THE UTOPIA OF RULES: ON TECHNOLOGY, STUPIDITY, AND THE SECRET JOYS OF BUREAUCRACY
Book ID/图书代码： 08885014B71433
English Summary/英文概要： A follow-up to David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years, which has sold 100,000 copies for Melville House and been published in 26 foreign editions
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?
To answer these questions, anthropologist David Graeber—one of the most prominent and provocative thinkers working today—takes a journey through ancient and modern history to trace the peculiar and fascinating evolution of bureaucracy over the ages.
He starts in the ancient world, looking at how early civilizations were organized and what traces early bureaucratic systems have left in the ethnographic literature. He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life—like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France—these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand.
Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 大卫格雷伯继《第一个5000年的债》后，本书由梅尔维尔出版社出版，拥有26个译本，已售出100,000册。
人们对无尽的规则，规范和官僚主义的渴望从何而来？
我们是如何变得要用那么多时间去填写表格的？
人类学家大卫格雷伯，是现今著名的和能引起人争议的思想家，他为了回答这些问题，通过研究古代史和现代史，追溯历代官僚主义那既独特又迷人的演变。
他从远古世纪开始，探寻早期文明是如何变得系统化，和早期官僚主义系统在民族文学中留下了什么。然后他跳跃到19世纪，19世纪是现代官僚主义形成的雏形。在当今社会的一些地方—比如有着现代邮政系统的德国和法国—官僚政治给现代生活带来了巨大的效率。但是格雷伯提出了一个之前很少有人提及的现代官僚主义的黑暗面。的确，在我们自己“规则的乌托邦”里，自由，技术创新在多数情况下是这个系统的受害者，而我们却知之甚少。
本书极具煽动性和实时性，它是次有力的探寻，追溯了历代官僚主义和历史，和官僚主义塑造世界的想法的力量。（YYW）
Awards/获奖情况："Interrogates aspects of bureaucratic modernity that are normally unexamined causes of annoyance... Stylish and witty." --The New Statesman
"Packed with provocative observations and left-field scholarship. Ranging from witty analysis of comic-book narratives to penetrating discussion of world-changing technologies that haven’t actually appeared, it demystifies some of the ruling shibboleths of our time. Modern bureaucracy embodies a view of the world as being essentially rational, but the roots of this vision, Graeber astutely observes, go all the way back to the ancient Pythagoreans." --John Gray, The Guardian
"A startlingly original thinker... able to convey complicated ideas with wit and clarity." --The Telegraph
"A brilliant, deeply original political thinker." --Rebecca Solnit
"I loved this book." --Thomas Piketty, author of ’Capital in the Twenty-First Century’
"One of the year’s most influential books." --Paul Mason, The Guardian
"Fascinating... Graeber’s book is not just thought provoking, but also exceedingly timely." --Gillian Tett, Financial Times
"When you read this you’ll be cleverer." --Russell Brand
"Brilliant, unexpectedly funny, and provides many bracing perspectives on the subject." --A 2012 Book of the Year in The Spectator
"The most important theory book I’ve read this year, an essential take on the current crisis by an anarchist anthropologist who combines credentials with readability." --Laurie Penny’s Book of 2012 in the New Statesman
"The book is more readable and entertaining than I can indicate... It is a meditation on debt, tribute, gifts, religion and the false history of money. Graeber is a scholarly researcher, an activist and a public intellectual." --Peter Carey, The Observer
"Four years ago [Graeber] penned a brilliant treatise on debt, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. His new book develops this analysis and asks why so much of modern life is dominated by endless bureaucracy and frustrating administrative tasks, whether in relation to finance, healthcare or almost everything else... Graeber’s book should offer a challenge to us all. Should we just accept this bureaucracy as inevitable? Or is there a way to get rid of all those hours spent listening to bad call centre music?... Can we imagine another world?" --Gillian Tett
"Graeber’s most interesting claim... is that our expressed hostility toward bureaucracy is at least partly disingenuous: that these thickets of rules and regulations are a source, to quote from his subtitle, of ’secret joys’ for most of us." --Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian
"Fantastic, illuminating... get it, and learn." --Russell Brand
"[A] fizzing, fabulous firecracker of a book...Our contemporary bureaucrats are revealed, in fact, as none other than you and me, forever administering and marketing ourselves." --Literary Review
"Interrogates aspects of bureaucratic modernity that are normally unexamined causes of annoyance...Stylish and witty." --New Statesman
About the Author/作者介绍： 大卫格雷伯在伦敦商学院教授人类学，他是《第一个五千年的债》，《人类学价值理论》，《失落的人类：马达加斯加奴隶制传奇》《无政府主义人类学的碎片》《可能性：论等级制度，暴动和欲望》以及《直接行动：人种学》。他也给《哈泼斯杂志》，《国家杂志》，《异见者》《华尔街日报》《华盛顿邮报》和《新左派评论》写过文章。
DAVID GRAEBER teaches anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Towards an Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, and Direct Action: An Ethnography. He has written for Harper’s, The Nation, The Baffler, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New Left Review.
Format:TRADE PAPERBACK
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：SOLD
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)
Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：
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