Name: The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
Brand: David Graeber

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

9781612195186

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Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format Books GB

Paperback

Format detail

Limited edition

Release date

2016-02-15

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Turnaround

Tax rate GB

Zero:0

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1 / Extended format: No / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

David Graeber

Genre GB

Writing

Label GB

melville house

Where does the desire for endless rules and regulations come from? How did we come to spend so much time filling out forms? And just how much are our lives being ruined by all this nonstop documentation? To answer these questions, the LSE anthropologist David Graeber, author of the international bestseller DEBT and one of our most important and provocative thinkers, traces the unexpected ways we relate to bureaucracy and reveals how it shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice. Is the inane, annoying paperwork we confront daily really a cipher for state violence? Is the capitalist promise of salvation through technology just a tool for the powerful to exert more control? Graeber provides a forceful, radical answer to these questions, while also suggesting there may be something perversely appealing, even romantic, about bureaucracy. Leaping from economic theory to the hidden meanings behind James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Batman, The Utopia of Rules is at once a powerful work of social theory and an entertaining reckoning with popular culture. An essential book for our times that is destined to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule our lives, and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.

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

Books GB