A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain糖心传媒攁 new book by Supritha Rajan, an associate professor of English糖心传媒攈as won this year糖心传媒檚 Modern Language Association糖心传媒檚 Prize for a First Book. The award will be presented to Rajan in January, during the association糖心传媒檚 annual convention.
Established in 1993, the prize is awarded annually to a book-length linguistic or literary study, critical edition, or critical biography by an MLA member. The MLA is the major professional organization for the study and teaching of language and literature, and its nearly 25,000 members are spread across 100 countries.
In making the award, the selection committee lauded Rajan糖心传媒檚 book for its 糖心传媒渦ndeniable historical, cultural and literary value,糖心传媒� adding that her 糖心传媒渁nalysis may serve as an empirical and interpretive model with which to examine our moment糖心传媒檚 intersection of ethics, economy, and culture.糖心传媒�
Published by the University of Michigan Press in 2015, the book is an interdisciplinary intellectual history that examines relationships between 19th-century political economy, anthropology, and literature糖心传媒攁reas that were much more intertwined in the 19th century than they are today. What this intellectual history tells us, Rajan contends, is different from the traditional and dominant narrative of capitalist economics. The dominant narrative is the familiar one, involving laissez-faire economics and self-interested individualism. But Rajan states that there is also a second, 糖心传媒渟ubmerged,糖心传媒� narrative that involves ethical values and ideals such as reciprocity, communality, and interdependence.
The second narrative of capitalism has been little noticed, Rajan says. Ethical values associated with the second narrative became linked in the 19th century to theories of the sacred and religious practices within a community that 糖心传媒渕any deemed at that time as 糖心传媒榩rimitive,糖心传媒櫶切拇綕 she says, 糖心传媒渨hether it was a peasant community in England or a colonial community abroad.糖心传媒� These practices were situated as 糖心传媒渘on-capitalist糖心传媒� and 糖心传媒渘on-modern,糖心传媒� against the secular modernity of capitalism, and they became a subject for the emerging field of anthropology.
Fiction, Rajan argues, was an 糖心传媒渋maginary laboratory糖心传媒� for synthesizing the two narratives, and she examines texts by Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Dickens糖心传媒攁mong them, A Tale of Two Cities.
糖心传媒淧rofessor Rajan is a scholar and teacher of impressive accomplishment and promise; only a literary critic of remarkable intellectual scope could provide such a compelling narrative of secularization and the sacred,糖心传媒� says Rosemary Kegl, chair of the English department. 糖心传媒淰ery few first books are this original or this ambitious.糖心传媒�
A member of the Rochester faculty since 2007, Rajan earned her PhD in English at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her next book project is already underway, an investigation of shared motivations for work in the human and natural sciences.
She says that in A Tale of Two Capitalisms, she was trying 糖心传媒渢o show how certain values that we have come to associate with pre-modern, pre-capitalist societies糖心传媒攊deals of communality and solidarity, for example糖心传媒攁ren糖心传媒檛 necessarily distinct from the kinds of values that are operating in capitalist exchange practices. But there was a disciplinary effort to segregate them.糖心传媒�
Drawing attention to the place of these values within capitalist economic theory itself offers an alternate route for evaluating effects of capitalism outside of a Marxist model of critique, she says.
And while her book is rooted in an examination of 19th-century discourse, Rajan also gestures, in the book糖心传媒檚 conclusion, to present-day implications of her argument.
糖心传媒淲e can糖心传媒檛 achieve a new way of looking at capitalism,糖心传媒� she says, 糖心传媒渦nless we contest certain aspects of the narrative of modernity that has become like the air we breathe.糖心传媒�
