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Futilitarianism
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Download or read book Futilitarianism written by Neil Vallelly and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal for countering the futility of neoliberal existence to build an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future. If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximization and the common good. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms--including "the futilitarian condition," "homo futilitus," and "semio-futility"--to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximization traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. This urgent and provocative book chimes with the mood of the time by at once mapping the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, developing an original framework for understanding neoliberalism, and recounting the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. At a time of epoch-defining disasters, from climate emergencies to deadly pandemics, countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future.
Download or read book Futilitarianism written by Neil Vallelly and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A proposal for countering the futility of neoliberal existence to build an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future. If maximizing utility leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, as utilitarianism has always proposed, then why is it that as many of us currently maximize our utility--by working endlessly, undertaking further education and training, relentlessly marketing and selling ourselves--we are met with the steady worsening of collective social and economic conditions? In Futilitarianism, social and political theorist Neil Vallelly eloquently tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility maximization and the common good. Drawing on a vast array of contemporary examples, from self-help literature and marketing jargon to political speeches and governmental responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vallelly coins several terms--including "the futilitarian condition," "homo futilitus," and "semio-futility"--to demonstrate that in the neoliberal decades, the practice of utility maximization traps us in useless and repetitive behaviors that foreclose the possibility of collective happiness. This urgent and provocative book chimes with the mood of the time by at once mapping the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, developing an original framework for understanding neoliberalism, and recounting the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. At a time of epoch-defining disasters, from climate emergencies to deadly pandemics, countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future.
Download or read book Futilitarianism written by S. Subramanian and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-04-13 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an overview of, and commentary on, aspects of contemporary India and its socio-economic policies. It focuses on India’s economy and society in recent years, and in the process it addresses structural issues of development such as those of population, poverty, inequality, health, and social exclusion. It reviews the adequacy and appropriateness of governmental response to these problems, in terms of public policy, narrowly conceived, and philosophical orientation, more broadly conceived. The concern is not only with economic achievement and human development but also with the framework of civic rights, personal liberty, and institutional autonomy within which the exercise of governance is perceived to be carried out. The essays in this volume were originally written with the general-reader-as-involved-citizen very much in mind as the intended target. However, it should also be of interest to scholars of economics, political science, development studies, and South Asian studies.
Book Synopsis Can Markets Solve Problems? by : Daniel Neyland
Download or read book Can Markets Solve Problems? written by Daniel Neyland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative analysis of market-based interventions into public problems and the consequences. Market-based interventions have been used in attempts to solve numerous public problems, from education to healthcare and from climate change to privacy. Scholars have responded persuasively through critiques of neoliberalism. In Can Markets Solve Problems? Daniel Neyland, Véra Ehrenstein, and Sveta Milyaeva propose a different route forward. There is no single entity knowable as “the market,” the authors argue. Instead, they examine in detail the devices, relations, and practices that underpin these market-based interventions. Drawing on recent work in science and technology studies (STS), each chapter focuses on a different intervention and critically explores the market sensibility around which it is organized. Trade and exchange, competition, property and ownership, and investment and return all become the focus of a thorough exploration of what it means to intervene in public problems, how problems are composed, and how solutions are continually reworked. Can Markets Solve Problems? offers the first book-length STS enquiry into markets and public problems. Weaving together rich empirical descriptions and conceptual discussions, the book provides in-depth insights into the workings of these markets, their continuous evolution, and the consequences. The result is a new avenue of critical inquiry that moves between the details of specific policies and the always-emerging, collective features of this landscape of intervention.
Book Synopsis The Economics of Contemporary Latin America by : Beatriz Armendariz
Download or read book The Economics of Contemporary Latin America written by Beatriz Armendariz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-05-05 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysis of Latin America's economy focusing on development, covering the colonial roots of inequality, boom and bust cycles, labor markets, and fiscal and monetary policy. Latin America is richly endowed with natural resources, fertile land, and vibrant cultures. Yet the region remains much poorer than its neighbors to the north. Most Latin American countries have not achieved standards of living and stable institutions comparable to those found in developed countries, have experienced repeated boom-bust cycles, and remain heavily reliant on primary commodities. This book studies the historical roots of Latin America's contemporary economic and social development, focusing on poverty and income inequality dating back to colonial times. It addresses today's legacies of the market-friendly reforms that took hold in the 1980s and 1990s by examining successful stabilizations and homemade monetary and fiscal institutional reforms. It offers a detailed analysis of trade and financial liberalization, twenty–first century-growth, and the decline in poverty and income inequality. Finally, the book offers an overall analysis of inclusive growth policies for development—including gender issues and the informal sector—and the challenges that lie ahead for the region, with special attention to pressing demands by the vibrant and vocal middle class, youth unemployment, and indigenous populations.
