John Comaroff Theory Of Capitalism

Anxiety can be assumed one of the institutive mechanisms of neoliberalism. In the lights of that, Jean and John Comaroff evaluate production and accumulation processes in terms of how symbols and meanings are interpreted. The changes in the process of production affected people so that they manage their social and economic life in terms of their interpretation of neoliberal forces. They used millennial capitalism so that they tried to show the results of it. “To the degree that millennial capitalism fuses the modern and the postmodern, hope and hopelessness, utility and futility, the world created in its image presents itself as a mass of contradictions: as a world, simultaneously, of possibility and impossibility (Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff,

Millennial capitalism is a system in which capital and production distanced from people and consumption becomes more visible. In that sense, illegal, unethical and magical implications take place to reverse the effects. It is another sense, as Comaroff states, casino capitalism. People have nothing to lose so they manage their social and economic life in this way. John and Jean Comaroff explain the results of millennial capitalism as follows: “A striking corollary of the dawning Age of Millennial Capitalism has been the global proliferation of occult economies. These economies have two dimensions: a material aspect founded on the sustained effort to conjure wealth - or to account for its accumulation - by appeal to techniques that defy practical reason; and an ethical aspect, grounded in the moral discourses sparked by the manufacture of value, either real or imagined, by arcane, "magical" means (Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, 2000:301).” Thus, it can be said that drastically increased witchcraft in South African post-colonial life is a result of anxiety that neoliberal production of wealth

For instance Scheper-Hughes discuss about human organ trafficking in relation to millennial capitalism and human values in her article. Organ donations have rules so that governments try to preserve equal value of human life. However people who have diseases or who live in poor conditions are desperate so that they voluntarily become a subject of occult economy. In the article, Rotten trade: Millennial capitalism, human values and global justice in organs trafficking, Mr K. has become a subject of kidney market. Former baker Mr. K. now earns $2 daily for living from junkman and lives in a room. Thus he runs into dealers and tries to sell his kidney. The beginning price was $50000 but when he realizes they are about to leave, he decides $10000 for his kidney. The anxiety of living bad conditions and lacking of the fiscal or/and cultural capital leads people to become a subject of millennial