The article is an evaluation of the economic, organizational and social theory of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s The New Spirit of Capitalism 15 years after its publication. The role of network capitalism, state capitalism, and aesthetic capitalism in French social life is analysed. The article concludes that flexible network capitalism was largely a chimera of the 1990s and that French political and economic life today is dominated by an ailing state capitalism.
AtlanH (2011) Selected Writings: On Self-Organization, Philosophy, Bioethics, and Judaism. New York: Fordham University Press.
2.
BarelY (1979) Le paradoxe et le système. Grenoble: Presses Universitaires de Grenoble.
3.
BouchetD (2007) The ambiguity of the modern conception of autonomy and the paradox of culture. Thesis Eleven88: 31–54.
4.
BettencourtLMALoboJHelbingDKuhnertCWestGB (2007) Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States104(17): 7301–7306.
5.
BettencourtLMALoboJStrumskyDWestGB (2010) Urban scaling and its deviations: Revealing the structure of wealth, innovation and crime across cities. PLOS One5: 11.
6.
BoltanskiLChiapelloE (2007) The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.
7.
CastoriadisC (1997a) World in Fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
8.
CastoriadisC (1997b) The Castoriadis Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
9.
CastoriadisC (1993) Political and Social Writings, Volume 3: 1961–1979. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
10.
CaulcuttC (2014) France adds employability to the university mission. Times Higher Education Supplement, 23 January.
11.
DebordG (1994) The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books.
12.
DupuyJ-P (2009) On the Origins of Cognitive Science: The Mechanization of the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
13.
Economist (2014) Can François do a Gerhard?The Economist, 11 January.
14.
FayolH (1949 [1917]) General and Industrial Management. London: Pitman.
15.
Floc’hB (2014) De plus en plus de jeunes quittent la France. Le Monde, 10 March.
16.
FriedmanM (1962) Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
17.
FriedmanMFriedmanR (1980) Free to Choose. New York: Harcourt.
18.
HayekF (1952) The Sensory Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
19.
HayekF (1960) The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
20.
HayekF (1973–9) Law, Legislation and Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
21.
LefortC (1986) The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy, Totalitarianism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
22.
LefortC (1987) Democracy and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
23.
LyotardJF (1985 [1979]) Just Gaming. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
24.
MichelsenA (2007) Autotranscendence and creative organization: On self-creation and self-organization. Thesis Eleven88: 55–75.
25.
MichelsenA (2014) The visual experience economy: What kind of economics? On the topologies of aesthetic capitalism. In: MurphyPde la FuenteE (eds) Aesthetic Capitalism. Leiden: Brill.
26.
MurphyP (2014) The aesthetic spirit of modern capitalism. In: MurphyPde la FuenteE (eds) Aesthetic Capitalism. Leiden: Brill.
27.
SchumpeterJ (1976 [1942]) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: George Allen and Unwin.
28.
SchumpeterJ (1982 [1911]) The Theory of Economic Development. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.
29.
WyploszC (2014) France’s economic sickness might defy a cure. The Conversation, 16 January.
