectacle, grotesque display, and overt performance. DeLillo stages consumer spectacle as collective liturgy; …

Father Knows Best? Not Here: Metaphors Of Kinship And Kingship In Haudenosaunee, Aristotelian, And Confucian Political Thought, Ian Kalman

Comparative Philosophy

The notion that the organization of large-scale social structures are rooted in domestic ones has a longstanding history in both Chinese and Greek classical political philosophy. Aristotle and Confucius independently reasoned that a good family, one with a strong father, mapped onto a good state, one with a strong king - though they differed on the details. While there is a strong literature juxtaposing these two titans, less attention has been paid to how their ideas compare with other philosophical traditions. This article provides an anthropological intervention to the comparative study of Confucius and Aristotle – while both autonomously argued …

The Coherence Of Navayāna Pragmatism: Ambedkar And The Pragmatist Reconstruction Of Buddhist Philosophy, Danish Hamid

Comparative Philosophy

This paper examines the philosophical coherence of B.R. Ambedkar’s reconstruction of his (Navayāna) Buddhism in relation to John Dewey’s pragmatism. Building on Scott Stroud’s reading of Ambedkar as a Deweyan Pragmatist (2017, 2023), it argues that Dewey’s evolutionary naturalism, his conception of growth, and pragmatic redefinition of concepts provide Ambedkar with the methodological tools for a naturalistic and socially reconstructive reinterpretation of Buddhist doctrines such as anicca (impermanence), dhamma (Buddha’s teaching), nirvāṇa (enlightenment), karuna (compassion), etc. Ambedkar transforms impermanence from a metaphysics of flux into an ethics of progressive growth, and recasts dhamma as a social morality grounded in fraternity …

The Modern-World System: Europe Or Asia? Fernand Braudel & André Gunder Frank, Charles Lemert

Fast Capitalism

Author Biography

Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University

Charles Lemert is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University and will soon publish: Americans Thinking America; The Bottom Turtle: Silence and Society; and. with Immanuel Wallerstein: Living Progressively in a Transitional Time.

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 …

The Solace Of The Sojourn: Towards A Praxis-Oriented Phenomenological Methodology And Ethics Of Deep Travel In Martin Heidegger's Sojourns

Fast Capitalism

This article focuses on Martin Heidegger's little read travel journal, Sojourns (1962), and explores how it yields surprisingly fruitful insights into our contemporary era of neoliberal globalization via its implicit exploration of the complex interconnections between travel, phenomenology, and ethics. Specifically, I posit that Sojourns contains an implicit praxis-oriented phenomenological methodology and ethics of global travel that together gesture towards a coherent practice of "deep travel," which American literature scholar Cinzia Schiavini aptly defines as "a vertical movement in a closed space which starts from the surface of the land and goes backward in time, searching for the hidden social …

Bound To Capitalism: The Pursuit Of Profit And Pleasure In Digital Pornography, Jennifer Miller

Fast Capitalism

This paper explores digital pornography dialectically through a case study of Kink.com, an online BDSM subscription service. It considers the tension between discourses of authenticity that seek to obscure profit motive and shifts in content prompted by market considerations.

Author Biography

Jennifer Miller, University of Texas at Arlington

Jennifer Miller is an interdisciplinary scholar and cultural theorist who researches children's picture books. She has published in the Journal of Homosexuality, the edited collection Heroes, Heroines, and Everything in Between, and is currently working on a book length project under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.

The Twilight Of Automation, Mario Khreiche

Fast Capitalism

The future of work has come under renewed scrutiny amidst growing concerns about automation threatening widespread joblessness and precarity. While some researchers rush to declare new machine ages and industrial revolutions, others proceed with business as usual, suggesting that specialized job training and prudent reform will sufficiently equip workers for future employment. Among the points of contention are the scope and rate whereby human labor will be replaced by machines. Inflated predictions in this regard not only entice certified technologists and neoclassical economists, but also increasingly sway leftist commentators who echo the experts' cases for ramping up the proliferation of …