The Utopia of Rules

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.

Autorentext
David Graeber (1961-2020) was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. One of the original organizers of Occupy Wall Street, Graeber was also the author of Utopia of Rules and wrote widely for publications such as The Guardian, Harper's, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, n+1, The Nation, The Washington Post, The New Inquiry, and The New Left Review.

Klappentext
A follow-up to David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years, which has sold 100,000 copies for Melville House and been published in 26 foreign editions 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? To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber-one of the most prominent and provocative thinkers working today-takes a journey through ancient and modern history to trace the peculiar and fascinating evolution of bureaucracy over the ages. He starts in the ancient world, looking at how early civilizations were organized and what traces early bureaucratic systems have left in the ethnographic literature. He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life-like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France-these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own "utopia of rules," freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand. Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.

Inhalt
Contents

Introduction: The Iron Law of Liberalism and the Era of Total Bureaucratization

1. Dead Zones of the Imagination: An Essay on Structural Stupidity

2. Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

3. The Utopia of Rules, or Why We Really Love Bureaucracy After All

4. Appendix: On Batman and the Problem of Constituent Power

Notes

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