Download or read book Unprecedented? written by William Davies and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical and evidence-based account of the COVID-19 pandemic as a political–economic rupture, exposing underlying power struggles and social injustices. The dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic represented an exceptional interruption in the routines of work, financial markets, movement across borders and education. The policies introduced in response were said to be unprecedented—but the distribution of risks and rewards was anything but. While asset-owners, outsourcers, platforms and those in spacious homes prospered, others faced new hardships and dangers. Unprecedented? explores the events of 2020-21, as they afflicted the UK economy, as a means to grasp the underlying dynamics of contemporary capitalism, which are too often obscured from view. It traces the political and cultural contours of a "rentier nationalism," that was lurking prior to the pandemic, but was accelerated and illuminated by COVID-19. But it also pinpoints the contradictions and weaknesses of this capitalist model, and the new sources of opposition that it meets. An empirical, accessible and critical analysis of the COVID economy, Unprecedented? is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the political and economic turbulence of the pandemic’s first eighteen months.
Book Synopsis The Morals of the Market by : Jessica Whyte
Download or read book The Morals of the Market written by Jessica Whyte and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fatal embrace of human rights and neoliberalism Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, Jessica Whyte uncovers the place of human rights in neoliberal attempts to develop a moral framework for a market society. In the wake of the Second World War, neoliberals saw demands for new rights to social welfare and self-determination as threats to “civilisation”. Yet, rather than rejecting rights, they developed a distinctive account of human rights as tools to depoliticise civil society, protect private investments and shape liberal subjects.
Book Synopsis Futile Pleasures by : Corey McEleney
Download or read book Futile Pleasures written by Corey McEleney and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2017-01-02 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, 2018 MLA Prize for a First Book Against the defensive backdrop of countless apologetic justifications for the value of literature and the humanities, Futile Pleasures reframes the current conversation by returning to the literary culture of early modern England, a culture whose defensive posture toward literature rivals and shapes our own. During the Renaissance, poets justified the value of their work on the basis of the notion that the purpose of poetry is to please and instruct, that it must be both delightful and useful. At the same time, many of these writers faced the possibility that the pleasures of literature may be in conflict with the demand to be useful and valuable. Analyzing the rhetoric of pleasure and the pleasure of rhetoric in texts by William Shakespeare, Roger Ascham, Thomas Nashe, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton, McEleney explores the ambivalence these writers display toward literature’s potential for useless, frivolous vanity. Tracing that ambivalence forward to the modern era, this book also shows how contemporary critics have recapitulated Renaissance humanist ideals about aesthetic value. Against a longstanding tradition that defensively advocates for the redemptive utility of literature, Futile Pleasures both theorizes and performs the queer pleasures of futility. Without ever losing sight of the costs of those pleasures, McEleney argues that playing with futility may be one way of moving beyond the impasses that modern humanists, like their early modern counterparts, have always faced.
Book Synopsis Reflexive Democracy by : Kevin Olson
Download or read book Reflexive Democracy written by Kevin Olson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-04-28 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument for justifying the welfare state politically rather than economically, based on an ideal of democratic equality.
Book Synopsis From the Corn Laws to Free Trade by : Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey
Download or read book From the Corn Laws to Free Trade written by Cheryl Schonhardt-Bailey and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The repeal of Britain's Corn Laws in 1846, one of the most important economic policy decisions of the 19th century, has long intrigued and puzzled political scientists, historians, and economists. This book examines the interacting forces that brought about the abrupt beginning of Britain's free-trade empire.
