Narcocapitalism

Narcocapitalism PDF Author: Laurent de Sutter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509506853
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
What do the invention of anaesthetics in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Nazis' use of cocaine, and the development of Prozac have in common? The answer is that they're all products of the same logic that defines our contemporary era: 'the age of anaesthesia'. Laurent de Sutter shows how large aspects of our lives are now characterised by the management of our emotions through drugs, ranging from the everyday use of sleeping pills to hard narcotics. Chemistry has become so much a part of us that we can’t even see how much it has changed us. In this era, being a subject doesn't simply mean being subjected to powers that decide our lives: it means that our very emotions have been outsourced to chemical stimulation. Yet we don't understand why the drugs that we take are unable to free us from fatigue and depression, and from the absence of desire that now characterizes our psychopolitical condition. We have forgotten what it means to be excited because our only excitement has become drug-induced. We have to abandon the narcotic stimulation that we’ve come to rely on and find a way back to the collective excitement that is narcocapitalism’s greatest fear.

Narcocapitalism

Narcocapitalism PDF Author: Laurent de Sutter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509506853
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Get Book Here

Book Description
What do the invention of anaesthetics in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Nazis' use of cocaine, and the development of Prozac have in common? The answer is that they're all products of the same logic that defines our contemporary era: 'the age of anaesthesia'. Laurent de Sutter shows how large aspects of our lives are now characterised by the management of our emotions through drugs, ranging from the everyday use of sleeping pills to hard narcotics. Chemistry has become so much a part of us that we can’t even see how much it has changed us. In this era, being a subject doesn't simply mean being subjected to powers that decide our lives: it means that our very emotions have been outsourced to chemical stimulation. Yet we don't understand why the drugs that we take are unable to free us from fatigue and depression, and from the absence of desire that now characterizes our psychopolitical condition. We have forgotten what it means to be excited because our only excitement has become drug-induced. We have to abandon the narcotic stimulation that we’ve come to rely on and find a way back to the collective excitement that is narcocapitalism’s greatest fear.

The Devil's Drug

The Devil's Drug PDF Author: Teun Voeten
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538198622
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
With a combination of thorough investigative journalism, daring fieldwork, and colorful atmospheric sketches, Teun Voeten draws a very detailed and disturbing picture of a drug that is on a rapid international rise. Methamphetamine, commonly referred to as crystal meth, is one of the most addictive drugs in the world. Heavy users can destroy themselves in just a few months. Originally given by the Nazis to their troops to fight the blitzkrieg, it has now conquered the whole world and is used at sex parties in Amsterdam and Antwerp, by former hippies in Prague, by the underclass in the slums of Harare, Cape Town, and Peshawar, by truck drivers in Thailand, and by workers in the sweatshops in Bangladesh. Researcher Teun Voeten traveled the globe for two years to investigate all sides of this diabolic drug, exploring the bizarre history and pharmacological effects. He talked to homeless addicts in Tijuana and Los Angeles, cartels in Mexico, international drug experts in Bangkok and Kabul, and more. Voeten also interviewed numerous authorities, judges, and social workers who are trying to stop the meth epidemic.

Time and Social Theory

Time and Social Theory PDF Author: Barbara Adam
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745669395
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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Book Description
Time is at the forefront of contemporary scholarly inquiry across the natural sciences and the humanities. Yet the social sciences have remained substantially isolated from time-related concerns. This book argues that time should be a key part of social theory and focuses concern upon issues which have emerged as central to an understanding of today's social world. Through her analysis of time Barbara Adam shows that our contemporary social theories are firmly embedded in Newtonian science and classical dualistic philosophy. She exposes these classical frameworks of thought as inadequate to the task of conceptualizing our contemporary world of standardized time, computers, nuclear power and global telecommunications.

Gore Capitalism

Gore Capitalism PDF Author: Sayak Valencia
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1635900581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
An analysis of contemporary violence as the new commodity of today's hyper-consumerist stage of capitalism. “Death has become the most profitable business in existence.” —from Gore Capitalism Written by the Tijuana activist intellectual Sayak Valencia, Gore Capitalism is a crucial essay that posits a decolonial, feminist philosophical approach to the outbreak of violence in Mexico and, more broadly, across the global regions of the Third World. Valencia argues that violence itself has become a product within hyper-consumerist neoliberal capitalism, and that tortured and mutilated bodies have become commodities to be traded and utilized for profit in an age of impunity and governmental austerity. In a lucid and transgressive voice, Valencia unravels the workings of the politics of death in the context of contemporary networks of hyper-consumption, the ups and downs of capital markets, drug trafficking, narcopower, and the impunity of the neoliberal state. She looks at the global rise of authoritarian governments, the erosion of civil society, the increasing violence against women, the deterioration of human rights, and the transformation of certain cities and regions into depopulated, ghostly settings for war. She offers a trenchant critique of masculinity and gender constructions in Mexico, linking their misogynist force to the booming trade in violence. This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to analyze the new landscapes of war. It provides novel categories that allow us to deconstruct what is happening, while proposing vital epistemological tools developed in the convulsive Third World border space of Tijuana.

