{"product_id":"9781612193748","title":"The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of the blockbuster international bestseller \u003ci\u003eDebt: The First 5,000 Years\u003c\/i\u003e comes a revelatory account of the way bureaucracy rules our lives\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eWhere 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 just how much are our lives being ruined by all this nonstop documentation?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTo answer these questions, 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 power shapes our lives in ways we may not even notice.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eIs the inane, annoying paperwork we confront every day really a cipher for state violence? And is the capitalist promise of salvation-through-technology just a tool for the powerful to exert more control? Graeber\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eprovides a forceful, radical answer to these questions, though he also suggests that there may be something appealing—even romantic—about bureaucracy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeaping from the ascendance of right-wing economics in the second half of the twentieth century to the hidden meanings behind James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman, \u003ci\u003eThe Utopia of Rules\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAn essential book for our times, \u003ci\u003eThe Utopia of Rules \u003c\/i\u003eis 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Melville House Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47037438853360,"sku":"9781612193748","price":26.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781612193748_p0.jpg?v=1763844590","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781612193748","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}