ABSTRACT
This chapter examines aspects of the changing conditions for teachers and their work arising from processes of globalisation and regionalization. It attempts to understand aspects of the new politics of global competitiveness and its underlying social relations of production and consumption. The chapter uses the term 'fast capitalism' as a descriptive and metaphoric category to point to a number of different but related aspects of the changed social relations of capitalist production and consumption that are part of the new social settlement. Ben Agger argues that "fast capitalism is distinguished by the way in which the line between the textual and the material world is blurred to the point of being indistinguishable, hence making it difficult to decipher the texts of ideology which enmesh us in their thoughtlessness". 'Fast capitalism' signifies a new phase in the global economy.
