"Globalization, transnational capitalism, structural adjustment programmes and the decay of welfare are all signs of the growing power of economics, one of the most potent forces of recent decades." "This profound and dangerous change in the power of abstract economics to shape the lives of people in rich and poor countries alike is the subject of this interdisciplinary study. Contributors show how economics has come to portray a virtual reality - a world that seems real but is merely a reflection of a neo-classical model - and how governments, the World Bank and the IMF combine to stamp the world with a virtual image that condemns as irrational our local social and cultural arrangements. Further, it is argued that virtualism represents the worrying emergence of new forms of abstraction in the political economy, of which economics is just one example."--Jacket.