How the 1970s energy crisis facilitated a neoliberal shift in US political culture.
In Energizing Neoliberalism, Caleb Wellum offers a provocative account of how the 1970s energy crisis helped to re-create postwar America. Rather than think of the crisis as the obvious outcome of the decade''s "oil shocks," Wellum unpacks the cultural construction of a crisis of energy across different sectors of society, from presidents, policy experts, and environmentalists to filmmakers, economists, and oil futures traders. He shows how the dominant meanings ascribed to the 1970s energy crisis helped to energize neoliberal visions of renewed abundance and power through free market values and approaches to energy.
Deeply researched in federal archives, expert discourse, and popular culture, Energizing Neoliberalism demonstrates the central role that energy crisis narratives played in America''s neoliberal turn. Wellum traces the roots of the crisis to the consumpt
