Reified Life - Speculative Capital and the Ahuman Condition by J. Paul Narkunas

$20.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Reified Life addresses the most pressing political question of the 21st century: what forms of life are free and what forms are perceived legally and economically as surplus or expendable, human and otherwise. The 2008 economic crisis solidified the dominion of neoliberal and financial capital to organi ze human societies much to the detriment of the world's populations. Reified Life theorizes the dangerous social implications of a posthuman future, whereby human agency is secondary to algorithmic processes, digital protocols, speculative financial instruments, and nonhuman market and technological forces. Employing new readings of Deleuze, Guattari, Foucault, Marx, Vico, Gramsci, Berardi, and Gilbert Simondon, Narkunas contends that it is premature to speak of a posthuman or inhuman future, or employ an 'ism, given how dynamic and contingent human practices and their material figurations can be. Over several chapters he diagnoses the rise of "market humans," the instrumentalization of culture to decide the life worth living along utilitarian categories, and the varied ways human rights and humanitarianism actually throw members of the species like refugees outside the human order. To combat this, Reified Life argues against Reified Life calls to abandon the human and humanism, and instead proposes the ahuman to think alongside the human, what philosopher Gilbert Simondon calls the transindividuation of ontogentic processes rather than subjectivity. To aid the "figurating animal," Reified Life elaborates speculative fictions as critical mechanisms for envisioning alternative futures and freedoms from the domineering forces of speculative capital, whose fictions have become our realities. Narkunas offers, to that end, a novel interpretation of the post-anthropocentric turn in the humanities by linking the diminished centrality of humanism to the waning dominion of nation-states over their populations and the intensification of financial capitalism, which reconfigures politics along economic categories of risk management. ...Show more

The Age of Disruption - Technology and Madness in Computational Capitalism by Bernard Stiegler

$25.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Half a century ago Adorno and Horkheimer argued, with great prescience, that our increasingly rationalized world was witnessing the emergence of a new kind of barbarism, thanks in part to the stultifying effects of the culture industries. What they could not foresee was that, with the digital revolution and the pervasive automation associated with it, the developments they had discerned would be greatly accentuated, giving rise to the loss of reason and to the loss of the reason for living. Individuals are now overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of digital information and the speed of digital flows, resulting in a kind of technological Wild West in which they find themselves increasingly powerless, driven by their lack of agency to the point of madness. How can we find a way out of this situation? In this major new book, Bernard Stiegler argues that we must first acknowledge our era as one of fundamental disruption and detachment. We are living in an absence of epokhē in the philosophical sense, by which Stiegler means that we have lost our path of thinking and being. Weaving in powerful accounts from his own life story, including struggles with depression and time spent in prison, Stiegler calls for a new epokhē based on public power. We must forge new circuits of meaning outside of the established algorithmic routes. For only then will forms of thinking and life be able to arise that restore meaning and aspiration to the individual. Concluding with a dialogue between Stiegler and Jean-Luc Nancy, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars in social and cultural theory, media and cultural studies, philosophy and the humanities generally. ...Show more

Serial Killers - Death and Life in America's Wound Culture by Mark Seltzer

$14.00 NZD

Category: Psychology | Reading Level: very good

In this provocative cultural study, the serial killer emerges as a central figure in what Mark Seltzer calls 'America's wound culture'. From the traumas displayed by talk show guests and political candidates, to the violent entertainment of Crash or The Alienist, to the latest terrible report of mass mu rder, we are surrounded by the accident from which we cannot avert our eyes. Bringing depth and shadow to our collective portrait of what a serial killer must be, Mark Seltzer draws upon popular sources, scholarly analyses, and the language of psychoanalysis to explore the genesis of this uniquely modern phenomenon. Revealed is a fascination with machines and technological reproduction, with the singular and the mass, with definitions of self, other, and intimacy. What emerges is a disturbing picture of how contemporary culture is haunted by technology and the instability of identity. ...Show more

Imperial Leather - Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest by Anne Mcclintock

$20.00 NZD

Category: History | Reading Level: very good

Imperial Leather chronicles the dangerous liaisons between gender, race and class that shaped British imperialism and its bloody dismantling. Spanning the century between Victorian Britain and the current struggle for power in South Africa, the book takes up the complex relationships between race and se xuality, fetishism and money, gender and violence, domesticity and the imperial market, and the gendering of nationalism within the zones of imperial and anti-imperial power. ...Show more

Spying on Democracy - Government surveillance, corporate power and public resistance by Heidi Boghosian

$12.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

"With ex-CIA staffer Edward Snowden's leaks about National Security Agency surveillance in the headlines, Heidi Boghosian's "Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance" feels especially timely. Boghosian reveals how the government acquires information from telec ommunications companies and other organizations to create databases about 'persons of interest.'" -- "Publishers Weekly" "Heidi Boghosian's "Spying on Democracy" is the answer to the question, 'if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you care if someone's watching you?'"--Michael German, Senior Policy Counsel, ACLU and former FBI agent Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to the "Guardian UK" and the "Washington Post," most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Apple, and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets. In "Spying on Democracy," National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and to the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government intelligence agencies mine data from sources as diverse as surveillance cameras and unmanned drones to iris scans and medical records, while combing websites, email, phone records and social media for resale to third parties, including U.S. intelligence agencies. The ACLU's Michael German says of the examples shown in Boghosian's book, "this unrestrained spying is inevitably used to suppress the most essential tools of democracy: the press, political activists, civil rights advocates and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse." Boghosian adds, "If the trend is permitted to continue, we will soon live in a society where nothing is confidential, no information is really secure, and our civil liberties are under constant surveillance and control." "Spying on Democracy" is a timely, invaluable, and accessible primer for anyone concerned with protecting privacy, freedom, and the U.S. Constitution. Heidi Boghosian is the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. She co-hosts "Law and Disorder," broadcast on WBAI-FM in New York and over forty stations nationwide. She is based in New York City. ...Show more

