TEHRAN – “Friendship in an Age of Economics: Resisting the Forces of Neoliberalism” by Todd Gifford May has been published by Ney Publications in Tehran.Kaveh Behbahani is the translator of the book originally published in 2012.We live in an age of economics.

We are encouraged not only to think of our work but also of our lives in economic terms. In many of our practices, we are told that we are consumers and entrepreneurs.

What has come to be called neoliberalism is not only a theory of market relations; it is a theory of human relations. “Friendship in an Age of Economics” both describes and confronts this new reality. It confronts it on some familiar terrain: that of friendship.

Friendship, particularly close or deep friendship, resists categorization into economic terms. In a sustained investigation of friendship, this book shows how friendship offers an alternative to neoliberal relationships and can help lay the groundwork for resistance to it.May is a political philosopher who has been teaching at Clemson University, a public land-grant research university in Clemson, South Carolina, for nearly thirty years with specialization in recent French thought, especially that of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. He writes on topics of anarchism, post-structuralism, and post-structuralist anarchism. More recently he has turned his attention to broader life concerns: meaning in life, coping with suffering, acting with moral decency, and so on. He is the author of sixteen books of philosophy.

In addition to his academic work, he teaches in a local prison, and has organized both inside and outside the university, examples of which include opposing the university administration’s public silence on such important issues as racism on campus and the Muslim ban.Photo: Front cover of the Persian edition of Todd Gifford May’s book “Friendship in an Age of Economics: Resisting the Forces of Neoliberalism”.MMS/YAW