Michel de Certeau: The Practice of Everyday Life, 2 vols. (1980–) [EN, PT, ES, CR]

Michel de Certeau considers the uses to which social representation and modes of social behavior are put by individuals and groups, describing the tactics available to the common man for reclaiming his own autonomy from the all-pervasive forces of commerce, politics, and culture. In exploring the public meaning of ingeniously defended private meanings, de Certeau draws brilliantly on an immense theoretical literature in analytic philosophy, linguistics, sociology, semiology, and anthropology–to speak of an apposite use of imaginative literature.

This social history of “making do” is based on microhistories that move from the private sphere (of dwelling, cooking, and homemaking) to the public (the experience of living in a neighborhood). The second volume of this magnum opus delves even deeper than did the first into the subtle tactics of resistance and private practices that make living a subversive art.

French edition
L’invention du quotidien, I, arts de faire, Gallimard, 1980
L’invention du quotidien, II, habiter, cuisiner, Gallimard, 1994

English edition
Translated by Steven Rendall
Publisher University of California Press, 1984
ISBN 0520236998, 9780520236998
229 pages

English edition, Volume 2: Living & Cooking
With Luce Giard and Pierre Mayol
Translated by Timothy J. Tomasik
University of Minnesota Press, 1998
ISBN 0816628777, 9780816628773
292 pages

Wikipedia (EN)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 1)
Publisher (EN, Vol. 2)
Google books (EN, Vol. 1)

The Practice of Everyday Life (English, trans. Steven Rendall, 1984, updated on 2013-9-28)
The Practice of Everyday Life, Vol. 2: Living and Cooking (English, trans. Timothy J. Tomasik, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
A invenção do cotidiano (Portuguese, trans. Ephraim Ferreira Alves, Third edition, 1998, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 1 Artes de hacer (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 2000, added on 2013-9-28)
La invención de lo cotidiano. 2 Habitar, cocinar (Spanish, trans. Alejandro Pescador, 1999, added on 2013-9-28)
Invencija svakodnevnice (Croatian, trans. Gordana Popovic, 2002, added on 2013-9-28)

David Graeber: Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (2001)

“This innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.”

Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2001
ISBN 0312240457, 9780312240455
337 pages

Review: Sutton (Anthropological Theory, 2004).

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2015-3-6)

Richard Barbrook: Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village (2007)

“Cooperative creativity and participatory democracy should be extended from the virtual world into all areas of life. This time, the new stage of growth must be a new civilisation.

Richard Barbrook traces the early days of the Internet, beginning from a pivotal point at the 1964 World’s Fair, in what critics are saying is the most well-researched and original account of cybertechnology among contemporary works. He demonstrates how business and ideological leaders put forth a carefully orchestrated vision of an imaginary future, where robots would do the washing up, go to the office and think for us. With America at the forefront of these promises, Barbrook shows how ideological forces joined to develop new information technologies during the Cold War era and how what they created historically has shaped the modern Internet, with intended political consequences.

Crucially, he argues that had the past been different, our technological and political present would not be what it is today. Barbrook’s conclusions about the modern state of the Internet, puts forward a call for action in how the world’s most important tool of revolutionary politics should be approached.”

Key terms: Fordism, W.W. Rostow, Marxism, cybernetic, Bell commission, artificial intelligence, gift economy, Stalinist, Maoist, Cold War game, Trotskyist, information society, laissez-faire liberalism, soft power, Hard power, American empire, Tet Offensive, Unisphere, grand narrative, Cold War Left

Publisher Pluto, 2007
ISBN 0745326609, 9780745326603
334 pages

Book website
Video introduction
Publisher

PDF, PDF (13 MB, updated on 2012-7-15)