Digesting Neo-Liberalism and Capitalism

            Truth be told, I had some difficulty in following the introduction to the readings for today. I felt somewhat lost in ascertaining what the true "focus” was. This may have been in part the writing style. However, what was clear, was the level of “totality” with which the authors wish to examine the issues, though I found it written in a bit of a convoluted manner. The two pieces I selected to read, in no particular order other than their titles caught my eye and sounded interesting, were “Your Family and Friends are Collateral: Micro finance and the Social”, as well as the “Tales of Physics and Cosmographies of Capitalism”.

            I was particularly curious about the title of the first piece by Caroline Shuster. I couldn’t really fathom what she meant by family and friends as “collateral”. I was familiar with the concept of collateral, similar to what she describes for conventional debt, and the class had briefly touched on the idea of individuals having nothing with which to establish credit for loans. However, I had never head of loans, even small ones of $100 being lent to groups, such as the ones described. In some ways, it almost seemed like an ingenious solution, and allowed for women’s empowerment. However, I agree with the author that, this commoditization of even social ties and family members seems incredibly dangerous, and clearly puts the organizer of the loan in a precarious situation. My question to the class for this piece is if they believe that such a system could work in the United States, or is it a system which could be easily taken advantage of?

Concerning the second piece by Mai Zhan, I once again found myself struggling to extrapolate the focus of the writing. I feel that it may be a critique about the western interpretation of capitalism being applied to everything, and in this case, China’s capitalistic economy. I did like, and find rather clever, the analogy to the ambiguous zodiac. In this case, I would appreciate a class discussion to clarify, which is an ironic request, what the author was truly getting at.