Neoliberalism is transmitted through everyday consumer encounters, not texts

Evidence

Not many people can be bothered to actually read Hayek or Buchanan or Milton Friedman or (even) Ayn Rand; but a whole lot more people drink fair trade coffee from time to time, watch Big Brother or Jerry Springer; have a Facebook page they desultorily update; contemplate whether to buy insurance; find themselves short until payday; are worried enough to check their FICO score; spring for a lottery ticket at the checkout; feel conflicted at the sight of a scruffy panhandler; worry about the foreclosure sale down the street; commiserate with friends over what to think about the British summer of riots in 2011; take medication to lose weight; or anguish over whether to visit a fertility clinic. In these thousand and one little encounters spread over a lifetime, the average person begins to absorb a set of images, causal scenarios, and precepts that begin to add up to something approaching a worldview. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 431

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the ‘daily life infrastructure’ of ideology - how FICO scores, payday loans, and reality TV train subjects for economic rationalism better than any treatise.
• DEEPTHINKING: Inverts the classic ‘people don’t read theory’ objection by pointing out ideology works through mundane practice, a genuinely analytical point about how the thought collective propagates.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism works best when subjects willingly internalize market logic through everyday micro-interactions; Non-philosophy disciplines have best grasped everyday neoliberal consciousness — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 253; Neoliberalism persists through pervasive cultural imagery, not popular political theory — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 246 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism persists through pervasive cultural imagery, not popular political theory #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 246
• Neoliberalism’s durability rests on fusing the economic with the cultural #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298
• Neoliberal legitimacy is secured by lifestyle knowhow rather than profit itself #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 755
• Treating culture and economics as separate spheres misreads how neoliberalism operates #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298