The Utopia of Rules

On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy

by

272 pages

English language

Published Feb. 23, 2016

ISBN:
9781612195186

View on Inventaire

4 stars (3 reviews)

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 …

7 editions

reviewed The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber

Bureaucracy, Games, Capitalism, and Batman

5 stars

What an incredible book. A poignant look at how and why bureaucracies are created and maintained, how they are a form of game that’s opposed to actual play, how each of us has a responsibility to actively imagine a better world and create the conditions under which it can come into existence, and a surprise analysis of Christopher Nolan’s film “The Dark Knight Rises” which (trust me) makes sense in this context.

A clear recommendation for anyone who wants to look critically at how we as a society run the world. It’s also not too dense (as opposed to some other political philosophy works) and written in a very approachable way.

reviewed The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber

Sadly, a slog to get through.

3 stars

A collection of essays with an almost-clever title but too many detours.

Far too often, I found myself having to re-read parts of essays in order to understand whatever the main point was. There were so many times that the content just meandered somewhere, tried to build into the point, and created confusion about whatever he was trying to describe.

At one point, I was 40 pages into an essay with another 10-20 to go, and it started feeling like he was trying to justify why it was okay to like fantasy literature and games despite the bureaucracy within them. I doubt that was his intent, but that was precisely the way they felt due to the way he writes.

So much of what was said was entirely superfluous, which... is fine. But again, for someone who was touted as being the 'most readable' theorist, this was pretty unreadable.

reviewed The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy by David Graeber

Review of 'The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This wasn't the easiest read (I finally finished this after about three years of false starts), but once it got going for me, it really got going. A mind-changing meditation on the nature of power and authority and the real and fictional manifestations that power (the essay on futurism was a particularly fun read), the book succeeds at developing a left-wing critique of bureaucracy and the state. Strongly recommended.

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