Avoiding 1984 Book

I'm a big fan of their first book, The End of Capitalism (as We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, and I loved this one too. In The End of Capitalism, they make a compelling (and often very funny) argument that we should stop focusing on capitalism so much (seeing it everywhere, spending lots of our energy critiquing it)'they call this tendency "capitalistocentrist" and say that such a focus is self-defeating in that it sustains a notion of capitalism as ubiquitous, inevitable, or as super-powerful. Instead, in a queer theory vein, they argue that we should develop our eye for the diversity of economic life, and recognize the extent to which non-capitalist transactions (household work, lending practices, stealing, for example) mark our lives and relationships. In this second book, they do what they recommend in the first: they turn their attention to all kinds of alternative economic ways of being and interacting, both in everyday life and in community projects. Here's what they say about the transition between the books:

[In the End of Capitalism]. we spoke to our readers as somewhat wayward feminists who seemed to relish our positioning as mildly outrageous, quirkily funny, and ambiguously gendered. A Postcapitalist Politics has a completely different feel; it reads like a wholesome, even earnest treatise on how to do economy differently. The authorial stance is open, exposed, even vulnerable, entirely different from the shining armor we of the earlier book (and much less fun, we fear).

I, for one, enjoyed both gears of their writing and found the second book just as fun (and thought-provoking) as their first. I'm looking forward to teaching it!