-PDF Download- Blog Theory Feedback And Capture In The Circuits Of Drive EBOOK

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies

Author: Jodi Dean

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2009-09-02

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0822390922

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies is an impassioned call for the realization of a progressive left politics in the United States. Through an assessment of the ideologies underlying contemporary political culture, Jodi Dean takes the left to task for its capitulations to conservatives and its failure to take responsibility for the extensive neoliberalization implemented during the Clinton presidency. She argues that the left’s ability to develop and defend a collective vision of equality and solidarity has been undermined by the ascendance of “communicative capitalism,” a constellation of consumerism, the privileging of the self over group interests, and the embrace of the language of victimization. As Dean explains, communicative capitalism is enabled and exacerbated by the Web and other networked communications media, which reduce political energies to the registration of opinion and the transmission of feelings. The result is a psychotic politics where certainty displaces credibility and the circulation of intense feeling trumps the exchange of reason. Dean’s critique ranges from her argument that the term democracy has become a meaningless cipher invoked by the left and right alike to an analysis of the fantasy of free trade underlying neoliberalism, and from an examination of new theories of sovereignty advanced by politicians and left academics to a look at the changing meanings of “evil” in the speeches of U.S. presidents since the mid-twentieth century. She emphasizes the futility of a politics enacted by individuals determined not to offend anyone, and she examines questions of truth, knowledge, and power in relation to 9/11 conspiracy theories. Dean insists that any reestablishment of a vital and purposeful left politics will require shedding the mantle of victimization, confronting the marriage of neoliberalism and democracy, and mobilizing different terms to represent political strategies and goals.

Global Covenant

Author: David Held

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-05-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0745637116

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this pathbreaking book, one of the world’s leading analysts of globalization and global governance confronts the failures of international politics in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war against Iraq. He argues that there were and are alternatives to the way the western coalitions responded to the profound challenges of mass terrorism and political violence - alternatives which can better address the roots of these challenges and deliver political and social justice. In order to grasp this alternative, the changing structure of the global order has to be understood. To this end, the book is divided into three sections: economics, politics and law. In each section contemporary trends are analyzed, problems confronted, and a series of detailed policies set out. The aim of the book is to focus on feasible and effective policy choices which could lead to a progressive transformation of global affairs. Against the ideologues who are wholly in favour or hostile to globalization, this book shows how globalization can be better regulated to deliver human development, equitable economic change, democracy and justice. This is an original book that will appeal to all those - students, policy makers, and the general reader - who confront questions about globalization and global governance. It is an optimistic text that holds that progressive political change is still within our grasp. To read the transcript of an interview with the author on the Global Covenant in democratiya, please click here .

Business in Society

Author: Mark Erickson

Publisher: Polity

Published: 2009-06-22

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0745642330

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book provides an indispensable introduction to business and organizations from a social perspective. Using classic and contemporary ideas and evidence, the book explores the connections between people, work, organizations and society, and shows how sociology can shed light on current developments in the business world.

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Author: Julian Jaynes

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2000-08-15

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 0547527543

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry

The Communist Horizon

Author: Jodi Dean

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2012-10-09

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1844679551

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this new title in Verso’s Pocket Communism series, Jodi Dean unshackles the communist ideal from the failures of theSoviet Union. In an age when the malfeasance of internationalbanking has alerted exploited populations the world over to theunsustainability of an economic system predicated on perpetualgrowth, it is time the left ended its melancholic accommodationwith capitalism. In the new capitalism of networked information technologies, ourvery ability to communicate is exploited, but revolution is stillpossible if we organize on the basis of our common and collectivedesires. Examining the experience of the Occupy movement, Deanargues that such spontaneity can’t develop into a revolution andit needs to constitute itself as a party. An innovative work of pressing relevance, The Communist Horizonoffers nothing less than a manifesto for a new collective politics.

Splinternet

Author: Scott Malcomson

Publisher: OR Books

Published: 2016-03-17

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1682190315

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“This is not your ordinary history of the Internet. Scott Malcomson has brilliantly extended the connections between Silicon Valley and the military back far beyond DARPA—back, in fact, to World War I. If you want to understand the conflict between cyberspace utopians and the states and corporations who seek to dominate our virtual lives, you’ve got to read this book.” —James Ledbetter, editor, Inc. Magazine “In elegant prose powered by deep research—and with a surprisingly vivid cast of characters—Scott Malcomson shows how profound the relationship is between the state and the Internet. As major powers try to assert control over the Web, Splinternet illuminates both how we got to this point and how to move forward.” —Parag Khanna, global contributor, CNN, and author of Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization There’s always been something universalizing about the Internet. The World Wide Web has seemed both inherently singular and global, a sort of ethereal United Nations. But today, as Scott Malcomson contends in this concise, brilliant investigation, the Internet is cracking apart into discrete groups no longer willing, or able, to connect. The implications of this shift are momentous. Malcomson traces the way the Internet has been shaped by government needs since the 19th century—above all, the demands of the US military and intelligence services. From World War I cryptography and spying to weapons targeting against Hitler and then Stalin, the monolithic aspect of the digital network was largely determined by its genesis in a single, state-sponsored institution. In the 1960s, internationalism and openness were introduced by the tech pioneers of California’s counter-culture, the seed bed for what became Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple. But in the last 15 years, security concerns of states and the privatizing impetus of e-commerce have come to the fore and momentum has shifted in a new direction, towards private, walled domains, each vying with the other in an increasingly fragmented system, in effect a “Splinternet.” Because the Internet today surrounds us so comprehensively, it’s easy to regard the way it functions as a simple given, part of the natural order of things. Only by stepping back and scrutinizing the evolution of the system can we see the Internet for what it is—a contested, protean terrain, constantly evolving as different forces intervene to drive it forward. In that vital exercise, Malcomson’s elegant, erudite account will prove invaluable.