The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy - Rilegato

Graeber, David

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1612193749 ISBN 13: 9781612193748

Casa editrice: Melville House, 2015

Riassunto

From the author of the international bestseller Debt: The First 5,000 Years comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives  

Where does the desire for endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy come from? How did we come to spend so much of our time filling out forms? And is it really a cipher for state violence?
 
To answer these questions, the anthropologist David Graeber—one of our most important and provocative thinkers—traces the peculiar and unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy today, and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice...though he also suggests that there may be something perversely appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy.
 
Leaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics to the hidden meanings behind Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory in the tradition of Foucault and Marx, and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture that calls to mind Slavoj Zizek at his most accessible.
 
An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

'[A] fizzing, fabulous firecracker of a book... Our contemporary bureaucrats are revealed, in fact, as none other than you and me, forever administering and marketing ourselves.' - Literary Review

'Four years ago [Graeber] penned a brilliant treatise on debt, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. His new book develops this analysis and asks why so much of modern life is dominated by endless bureaucracy and frustrating administrative tasks, whether in relation to finance, healthcare or almost everything else... Graeber's book should offer a challenge to us all. Should we just accept this bureaucracy as inevitable? Or is there a way to get rid of all those hours spent listening to bad call centre music?... Can we imagine another world?' - Gillian Tett
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'Graeber's most interesting claim... is that our expressed hostility toward bureaucracy is at least partly disingenuous: that these thickets of rules and regulations are a source, to quote from his subtitle, of 'secret joys' for most of us.' - Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian

Praise for David Graeber and DEBT:

'A startlingly original thinker... able to convey complicated ideas with wit and clarity' - The Telegraph

'A brilliant, deeply original political thinker' - Rebecca Solnit

'I loved this book' - Thomas Piketty, author of 'Capital in the Twenty-First Century'

'One of the year's most influential books' - Paul Mason, The Guardian

'Fascinating... Graeber's book is not just thought provoking, but also exceedingly timely' - Gillian Tett, Financial Times

'When you read this you'll be cleverer' - Russell Brand

'Brilliant, unexpectedly funny, and provides many bracing perspectives on the subject' - A 2012 Book of the Year in The Spectator

'The most important theory book I've read this year, an essential take on the current crisis by an anarchist anthropologist who combines credentials with readability' - Laurie Penny's Book of 2012 in the New Statesman

'The book is more readable and entertaining than I can indicate... It is a meditation on debt, tribute, gifts, religion and the false history of money. Graeber is a scholarly researcher, an activist and a public intellectual.' (Peter Carey, The Observer)

L'autore:

DAVID GRAEBER teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct Action: An Ethnography. He has written for Harper’s, The Nation, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Left Review.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Melville House
• Data di pubblicazione: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1612193749
• ISBN 13: 9781612193748
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 272