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The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

Author:
David Graeber
Read by:
Mike Chamberlain
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Unabridged Audiobook

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Ratings
Book
7
Narrator
5
Release Date
October 23, 2018
Duration
8 hours 1 minute
Summary
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.
Reviews
Profile Avatar Julie L. Jan 2021

Rest In Peace, David Graeber.

Profile Avatar Patrick K. Apr 2024

The content is brilliant and funny, as Graeber always is, but I find the narrator really hard to listen to. He's loud almost to the point of shouting. His cadence is exaggerated like he's mocking every sentence, but at the same time it becomes monotonous.

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

Author: David Graeber
Read by: Mike Chamberlain
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