Sock Puppets on Neoliberal Society

by Kieran Healy on February 17, 2008

Via Wicked Anomie. Imagine Sifl and Olly with less slacking and more social theory.

{ 9 comments }

1

DB 02.17.08 at 3:39 am

Speaking of sock puppets, here’s a hilarious story about a corporate quarterly earnings conference call hoaxster, from the weekend WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120301945499169247.html?mod=home_we_banner_left

I for one think “Joe Herrick” is Michael Berube, wasting time he could be using to learn French!

2

yoyo 02.17.08 at 4:59 am

Amazing.

3

Nick 02.17.08 at 10:17 am

Two nice bits of product placement too . . .

4

abb1 02.17.08 at 11:08 am

What they’re describing there – is it really the essence of neoliberalism, or is it more like propaganda, ideological indoctrination accompanying neoliberal policies?

5

wolfgang 02.17.08 at 2:54 pm

the creators are from the Austrian group monochrom.
an echo from the Austrian Marxists with google and ipod mixed in?

6

noen 02.17.08 at 7:06 pm

Boingboing also covered this. From the comments:

Our puppet piece is not directly dealing with economic theory, it is dealing with the shift in power structures. It’s a brief summary of Foucault’s concept of the -> “disciplinary society” and Deleuze’s adaption of Foucault’s ideas (-> “society of control”).

So it isn’t Marxist per se. Also from the comments Zuzu makes the observation:

This is tagged funny because they perpetuate the myth of the Labor Theory of Value, right?

The problem with Neo-Liberalism is the cognitive dissonance between the Classical Liberal theory espoused and the manner “privatization” is put into practice — which more accurately would be called Corporatism.

Which seems to me to be a very accurate assessment.

7

Chris Ashley 02.17.08 at 7:14 pm

Anybody who rips off Avenue Q is doing something right. (See The Internet Is For Porn as performed by one Trekkie Monster.)

8

Walt 02.18.08 at 6:25 am

The imitations of Kermit and Cookie Monster were pretty good.

9

a very public sociologist 02.18.08 at 12:11 pm

Noen @6, there’s “dissonance” between classical liberalism and neoliberalism because the relationship between the two is very superficial. Allow me to try the patience of the administrators of this good blog to plug an old(ish) post of mine from last week on defining neoliberalism.

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