On Thursday, May 4th, Melinda Cooper will have a reading and discussion about her book Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism.

In a series of case studies ranging from Bill Clinton’s welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Family Values explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, the book argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.

Melinda Cooper is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era.