Book Synopsis From the Margins by : Brian Keith Axel
Download or read book From the Margins written by Brian Keith Axel and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2002-06-07 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVState-of-the-art volume by the major voices in historical anthropology./div
Book Synopsis You Took the Last Bus Home by : Brian Bilston
Download or read book You Took the Last Bus Home written by Brian Bilston and published by Unbound Publishing. This book was released on 2016-10-06 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You Took the Last Bus Home is the first and long-awaited collection of ingeniously hilarious and surprisingly touching poems from Brian Bilston, the mysterious ‘Poet Laureate of Twitter’. With endless wit, imaginative wordplay and underlying heartache, he offers profound insights into modern life, exploring themes as diverse as love, death, the inestimable value of a mobile phone charger, the unbearable torment of forgetting to put the rubbish out, and the improbable nuances of the English language. Constantly experimenting with literary form, Bilston’s words have been known to float off the page, take the shape of the subjects they explore, and reflect our contemporary world in the form of Excel spreadsheets, Venn diagrams and Scrabble tiles. This irresistibly charming collection of his best-loved poems will make you laugh out loud while making you question the very essence of the human condition in the twenty-first century.
Book Synopsis D’Angelo’s Voodoo by : Faith A. Pennick
Download or read book D’Angelo’s Voodoo written by Faith A. Pennick and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock, jazz, gospel, hip-hop, and Afrobeats. D'Angelo put to music his own pleasures and insecurities as a man-child in the promised land. It was both a tribute to his musical heroes: Prince, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, J Dilla...and a deconstruction of rhythm and blues itself. Despite nearly universal acclaim, the sonic expansiveness of Voodoo proved too nebulous for airplay on many radio stations, seeping outside the accepted lines of commercial R&B music. Voodoo was Black, it was definitely magic, and it was nearly overshadowed by a four-minute music video featuring D'Angelo's sweat-glistened six-pack abs. "The Video" created an accentuated moment when the shaman lost control of the spell he cast.
Book Synopsis The Uninhabitable Earth by : David Wallace-Wells
Download or read book The Uninhabitable Earth written by David Wallace-Wells and published by Crown. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • The New York Times Book Review • Time • NPR • The Economist • The Paris Review • Toronto Star • GQ • The Times Literary Supplement • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON LITERARY SCIENCE WRITING AWARD “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books
Download or read book Forced Exit written by Wesley J. Smith and published by Crown. This book was released on 1997 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposing the false premise of the euthanasia movement to make a compelling case against assisted suicide, "Forced Exit" reveals the horrors of the Netherlands, where 8.5 percent of all deaths are attributed to assisted suicide and where Dutch doctors have rapidly moved from euthanizing the terminally ill to killing infants with birth defects.
Book Synopsis The Power of Systems by : Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
Download or read book The Power of Systems written by Eglė Rindzevičiūtė and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), an international think tank established jointly by the United States and Soviet Union in Austria in 1972, was intended to advance scientific collaboration. Until the late 1980s, the IIASA was one of the very few permanent sites where policy scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain could work together to articulate and solve world problems, most notably global climate change. One of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War, this think tank was a rare zone of freedom, communication, and negotiation, where leading Soviet scientists could try out their innovative ideas, benefit from access to Western literature, and develop social networks, thus paving the way for some of the key science and policy breakthroughs of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Future Shock written by Alvin Toffler and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic work that predicted the anxieties of a world upended by rapidly emerging technologies—and now provides a road map to solving many of our most pressing crises. “Explosive . . . brilliantly formulated.” —The Wall Street Journal Future Shock is the classic that changed our view of tomorrow. Its startling insights into accelerating change led a president to ask his advisers for a special report, inspired composers to write symphonies and rock music, gave a powerful new concept to social science, and added a phrase to our language. Published in over fifty countries, Future Shock is the most important study of change and adaptation in our time. In many ways, Future Shock is about the present. It is about what is happening today to people and groups who are overwhelmed by change. Change affects our products, communities, organizations—even our patterns of friendship and love. But Future Shock also illuminates the world of tomorrow by exploding countless clichés about today. It vividly describes the emerging global civilization: the rise of new businesses, subcultures, lifestyles, and human relationships—all of them temporary. Future Shock will intrigue, provoke, frighten, encourage, and, above all, change everyone who reads it.