Imperialism after the Neoliberal Turn

Imperialism after the Neoliberal Turn PDF Author: Efe Can Gürcan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000504980
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
This book explores how imperialism has been evolving in the neoliberal era, with the aim of providing a systematic and integrative understanding of the inner dynamics and vulnerabilities of the contemporary imperialist system. Asking how it has been possible to sustain an imperialist system that fails to address the problems of unemployment, declining standards of living and globalizing conflicts, the author draws upon theoretical and empirical contributions from the current literature to further recent efforts at re-conceptualizing imperialism under the conditions of neoliberal globalization and advances a critique of the school of transnationalism in global political economy. The author puts forward that contemporary imperialism rests on a triangular structure composed of (a) economic imperialism, which is driven by a neoliberal logic of maximizing monopoly profits at massive societal costs; (b) military imperialism, which is shaped by the neoliberal transformation of the US military-industrial complex with the rise of private armies, the globalization of narcocapitalism, and the weaponization of Islamist terrorism and ethno-religious divides; and (c) cultural imperialism, which is led by the media- and nonprofit-corporate complexes, having weaponized the media and civil society in manufacturing popular consent. The book’s arguments are also extended to the current challenges of imperialism embodied in the rise of the BRICS, post-hegemonic forms of regional cooperation, and global popular resistance. As such, it will appeal to scholars of politics and sociology with interests in globalization, imperialism, capitalism, and global power. Recipient of the 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award in Political Economy from the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE).

The Alchemy of Meth

The Alchemy of Meth PDF Author: Jason Pine
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452961271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Meth cooks practice late industrial alchemy—transforming base materials, like lithium batteries and camping fuel, into gold Meth alchemists all over the United States tap the occulted potencies of industrial chemical and big pharma products to try to cure the ills of precarious living: underemployment, insecurity, and the feeling of idleness. Meth fires up your attention and makes repetitive tasks pleasurable, whether it’s factory work or tinkering at home. Users are awake for days and feel exuberant and invincible. In one person’s words, they “get more life.” The Alchemy of Meth is a nonfiction storybook about St. Jude County, Missouri, a place in decomposition, where the toxic inheritance of deindustrialization meets the violent hope of this drug-making cottage industry. Jason Pine bases the book on fieldwork among meth cooks, recovery professionals, pastors, public defenders, narcotics agents, and pharmaceutical executives. Here, St. Jude is not reduced to its meth problem but Pine looks at meth through materials, landscapes, and institutions: the sprawling context that makes methlabs possible. The Alchemy of Meth connects DIY methlabs to big pharma’s superlabs, illicit speed to the legalized speed sold as ADHD medication, uniquely implicating the author’s own story in the narrative. By the end of the book, the backdrop of St. Jude becomes the foreground. It could be a story about life and work anywhere in the United States, where it seems no one is truly clean and all are complicit in the exploitation of their precious resources in exchange for a livable present—or even the hope of a future.

Drugs Politics

Drugs Politics PDF Author: Maziyar Ghiabi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108475450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Drug War Capitalism

Drug War Capitalism PDF Author: Dawn Paley
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN: 1849351880
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Though pillage, profit, and plunder have been a mainstay of war since pre-colonial times, there is little contemporary focus on the role of finance and economics in today's "Drug Wars"—despite the fact that they boost US banks and fill our prisons with poor people. They feed political campaigns, increase the arms trade, and function as long-term fixes to capitalism's woes, cracking open new territories to privatization and foreign direct investment. Combining on-the-ground reporting with extensive research, Dawn Paley moves beyond the usual horror stories, beyond journalistic rubbernecking and hand-wringing, to follow the thread of the Drug War story throughout the entire region of Latin America and all the way back to US boardrooms and political offices. This unprecedented book chronicles how terror is used against the population at large in cities and rural areas, generating panic and facilitating policy changes that benefit the international private sector, particularly extractive industries like petroleum and mining. This is what is really going on. This is drug war capitalism. Dawn Paley is a freelance journalist who has been reporting from South America, Central America, and Mexico for over ten years. Her writing has been published in the Nation, the Guardian, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail, Ms. magazine, the Tyee, Georgia Straight, and NACLA, among others.

Delirium

Delirium PDF Author: Laura Restrepo
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385521510
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In this remarkably nuanced novel, both a gripping detective story and a passionate, devastating tale of eros and insanity in Colombia, internationally acclaimed author Laura Restrepo delves into the minds of four characters. There's Agustina, a beautiful woman from an upper-class family who is caught in the throes of madness; her husband Aguilar, a man passionately in love with his wife and determined to rescue her from insanity; Agustina's former lover Midas, a drug-trafficker and money-launderer; and Nicolás, Agustina's grandfather. Through the blend of these distinct voices, Restrepo creates a searing portrait of a society battered by war and corruption, as well as an intimate look at the daily lives of people struggling to stay sane in an unstable reality.

The PlayStation Dreamworld

The PlayStation Dreamworld PDF Author: Alfie Bown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509518061
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
From mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.