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Author: Calvin Hui
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167
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Book Description
Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.
Author: Calvin Hui
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231549830
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 167
Get Book Here
Book Description
Since embarking on economic reforms in 1978, the People’s Republic of China has also undergone a sweeping cultural reorganization, from proletarian culture under Mao to middle-class consumer culture today. Under these circumstances, how has a Chinese middle class come into being, and how has consumerism become the dominant ideology of an avowedly socialist country? The Art of Useless offers an innovative way to understand China’s unprecedented political-economic, social, and cultural transformations, showing how consumer culture helps anticipate, produce, and shape a new middle-class subjectivity. Examining changing representations of the production and consumption of fashion in documentaries and films, Calvin Hui traces how culture contributes to China’s changing social relations through the cultivation of new identities and sensibilities. He explores the commodity chain of fashion on a transnational scale, from production to consumption to disposal, as well as media portrayals of the intersections of clothing with class, gender, and ethnicity. Hui illuminates key cinematic narratives, such as a factory worker’s desire for a high-quality suit in the 1960s, an intellectual’s longing for fashionable clothes in the 1980s, and a white-collar woman’s craving for brand-name commodities in the 2000s. He considers how documentary films depict the undersides of consumption—exploited laborers who fantasize about the products they manufacture as well as the accumulation of waste and its disposal—revealing how global capitalism renders migrant factory workers, scavengers, and garbage invisible. A highly interdisciplinary work that combines theoretical nuance with masterful close analyses, The Art of Useless is an innovative rethinking of the emergence of China’s middle-class consumer culture.
Author: Nuccio Ordine
Publisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589881168
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 188
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Book Description
“A little masterpiece of originality and clarity.”—George Steiner “A necessary book.”—Roberto Saviano “A wonderful little book that will delight you.”—François Busnel International Best Seller / Now in English for the First Time In this thought-provoking and extremely timely work, Nuccio Ordine convincingly argues for the utility of useless knowledge and against the contemporary fixation on utilitarianism—for the fundamental importance of the liberal arts and against the damage caused by their neglect. Inspired by the reflections of great philosophers and writers (e.g., Plato, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Borges, and Calvino), Ordine reveals how the obsession for material goods and the cult of utility ultimately wither the spirit, jeopardizing not only schools and universities, art, and creativity, but also our most fundamental values—human dignity, love, and truth. Also included is Abraham Flexner’s 1939 essay “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,” which originally prompted Ordine to write this book. Flexner—a founder and the first director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton—offers an impassioned defense of curiosity-driven research and learning.
Author: George Anders
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316548855
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
In a tech-dominated world, the most needed degrees are the most surprising: the liberal arts Did you take the right classes in college? Will your major help you get the right job offers? For more than a decade, the national spotlight has focused on science and engineering as the only reliable choice for finding a successful post-grad career. Our destinies have been reduced to a caricature: learn to write computer code or end up behind a counter, pouring coffee. Quietly, though, a different path to success has been taking shape. In YOU CAN DO ANYTHING, George Anders explains the remarkable power of a liberal arts education - and the ways it can open the door to thousands of cutting-edge jobs every week. The key insight: curiosity, creativity, and empathy aren't unruly traits that must be reined in. You can be yourself, as an English major, and thrive in sales. You can segue from anthropology into the booming new field of user research; from classics into management consulting, and from philosophy into high-stakes investing. At any stage of your career, you can bring a humanist's grace to our rapidly evolving high-tech future. And if you know how to attack the job market, your opportunities will be vast. In this book, you will learn why resume-writing is fading in importance and why "telling your story" is taking its place. You will learn how to create jobs that don't exist yet, and to translate your campus achievements into a new style of expression that will make employers' eyes light up. You will discover why people who start in eccentric first jobs - and then make their own luck - so often race ahead of peers whose post-college hunt focuses only on security and starting pay. You will be ready for anything.
