{"title":"David Graeber","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"bullshit-jobs","title":"Bullshit Jobs.","description":"\u003cp\u003e37% people in the UK believe their jobs don't make a meaningful contribution to the world\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'There is something very wrong with what we have made ourselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe have become a civilisation based on work—not even “productive work” but work as an end and meaning in itself. We have come to believe that men and women who do not work harder than they wish at jobs they do not particularly enjoy are bad people unworthy of love, care, or assistance from their communities. The main political reaction to our awareness that half the time we are engaged in utterly meaningless or even counterproductive activities is to rankle with resentment over the fact there might be others out there who are not in the same trap. As a result, hatred, resentment, and suspicion have become the glue that holds society together.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a disastrous state of affairs. I wish it to end. If this book can in any way contribute to that end, it will have been worth writing.'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"B66ks","offers":[{"title":"Paperback - 1145623","offer_id":50387972620619,"sku":"1145623","price":5.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/0a06368a-7316-445e-8d13-c64cb143fafc_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726338784"},{"product_id":"the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity","title":"The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 per cent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision and faith in the power of direct action.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"No Label","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":50411303829835,"sku":"1153211","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/15b74fea-75ea-4172-a01f-84222cd90a66_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726655871"},{"product_id":"pirate-enlightenment-or-the-real-libertalia-buccaneers-women-traders-and-mock-kingdoms-in-eighteenth-century-madagascar","title":"Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia: Buccaneers, Women Traders and Mock Kingdoms in Eighteenth Century Madagascar","description":"\u003cp\u003eA characteristically radical re-reading of history that places the social and political experiments of pirates at the heart of the European Enlightenment. A brilliant companion volume to the best-selling Dawn of Everything' Amitav GhoshThe Enlightenment did not begin in Europe. Its true origins lie thousands of miles away on the island of Madagascar, in the late seventeenth century, when it was home to several thousand pirates. This was the Golden Age of Piracy, a period of violent buccaneering and rollicking legends - but it was also, argues anthropologist David Graeber, a brief window of radical democracy, as the pirate settlers attempted to apply the egalitarian principles of their ships to a new society on land.For Graeber, Madagascar's lost pirate utopia represents some of the first stirrings of Enlightenment political thought. In this jewel of a book, he offers a way to 'decolonize the Enlightenment', demonstrating how this mixed community experimented with an alternative vision of human freedom, far from that being formulated in the salons and coffee houses of Europe. Its actors were Malagasy women, merchants and traders, philosopher kings and escaped slaves, exploring ideas that were ultimately to be put into practice by Western revolutionary regimes a century later.Pirate Enlightenment playfully dismantles the central myths of the Enlightenment. In their place comes a story about the magic, sea battles, purloined princesses, manhunts, make-believe kingdoms, fraudulent ambassadors, spies, jewel thieves, poisoners and devil worship that lie at the origins of modern freedom.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin","offers":[{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":50411553816907,"sku":"2005115","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":50411554406731,"sku":"2165823","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/414hQb37dCL._SX308_BO1204203200__f7f76d43_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726659853"},{"product_id":"the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy","title":"The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhere 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"melville house","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":50452170408267,"sku":"398937","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/f8fb1af8-d0d1-4e66-b6d0-988f68b01dc0_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727142470"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/david-graeber.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}