ABSTRACT
It is always difficult to tell where capitalism will go next as it continues to seek out new sources of profit. After all, capitalism is not a fixed and unforgiving force. Rather, it is a heterogeneous and continually dynamic process of increasingly global connection – often made through awkward and makeshift links – and those links can be surprising, not least because they often produce unexpected spatial formations which can themselves have force (Amin 2004; Bayart 2001; Moore 2004; Tsing 2005). In this chapter, I therefore want to take some really quite specific links in an increasingly globally connected capitalism, links to do with what might still be considered to be its beating heart – the system of production of commodities and the process of commodification – and to attempt to weave them into a general story about what might be happening currently at its leading edge. Conforming to the premise that there is an urgent necessity to anticipate the transformation and command strategies of capital,1 I want to argue that it is possible to detect a series of novel practices emerging which are likely to have
interesting consequences over the long term, both economically and culturally. Indeed by constantly putting these two descriptors into play, these practices once again reinforce the argument that political economy can no longer claim an ‘isolement splendide, majestueux et décevant’ (Tarde 1902: 97).
