David Harvey: Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (2012–) [EN, ES]

“Long before the Occupy movement, modern cities had already become the central sites of revolutionary politics, where the deeper currents of social and political change rise to the surface. Consequently, cities have been the subject of much utopian thinking. But at the same time they are also the centers of capital accumulation and the frontline for struggles over who controls access to urban resources and who dictates the quality and organization of daily life. Is it the financiers and developers, or the people?

Rebel Cities places the city at the heart of both capital and class struggles, looking at locations ranging from Johannesburg to Mumbai, and from New York City to São Paulo. Drawing on the Paris Commune as well as Occupy Wall Street and the London Riots, Harvey asks how cities might be reorganized in more socially just and ecologically sane ways—and how they can become the focus for anti-capitalist resistance.”

Publisher Verso Books, London, 2012
ISBN 1844679047, 9781844679041
216 pages

Reviews: Owen Hatherley (The Guardian, 2012), Ruth Lorimer (Socialist Review, 2012), Lewis Beardmore (Open Democracy, 2012), Justin McGuirk (Art Review, 2012), more.

Publisher

Rebel Cities (English, updated on 2020-11-28)
Ciudades rebeldes (Spanish, trans. Juanmari Madariaga, 2013, added on 2020-11-28)

Michael T. Taussig: The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (1980/2010)

In this classic book, Michael Taussig explores the social significance of the devil in the folklore of contemporary plantation workers and miners in South America. Grounding his analysis in Marxist theory, Taussig finds that the fetishization of evil, in the image of the devil, mediates the conflict between precapitalist and capitalist modes of objectifying the human condition. He links traditional narratives of the devil-pact, in which the soul is bartered for illusory or transitory power, with the way in which production in capitalist economies causes workers to become alienated from the commodities they produce. A new chapter for this anniversary edition features a discussion of Walter Benjamin and Georges Bataille that extends Taussig’s ideas about the devil-pact metaphor.

30th Anniversary Edition
With a new chapter by the author
Publisher University of North Carolina Press, 2010
ISBN 0807871338, 9780807871331
296 pages

publisher
google books

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Amber Hickey (ed.): A Guidebook of Alternative Nows (2012)

A Guidebook of Alternative Nows is a collaboratively created book.

34 visionary creative thinkers and makers contributed to this book which illuminates ways of devising more socially, economically, and ecologically just versions of now.

Contributors: Alex Kemman (The Valreep Collective), Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Artist Bailout Collective, Billy Mark, Cheyenna Weber (SolidarityNYC), Antonio Scarponi (Conceptual Devices), Critical Art Ensemble, Ethan Miller, Fallen Fruit (David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young), Georg Hobmeier and Tommy Noonan, Howling Mob Society, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Jenny Cameron, Johannes Grenzfurthner (Monochrom), Marc Herbst and Christina Ulke (Journal of Aesthetics & Protest Editorial Collective), Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative, Ken Ehrlich and Kate Johnston, Llano Del Rio Collective, New Social Art School, Platform, Rori Knudtson (School of Critical Engagement), Santiago Cirugeda (Recetas Urbanas), Sasha Costanza-Chock, SPURSE, swearonourfriendship, T.J. Demos, Temporary Services, The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Precarious Workers Brigade, The Vacuum Cleaner, The Yes Men, TradeSchool.coop, UrbanFarmers, Watts House Project.

Publisher The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2012
ISBN 978-0-615-64972-6
266 pages
via An Chaosdroid

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