The temporality of no hope

The anthropologist and prominent Australian public intellectual Ghassan Hage has recently drawn attention to the changing character of capitalism and the increasing unequal distribution of hope following neoliberal reform. Hage writes, "Capitalist societies are characterised by a deep inequality in their distribution of hope, and when such inequality reaches an extreme, certain groups are not offered any hope at all" (2003:17). According to Hage, as a result of the expansion of transnational firms, the character of capitalism has profoundly changed. Global capitalism in turn changed the way the state relates to society: "National and sub-national (such as State or provincial) governments all over the world are transformed from being primarily the managers of a national society to being the managers of the aesthetics of investment space" (19).