Consumer Republic: Using Brands to Get What You Want, Make Corporations Behave, and Maybe Even Save the World by Bruce Philp

$15.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Consumer Republic's message begins with this single, inarguable truth: brands make corporations accountable. Expensive to create, essential to making money, and more public than anything else a corporation has or does, a brand is an enormously valuable and fragile asset to them. And we consumers have th e power to make it worthless. With fascinating case examples, and a startling yet pragmatic argument, Bruce Philp dismantles the simplistic predator-prey narrative behind the anti-brand movement, confronts us with our real role in the system, and inspires us to make every dollar we spend count. To buy less, but demand better. To make meaningful choices instead of just easy ones. And then to speak up when we're happy and when we're not. Pin every one of these acts to a brand, and corporations will be forced to cooperate in making our way of life sustainable. Brands, says Philp, are the only leverage the average consumer has with which to make a company behave itself. Abandon them, and we'll surrender our marketplace to scoundrels. Take control of them, and we can save the world. ...Show more

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald

$12.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: good

No Place to Hide is the story of one of the greatest national security leaks in US history. In June 2013, reporter and political commentator Glenn Greenwald published a series of reports in the Guardian which rocked the world. The reports revealed shocking truths about the extent to which the National S ecurity Agency had been gathering information about US citizens and intercepting communication worldwide, and were based on documents leaked by former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden to Greenwald. Including new revelations from documents entrusted to Greenwald by Snowden, this essential book tells the story of Snowden and the NSA, explores the extraordinary cooperation between private industry and the NSA and examines the far-reaching consequences of the government's surveillance program, both in the US and abroad. ...Show more

Concepts & Theories of Modern Democracy by Anthony Harold Birch

$14.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

The second edition of this highly successful and widely used textbook has been updated to take into account the considerable developments in the field since the last edition was published. New areas covered include: * the Nation-state* the internet* the notion of governance* nationalism

America and the World - Debating the New Shape of International Politics by Gideon Rose (Editor)

$16.00 NZD

Category: Social Science

The Media and Political Process by Eric Louw

$15.00 NZD

Category: Media | Reading Level: very good

How have professional communicators transformed the business of politics? How do political bodies use the media to sell domestic and foreign policies to the public? This fully revised new edition of The Media and Political Processassesses the impact of spin doctoring and media activity in liberal democr acies that are just as concerned with impression management and public relations as with policy. Political processes never stand still, and this revised second edition explores the mediatisation of the political process in light of recent developments, from Vladimir Putin′s growth into a political celebrity, to the activities of spin doctors in the 2008 US Presidential Elections. Providing a comprehensive overview of the evolution, operation and terminology of political communication, this text is an accessible, lively resource for students of political communication and media and politics, and will be important further reading for students of journalism, public relations and cultural studies. ...Show more

Culture and the Public Sphere by Jim McGuigan

$14.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Jim McGuigan discusses cultural policy as a manifestation of cultural politics in the widest sense. Illustrating his case with examples from recent cultural policy initiatives in Britain, the United States and Australia, he looks at: * The rise of market reasoning in arts administration* Urban regenerat ion and the arts* Heritage tourism* Race, identity and cultural citizenship* Censorship and moral regulation* The role of computer-mediated communication in democratic discourse ...Show more

Defending Politics - Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century by Matthew Flinders

$14.00 NZD

Category: Social Science | Reading Level: very good

Citizens around the world have become distrustful of politicians, skeptical about democratic institutions, and disillusioned about the capacity of democratic politics to resolve pressing social concerns. Many feel as if something has gone seriously wrong with democracy. Those sentiments are especially h igh in the U.S. as the 2012 election draws closer. In 2008, President Barack Obama ran--and won--on a promise of hope and change for a better country. Four years later, that dream for hope and change seems to be waning by the minute. Instead, disillusionment grows with the Obama adminstration's achievements, or depending where you fall on the spectrum, its lack thereof. Defending Politics meets this contemporary pessimism about the political process head on. In doing so, it aims to cultivate a shift from the negativity that appears to dominate public life towards a more buoyant and engaged "politics of optimism." Matthew Flinders makes an unfashionable but incredibly important argument of utmost simplicity: democratic politics delivers far more than most members of the public appear to acknowledge and understand. If more and more people are disappointed with what modern democratic politics delivers, is it possible that the fault lies with those who demand too much, fail to acknowledge the essence of democratic engagement, and ignore the complexities of governing in the twentieth century? Is it possible that the public in many advanced liberal democracies have become "democratically decadent," that they take what democratic politics delivers for granted? Would politics appear in a better light if we all spent less time emphasizing our individual rights and more time reflecting on our responsibilities to society and future generations? Democratic politics remains "a great and civilizing human activity...something to be valued almost as a pearl beyond price," Bernard Crick stressed in his classic In Defense of Politics fifty years ago. By returning to and updating Crick's arguments, this book provides an honest account of why democratic politics matters and why we need to reject the arguments of those who would turn their backs on "mere politics" in favor of more authoritarian, populist or technocratic forms of governing. ...Show more