Author: Geoffrey Burch
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119950031
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
This book will show you how anyone can be persuaded to do anything. Geoff Burch has written a book that will change almost everything you ever believed about business and selling. Combining the quick wit of a stand up comedian with the serious thoughtfulness of a psychoanalyst, he explains the value and power of persuasion - a verbal martial art that, if used correctly will always give you the outcome you desire in your business dealings. Resistance is Useless will show you how to: Change anyone's opinion on any subject. Transform a lynch mob into your most devout supporters. Avoid wasting thousands of pounds on customer care while your accounts department is threatening to pulp your customer's fingers with a hammer. Understand how a perfect product demonstration can get you hurled into the street by security. Sell tanks to Genghis khan. Readership: General Business, customer service and sales.
Author: William Morris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Labor
Languages : en
Pages : 32
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Book Description
Author: Joshua Isard
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
ISBN: 1935955543
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
Average suburban middle manager Nathan's life starts to unravel around him as his wife goes baby crazy, his friend wants to climb Everest, and he lends a copy of "Cat's Cradle" to a local teenage girl.
Author: Abraham Flexner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691174768
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 104
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Book Description
A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs A forty-year tightening of funding for scientific research has meant that resources are increasingly directed toward applied or practical outcomes, with the intent of creating products of immediate value. In such a scenario, it makes sense to focus on the most identifiable and urgent problems, right? Actually, it doesn't. In his classic essay "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," Abraham Flexner, the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the man who helped bring Albert Einstein to the United States, describes a great paradox of scientific research. The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs. In short, no quantum mechanics, no computer chips. This brief book includes Flexner's timeless 1939 essay alongside a new companion essay by Robbert Dijkgraaf, the Institute's current director, in which he shows that Flexner's defense of the value of "the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge" may be even more relevant today than it was in the early twentieth century. Dijkgraaf describes how basic research has led to major transformations in the past century and explains why it is an essential precondition of innovation and the first step in social and cultural change. He makes the case that society can achieve deeper understanding and practical progress today and tomorrow only by truly valuing and substantially funding the curiosity-driven "pursuit of useless knowledge" in both the sciences and the humanities.
Author: Thomas Walton
Publisher: Sagging Shorts
ISBN: 9781944697914
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Poetry. Fiction. Literary Nonfiction. Art. Illustrated by Douglas Miller. This is a book of seventeen-word sentences, of aphorisms and otherisms. The aphorisms are in the tradition of Porchia, Blake, The Tao Te Ching, and Wittgenstein. The otherisms find their ancestors in Gertrude Stein, cabaret, Hejinian, haiku, and noir pulp fiction. Arranged thematically to respond to various themes--politics, love and sex, parenthood, the afterlife, etc.--both what's lofty and lowly are represented in these wildly imaginative and strangely intimate "seventeens." At times pithy, poetic, surreal or profane, each line is a concise world of wonder. Here is a collection of seventeen-word landscapes, snapshots and found bits of lint, learning and linden leaves that can be nibbled on, a few at a time, or binged in quick succession. ALL THE USELESS THINGS ARE MINE is illustrated with seventeen etchings and drawings by Douglas Miller and includes an afterword by Elizabeth Cooperman.
Author: Werner Herzog
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062016466
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
“Hypnotic….It is ever tempting to try to fathom his restless spirit and his determination to challenge fate.” —Janet Maslin, New York Times Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain , Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle. With fascinating observations about crew and players—including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski—and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.
Author: David Samson
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 1466855940
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
How can your tongue get you arrested? What dessert is as smart as the average adult? What's louder: A jet plane at take-off or a hippo having sex? In the form of a lively and eccentric course catalog, Useless Knowledge, the brainchild of the creator of the wildly successful Useless Knowledge website offers up loads of facts of little consequence for the hardcore trivia buff or the casual enthusiast. Inside, you'll find topics and entries like these: The Core Curriculum The Useless School of Animals The sound that a camel makes is called "nuzzing". The Useless School of Film Warren Beatty's first job in the theater was a rat-catcher...backstage. The Useless School of History Not that he was immature, but Napoleon concocted his battle strategies in a sandbox. The Useless School of Sports It takes 3,000 cows to supply a single season's worth of footballs to the NFL. There are also Useless Schools of Television, Biology, Science and Technology, Music, Geography, and Culinary Arts.
